By Tony Attwood

There is an index to the complete “All Directions at once” series here.

The series “All Directions at once” has now reached the final year before, for the first time ever, Bob devoted himself to writing songs which all dealt with one topic.  Our last episode All Directions 40: 100 twists before trying Christianity  took us through the first six songs of 1978, up to “Pressing On”.  So we do indeed press on, knowing that what came next year would be nothing but Christianity.

The question is, what led up to this new direction? Was Christianity the central theme in these songs at the end of the year before the all-out onslaught?  Here I look at the seventh and eighth songs of 1978 – the last two before Christianity took over.

  7.  Slow Train

https://youtu.be/dog4tPL3UZQ

This song is widely seen as the first of the new batch of Christian songs, but I would agree with those who suggest it is only seen this way because it turns up on, and gives its name to, the first of the religious albums.

Taken on its own it does not come across as a religious song, and indeed the lyrics may well remind us more of the closing song on Street Legal wherein Dylan writes, “There’s a long-distance train, pulling through the rain.”

Jochen wrote of this song, “…wide-ranging confetti-rains of impressions by an American citizen who connects the private with the universal, who slaloms between satire, reporting, surrealism, aphoristic oneliners and poetry,” and yes I can certainly live with that as a description.  And that is certainly not a comment that says, “Dylan has just turned his head, heart and soul to Jesus”.

Once written, it was an obvious song to keep, not just to put on the next album but also to make the lead title for the album.  It is pure Dylan, for Dylan has always loved songs about trains and moving on.  He’s performed “900 miles”, “Broke Down Engine”, “Freight Train Blues”, “Man of constant sorrow”, “Mystery Train,” “Railroad Bill”, and “Sentimental Journey”.  He wrote  “Only a hobo”, “Duquense Whistle”, “It takes a lot to laugh”, “Train a travellin”, “Walking down the line”, “Roll on Train”, “Ballad for a friend”, “Bob Dylan’s Dream”, “Ride this train”, “Riding on this train” (those are not the same song), “This wheel’s on fire”, “Walk out in the rain,” and many, many more moving on songs and songs mentioning the railway.  He also said in one interview he wrote the whole of the JWH album on a train journey.

And this is before we even start thinking about the more generalised moving on songs which classification is the third largest in terms of the subject matter of Bob’s compositions (beaten only, in terms of subject matter, by “love” and “lost love”.

But  there again, despite its title “Slow Train” isn’t really about a train journey, it is about change, life, the world and everything.  It is about America, and as Jochen once wrote, a”wide-ranging confetti-rains of impressions by an American citizen who connects the private with the universal, who slaloms between satire, reporting, surrealism, aphoristic oneliners and poetry.”

And in the centre of this is the way the world has changed, often in a way that Bob doesn’t like.   After all, what is religion about …

All that foreign oil controlling American soil
Look around you, it’s just bound to make you embarrassed
Sheiks walkin’ around like kings
Wearing fancy jewels and nose rings
Deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and to Paris
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

Staying with Jochen’s comments, in his review he saw that verse as “xenophobic, agitprop-spreading populist provocateur speaks up, here the poet assumes the role of a redneck uncomfortably close to unhealthy nationalism. “Facts” are stated with a Trump-like aplomb and inaccuracy. That control by foreign oil is really not that big a deal, for example. The United States has been producing more than half of its oil requirements itself for many years and there is still lots of stretch in that need. The image of sheikhs walking around waving chic jewels and wearing nose rings (?), determining America’s future, is downright nasty and malicious, and does awkwardly resemble some demagogue’s fit, rather than a poet laureate’s well-considered reflections.”

And yet this song became the title song of the new religious album.

Of course there are images within the song that can readily be seen as religious, such as

Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?

And the religious bits and pieces, such as “Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan” and “All nonbelievers and men stealers talkin’ in the name of religion” although that last has always struck me as a condemnation of contemporary religious practices rather than a call to the cause.

And above all I do get the sense of a rant (and I’ve nothing against a good rant from time to time), in lines such as “They talk about a life of brotherly love show me someone who knows how to live it”.

So I still hear this song, as when I first heard it, as an admonishment of everyone who tells us what to do, on the grounds that they are by and large all hypocritical.

And there is that constant theme of power, as with “my baby went to Illinois with some bad-talkin’ boy she could destroy, A real suicide case, but there was nothin’ I could do to stop it.”   That is powerful stuff, but I still don’t hear it as religion.

Above all, it is the end of the song that tells me that this is another Dylan song in which interesting, and sometimes exquisite lines are put together because they sound good, they scan, and they rhyme, and they feel as if they might mean something even though that something is not made particularly clear…

I don’t care about economy
I don’t care about astronomy
But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets

This says the message of “Times they are a-chanin'” written 15 years before, has come to pass.  “Times”, you may recall, told us that change happens, whether we want it to or not. It just happens.  Indeed there is the suggestion that we can’t even influence the direction of the change; it just is.

The only difference between “Times” and “Slow Train” is that with the latter it now has become personal.

And that is the theme.   From the second line (“Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions”) through to the penultimate line, “But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets”) there is the warning that times have changed, and it ain’t been for the good, and it is affecting his friends.

Thus to me, “Slow Train” is a song about a world changing, and thus the title line is singularly apt, because there is no revolution, just an evolution in a world that is more horrible than the one people were worried about in the 1960s.  Times change, just like he said back in the 60s.

So I wonder… could it be that “Slow Train” wasn’t the first religious song of the new collection, but the song which, as it emerged, caused him to think more about religion?

8 Do right to me baby

But then, if “Slow Train” wasn’t the first of the religious songs, was it “Do right to me baby”?

In many obvious ways no.  Because the line, “if you do right to me baby, I’ll do right to you” is conditional, and the message of love of Christianity is that it is unconditional. If you are treated badly, just turn the other cheek.

Besides what about the opening: “don’t wanna be judged”  – well sorry but there’s a judgement day writ large in Christianity.  Matthew 7:12, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you,for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

Bob spends his time here telling us what he doesn’t want to do (such as shooting, enslaving, being a bigamist etc) and indeed much of the song is a plea to be left alone, left to do his own thing, not be part of any movement.   Such sentiments were a common part of the anarchist wing of protest in the 1960s.  Although I rather lost Bob at “Don’t wanna amuse nobody, don’t wanna be amused”.   Why not?  Except it was another line to fit into the song, in which case we shouldn’t be taking it seriously.

But, of course the key line comes at the end

Don't put my faith in nobody,

The lack of faith in others is sad.  I don’t have faith in a messiah or other religious figureheads, and indeed given the recent record of the Christian representatives in laundries and churches in Ireland and the UK in terms of downright abuse, I suspect I’ve been on the right track.   But I have faith in my friends and I think maybe they have faith in me, each of us feeling of the others that here is a decent person who will try to do the right thing and try to be there there for the other in a crisis.  Not much, but the best we can do.

The song was played 73 times on tour, which shows it was no just a passing whim.

Here’s a live version…

So the year ends without (in my opinion) any Christian songs.  ‘Slow Train’ is the stand out piece, and if it was meant to be overtly religious it is odd that the follow up composition wasn’t.  Perhaps the best summary is that Dylan had cleared his mind a bit and could now take a new direction.

My take therefore is that when he wrote “Slow Train” he knew he was moving on, and he had a fair idea what he was moving away from.  He just hadn’t yet decided quite where he was going.

But by the time he started writing again in 1979 he most certainly did know.  For the next two songs he wrote were Gotta Serve Somebody and I believe in You.

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

• More Than Flesh And Blood (1978) part I: Lousy poetry
• More Than Flesh And Blood (1978) part II: Johnnie, that’s called songwriting
• More Than Flesh And Blood (1978) part III: Do right man

by Jochen Markhorst

IV         Exquisite corpse

 Henry Miller was an avid ping-pong player, but in the 1930s, in his Paris years, he entertained himself with a somewhat more intellectual pastime: with the cadavre exquis game, the more ambitious, literary variant of the old parlour game Consequences. The decor must have inspired Miller: the French surrealists Andre Breton and Paul Eluard, together with their entourage, are considered the inventors of cadavre exquis some fifteen years before Miller amuses himself with it – perhaps even on this very terrace of Café de Flore or else across the street, at Les Deux Magots.

The rules are simple: as in Consequences, the poet writes a first line of verse and the first word of line two. He covers the opening line and passes the paper on to a second poet, who continues from that one word on line two, and so on. You can agree to write a rhyming poem, in which case the last word of the sentence remains uncovered. The origin of the bizarre name is obvious: Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau (“The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine”) comes from the first poem that Breton and his mates produce using this “technique”.

It inspires the American colleagues in the 1940s. Like the trio Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, neatly alternating, filling pages with poems like “Pull My Daisy”;

Pull my daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken

… which on a technical level inspires Burroughs to write his cut-up writings, and content-wise inspires Dylan to write lyrics like “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.

In 1978, after the more classic writing collaboration with Jacques Levy on Desire, Dylan seems to have found a partner for this more playful form of writing collaboration: Helena Springs. At least, after two stanzas of “More Than Flesh And Blood”, the suspicion seems justified that Dylan and Springs have indulged in a game of exquisite corpse. The B-variant, that is, the one where you get to see your partner’s last word, the rhyming word. Of course, Dylan has often produced sequences of unrelated lines of poetry, especially in the mercurial years, but usually a coherent image rises therefrom, or it has a comic, absurd effect, or it offers closed, poetic tableaux. Which doesn’t happen here, mainly because there is apparently a need to suggest a narrative, an urge to vary on the soul classics in which a strong woman lashes out at her former lover.

It doesn’t really work. Maybe it’s because Springs lacks poetic instinct, maybe it’s because Dylan isn’t really in form today, but probably because the chosen exquisite corpse technique never ever produces catchy, exciting or moving poems, let alone song lyrics; a bit like the hundred typing monkeys can go on typing ad infinitum, but will never ever type out Hamlet.

Still, a full hit will pop up soon. But not yet. Not until after the second chorus, the one with perhaps the most empty line of the entire text: “Don’t discard the lily like the garment that you wear”. In itself, this is a rather refreshing manoeuvre: alternating lines in the chorus. Not unique per se, but in the art of song it is in any case not very common, to provide the recurring refrain with one consistently changing line. Dylan has already done this in extremis in “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), where almost every word in every next chorus is different, and more sober in “Maggie’s Farm” (where the chorus line, by means of a minor adjustment, connects to the previous verse; I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more and I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more, for example).

In “More Than Flesh And Blood”, Dylan and Springs reserve the third line of the four-line chorus for that variation. But without any underlying idea, without any function, just varying for the sake of varying:

And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
I reach for you at midnight just to find you're never there
And it’s more than flesh and blood can bear

In the second chorus, that third line has been changed to:

More than flesh and blood can bear
Don't discard the lily like the garment that you wear,

… in the third it becomes:

More than flesh and blood can bear
Do yourself a favour cos I know you're never there

… and in the final chorus:

More than flesh and blood can bear
Take the saddle off your horse and give yourself a chair

Appropriately enough, these four chorus lines have the same imbalance as the whole text; the first and the last are powerful, evocative and poetic lines, the second and the third are clumsy and stylistically weak, are lousy poetry again.

Most pretentious, of course, is that lily and garment line. Both nouns have an inescapable Biblical connotation, and their appearance confirms the suspicion that Mahalia Jackson can indeed be found in the cassette case of Springs or one of the other ladies from Dylan’s background choir in the tour bus. The Lily Of The Valley is sung in every variation of one of her greatest evergreens, in “Move On Up A Little Higher” (1947). But garment and lily are everywhere in the divine Ms Jackson’s enormous catalogue anyway (“How I Got Over”, “These Are They”, “I Would Rather Have Jesus”).

The somewhat peculiar expression “Don’t discard the lily” is perhaps nowhere to be found as such, but is actually quite appropriate in this song. In the Bible, the lily symbolises, both with Solomon in the Old Testament and with Jesus in the New Testament (Luke 12;27), something like pure, innocent beauty and modest, lower-class origins. All of sudden, this would create a bridge to that strange opening line You hate me cos I’m pure – and all of a sudden some coherence in the wavering, unsteady lyrics surfaces. But alas; the hopelessly hollow continuation …like the garment that you wear destroys all emerging pleasant surprise again. It is at best a stroke of luck, that line from lily to the opening line’s pure.

A comparable glimmer of hope is unfortunately not to be found in that other strange refrain line, Do yourself a favour cos I know you’re never there. It is not even an ordinary non-sequitur, a false fallacy, but really one level thereunder: an anacoluthon, an incorrect sentence. A corpse, but hardly exquisite.

Luckily, the first Dylan-worthy one-liner is coming up.

To be continued. Next up: More Than Flesh And Blood part V:

—————-

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 (only German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

This new series is an experiment – as indeed all of Untold Dylan has been as each series has started.  One or two people have an idea, we try it out, see what comments we get, get a bit of a feeling among those who write the series, and then decide if this works or not.

Personally, I value this experimentation, and I value the fact that virtually everyone is very tolerant of what we do, recognising the value of exploration, rather than indulging in instant criticism because something is not perfectly right or clear first time around.

So off we go, and for no particular reason apart from an alphabetical one, I’m having a bash at the covers of Absolutely Sweet Marie.  If I’ve not included your favourite please do write in, and I’ll try and add a recording or a video of it, to the article.

This was suggested by Dave Miatt and I rate the fact that the band has given us an unusual and engaging video, to go with a fantastic upbeat version.  The simple trick of repeating the “where are you tonight” line” and then changing the orchestration for the middle 8 really does make it work.

The energy doesn’t tire throughout, and it just holds my interest all the time; as time goes by the repeating of the main line works.

And this is a good point to kick off the series with, it seems to me, because we surely all know the song inside out and back to front, so we really do need a difference if we are going to listen.  Given the context of the music the video works as well.  What else do we want?  (PS I think this is called cowpunk).

This George Harrison version was suggested by Imam Alfa Abdulkareem.  George Harrison, goes down a different route, but through his distinctive voice he gives us a different feel, without adding anything particularly new to the song.  And that is one hell of a trick – to deliver the song without major variations and yet still make it a version we want to hear.

This is what is known as “Dream rock” and I find it fascinating.   The Boston Globe said “She has a voice that, in mythological times, could have lured men to their deaths at sea, an intoxicating soprano drenched in gauzy reverb that hits bell-clear heights, lingers, and tapers off like rings of smoke”.  Quite a thought.

So the song is taken somewhere else.  Instead of the rollocking “come here where are you” we have the plaintive lost love voice.   And what totally turns me over are the harmonies.

I am really sorry to say that because of the eternal muddle that my desk and my computer are I can’t see who introduced me to this recording.  Apologies, my thanks to you, whoever you are.

Looking back to the song’s origins it was of course Jochen who found the original or one of the original mentions of Sweet Marie in music.  I just have to include it.

And while on the subject of origins…

But lest you think Jochen was simply picking up old songs with a similar title let us move on to another of his selections and note the Flamin Groovies, a band that dates back to the 1960s and which remarkably continued to tour until recently.

Moving on, if you are a regular here you may have noted my devotion to the Old Crow Medicine Show.  Their version of “Visions” is the one I rate above all others.  Here I find them dutiful and complete, but not so innovative.  It’s interesting that no one really tries to make much of one of the most famous of all Dylan lines (“To live outside the law…”) – it is always left within the song as a regular line without special emphasis.  Make of it what you will.

But yes of course an excellent instrumental break.  With Old Crow you’d not expect anything else.

OK if you are still with me then here we go: Robin Williamson and now it gets weird.  Robin was part of the Incredible String Band, and if you were there, you would remember.   We covered the band and Bob’s feeling about them in the review of the wonderful “October Song” 

Last one, selected from the vast number of options because of its beautiful guitar playing.  This is Stephen Inglis

It is gentle, it takes me through the song beautifully; a lovely way to end this little exploration.  I hope you found something you liked.

I quite enjoyed that.  If you want to put a collection together please do and send it to me (ideally as a word document with the links to the songs as the full URL).  And please do put your name on the document – or at least the name you want to be identified with when we publish.  Just send to Tony@schools.co.uk and write Beautiful Obscurity in the subject line.  You can if you like just send in the selection of recordings and leave me to add the comments, but I’m happier if you send a complete article.

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

Revealed: More Bob Dylan Time-Travel

Previous time travel articles:

• Exclusive Untold Interview: Bob talks about time travelling in Canada
• Time Travel with Bob Dylan in Canada (part II)
• Bob Dylan goes time travellin’ once again

After a long but successful search, the diligent investigators at the Untold Dylan Archives Department have uncovered some very dusty, but revealing documentation concerning the singer/songwriter.

Discovered is that Bob Dylan encouraged by Allen Ginsberg decide to travel together back in time to Paris just after members of the Commune topple the the statue of Napoleon in Vendome Place.

Mentioned in the following song lyrics:

Well, I've been to London, and I've been to gay Paree
I've followed the river, and I got to the sea
(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)

In an unsigned letter that he obviously decides not to deliver to a New York newspaper, Dylan confirms that the French poet Arthur Rimbaud was there at the time:

“I go out of my way and give Arthur a copy of my song ‘Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts’, and as the three of us are leaving together, the smart-assed, foul-mouthed kid passes me a note in which he calls me a ‘Flower’.”

The note reads:

In short, is a Flower, Rosemary
Or Lily, dead or alive, worth
The excrement of one seabird

Mimicking lines of the following song in which Rosemary is hanged:

Lily had already taken all the dye out of her hair
She was thinking 'bout her father, who she very rarely saw
Thinking 'bout Rosemary, and thinking 'bout the law
But most of all, she was thinking 'bout the Jack ofHearts

(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

With the Untold letter is a photograph taken at the time; Dylan points out in red pencil that Rimbaud is fifth from the right in the photo; Ginsberg is the man with the beard who’s ninth from the right, and himself fourteenth from the right, recognizable by his ‘warehouse eyes’; Dylan states that, though partially obscured, he can’t be missed beause he’s wearing modern-day plastic sunglasses.

The story revealed by the ‘lost’ documents rings true. Never one to forget a slight, Dylan mocks Rimbaud in the song lyrics below – Arthur gets wounded by Paul Verlaine after the Dylan/Rimbaud insult incident:

Situations have ended sad
Relationships have ended bad
Mine have been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud
(Bob Dylan: You Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go)

In the following poem, Rimbaud writes about being raped by Communard soldiers:

I'll retch to see my heart
Trampled by these clods
What will my stolen heart do
When they've shot their wads
(Arthur Rimbaud: Stolen Heart ~ translated)

In the song lyrics below, thinly disguised and cynical, no sympathy at all is shown for the young Frenchman’s sexual problems.

Having been called a ‘Flower’ by Rimbaud, Bob gets his own back by calling Arthur a ‘Butterfly’:

Madame Butterfly 
She lulled me to sleep
In a town without pity
Where the water runs deep
She said, 'Be easy, baby
There ain't nothing worth stealing in here'
(Bob Dylan: Tight Connection To My Heart)

The Dylan/Rimbaud/Ginsberg documents remain under lock and key at the Archives Department.

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

• More Than Flesh And Blood (1978) part I: Lousy poetry
• More Than Flesh And Blood (1978) part II: Johnnie, that’s called songwriting

by Jochen Markhorst

III         Do right man

 In a tour bus with experienced, thoroughbred musicians and the professional, soulful singers Carolyn Dennis, Jo Ann Harris and Helena Springs, cruising from gig to gig through the southwest of the United States, the Queen of Soul is inevitable. Especially from September ’79, when Dennis and Harris have been replaced by Regina McCrary and Monalisa Young, and Spooner Oldham has joined for Dylan’s first Gospel tour. The Spooner Oldham, Muscle Shoals’ keyboardist Dewey Lindon “Spooner” Oldham. The man who plays the organ and electric piano on “When A Man Loves A Woman” and “Mustang Sally” and dozens of other immortal songs, but most of all on Aretha’s breakthrough album, the man who pulls the superior Wurlitzer intro of “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” out of his sleeve and so subserviently plays the organ on “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man”.

Aretha Franklin’s “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” is a song of the highest category and has a special history. It is January 1967, Aretha has just been dismissed by Columbia Records after nine okay albums, and the legendary Jerry Wexler sees his chance. He gets Aretha a contract with Atlantic Records and arranges a recording session in the famous fame studios in his hometown Muscle Shoals. The first day of recording is the last day too; after the end of a long, difficult and almost completed struggle to get the brilliant “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” properly recorded, and while recording “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man”, Aretha’s then husband and manager Ted White gets into a fight with trumpeter Ken Laxton. Studio boss Rick Hall goes to the hotel that night to talk it out, which gets totally out of hand; Aretha and her husband leave and never come back to Muscle Shoals.

Wexler does not give up, books another session in New York, calls Aretha and takes his musicians minus trumpeter Laxton with him to record the rest a few weeks later; the album that will make Aretha Franklin the Queen Of Soul, the album with “Respect”, and “Soul Serenade”, and “Baby Baby Baby”, and all those other immortal highlights: I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You (released March 10, 1967).

The only other song (partly) recorded on that first and last day in Alabama is also a classic. Pianist Spooner Oldham recalls:

“We did a skeletal track for “Do Right Woman”. That song was not finished, actually. Jerry told Dan [Penn] and Chips [Moman] that he would like to do it with Aretha, but it needed a bridge. It just had two verses. Dan was over there in the closet trying to write a bridge while we were recording the first song! Aretha offered a line, Jerry offered a line… If I remember, Dan was singing the vocal, because Aretha hadn’t learned the song yet. We were going to finish it the following day.”

But the row ensues during the recording, and that “following day” ends up being three weeks later in New York. In the meantime, Wexler has successfully pushed “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” with befriended radio DJs, so he is in a hurry with the single; “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” is completed on the first day in New York and quickly promoted to the single’s B-side (released February 10, 1967 – exactly one month before the album).

It has to be one of the most perfect singles in pop history, along with “Strawberry Fields Forever b/w Penny Lane” and “I Want You b/w Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”.

Etta, Aretha… Dylan tours America with articulate, extremely talented black singers, steeped in soul and gospel, and it becomes clear who picks the music along the way. Mahalia Jackson will probably drop by too, but one of the ladies apparently also has a cassette with Curtis Mayfield’s Curtis/Live! (1971), and no doubt they will be singing along harmoniously to “We’re A Winner”, the song Mayfield took from his Impressions repertoire.

“We’re A Winner” is one of Curtis’ signature songs, on the same Olympic level as “People Get Ready” and “Keep on Pushing”:

We're a winner and never let anybody say
Boy, you can't make it 'cause a feeble mind is in your way
No more tears do we cry
And we have finally dried our eyes

… and the only song in the canon to feature the phrase feeble mind, which then echoes in the second verse of “More Than Flesh And Blood”:

I see you at the party baby trying to converse
The room is going round and round and now it’s in reverse
Don't give in to the spirit, the spirit is adverse
Beware because your feeble mind will tear

Spirit is a “Curtis-word” anyway, and it just so happens that “round and round” also can be heard on this same Curtis album (in “Gypsy Woman”).

Moreover, Curtis/Live! was recorded in Dylan’s Greenwich Village, at The Bitter End on Bleecker Street, where Dylan regularly performs in the 1970s (one of Dylan’s most famous bootleg recordings, “Abandoned Love” was recorded there, 3 July 1975).

Anyway, Dylan must have listened to the live album with admiration. The excitement, the loaded songs, the messages, Curtis’ preachy raps between songs, the audience participation; these are all things Dylan is trying to emulate in his three Gospel Tours – and to which, according to Spooner Oldham, he is getting close. After the initial surprised, hostile and disappointed fan reactions of the first performances, it becomes enjoyable, the keyboardist says in an interview with Scott Marshall, 1999:

“All the shows at this point started to be pretty comfortable, everybody knew their part pretty well. In a sense it was becoming more enjoyable because the stress and insecurity about everything [was gone], it was becoming crystal clear that it was just a matter of getting out there and doing it. So the audience started feeling pretty similar, everybody seemed to enjoy it.”

Still, it doesn’t reach the raw excitement of a Curtis Mayfield performance in 1971, of course.

There is no live recording of “More Than Flesh And Blood”, but it’s safe to say that even Curtis himself could not have ignited his audience with it. With the music there is little wrong, obviously. Quite on the contrary – “good groove, strong hook,” as guitarist Billy Cross says. The lyrics, however, are not conducive. Just like the first quatrain, this second one is poetically not very uplifting, nor very expressive. Now that in itself is not a problem, of course. Mayfield’s “We’re A Winner” won’t win him a Pullitzer Prize for Poetry any time soon either – but Curtis does write short, powerful and incendiary slogan-like verses, the words don’t interfere, as Dylan words his own ideal of lyrics in 1978.

The Dylan/Springs verses here certainly do not have that quality. Although it is less laborious than the opening (The room is going round and round and now it’s in reverse is a rhythmically strong, tightly iambic line with a pleasantly assonating “ou”-sound in round-round-now), it is still empty: the lack of coherence between lines 1 and 2, and 2 and 3, and 3 and 4 does interfere.

And it will get even worse.

To be continued. Next up: More Than Flesh And Blood part IV: Exquisite corpse

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 (only German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

This is part 30 of Mike’s mammoth review of the Never Ending Tour.  You can find an index to the whole series thus far here.   The previous two episodes were

• 1995, Part 3, The Prague Revelation – down in the flood
• 1995, Part 4, Beyond Prague, London Calling

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

Since Dylan no longer played alone on stage with just an acoustic guitar, amplified by a microphone, as he did in his early days, we have to ask what acoustic means  in terms of the development of Dylan’s sound in the 1990s.

I have made reference to a mingled, or modified acoustic sound, but for me the key indicator is whether or not Dylan is playing his electric Stratocaster or his Gibson acoustic. Dylan’s Gibson guitar, and Jack Johnson’s, are amplified rather than just played into a mic, so the sound can sometimes be as loud if not louder than some of the more muted electric sounds. Often, on the acoustic tracks Tony Garnier will play a double bass instead of an electric bass. Bucky Baxter’s steel guitar, however, sounds pretty much the same, acoustic or electric.

The drums are another key indicator. In most of the acoustic tracks they are absent, giving the performance a more folky feel.

This post is dedicated to the songs from 1995 which satisfy those criteria, and which we can unhesitatingly identify as acoustic.

‘Hard Rain’ of course began as an acoustic solo (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, 1963).  During the Rolling Thunder tour (1975/6), it turned into a fast-paced crashing rocker, a hurricane of sound. This one (16^th December), with its discreet backing, gives this performance the feel of Dylan’s early 60’s performances. The backing smoothes it out a bit too, reducing the dumpty-dum tendency of the ballad form. Given the apocalyptic content, this is a quiet, restrained performance. In Dylan’s evolving style, however, it builds to climaxes, goes quiet again, then builds again. Powerful delivery of the last verse. An  epic performance of an epic song.

Hard Rain’s a-gonna fail

‘One Too Many Mornings’ (1964) has also been through its changes, but to my ear the loud Rolling Thunder version is just too raucous for the quiet melancholy of the song. It’s a morning after song, full of bitter-sweetness and regret.

‘From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes start to fade
And I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
And I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I'm one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind’

I love this performance (22^nd July). It’s a little slower than the album version, and the vocal is softly and lovingly delivered. This is a song that benefits from Dylan’s maturing voice. On the album he artificially aged his voice by making it sound cracked and well lived in, even though he was only 23 years old. Now at 54, he doesn’t have to try.

One too many mornings

If I had a choice of attending any concert other than the Prague concerts I would choose the concert at Bethlehem on the 13^th of December. The recordings are good and Dylan’s performances are superlative.

What makes this Bethlehem performance of ‘Desolation Row’ so special is the inclusion of that which over the years has become the missing verse. Why Dylan chose to drop this verse will remain a mystery I guess, but I always thought it was one of the best verses of the song. In it, Dylan the post-modernist reflects on the two great modernist poets of the early part of the 20^th Century.

‘Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row’

Interestingly, ‘Which Side Are You On?’ is a pro-union song by Pete Seeger. Dylan may have been taking a sideswipe at Seeger, but his real aim is at increasing polarisation of political attitudes, the sense of battle lines being drawn. In Desolation Row (the place) you can hear them all playing their penny whistles.

You can hear a few members of the audience react when Dylan begins the verse.

Desolation Row

Listening to that, I can’t help but reflect on Dylan’s acoustic style. I don’t think there is that big a difference between his acoustic and his electric playing, but the effect is sure different. I have suggested that Dylan’s guitar playing is percussive rather than melodic or lyrical. It’s there to drive the beat and build up the tension as the song progresses, not to sound pretty. This ‘Desolation Row’ is a particularly good example of how he pushes the song along with the guitar. With Dylan’s singing it’s all about phrasing; with his acoustic guitar it’s all about timing.

Now for a rarity. Dylan and Patti Smith duetting on ‘Dark Eyes’, a rarely performed song from Empire Burlesque (1985). The magazine Far Out has a lovely article on this performance.

Apparently they performed the song seven times together in 1995. I think the best version is this one from that same Bethlehem concert

Dark Eyes

There is no video of that concert, but there is this one from Philadelphia on the 16^th of Dec, three days after the Bethlehem concert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0KIQ6HGn0U

While on the subject of duets, ‘Mama You Been On My Mind,’ described as one of Dylan’s greatest love songs, was often performed with Joan Baez in the 1960s. It was often performed with a bit of a laugh or smile, but it’s not really that funny, unless yearning itself is funny. There is however a wry, almost throw away quality to the lyrics:

‘Perhaps it's the color of the sun cut flat
And covering the crossroads I'm standing at
Or maybe it's the weather or something like that
But mama, you been on my mind.’

In this performance Dylan plays it fast and straight, with an emphasis on the passionate rather than the humorous side of the song. Lovers of Dylan’s harmonica have a joyous surprise in store with a peppy break at the end of the song, hitting the high, squealing notes Dylan first developed in 1989.

 Mamma you’ve been on my mind

If you have been following these posts, ‘Gates of Eden’ needs no introduction. I have always loved the mysteriousness and weirdness of the song.

‘The motorcycle black Madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden’

The ‘grey flannel dwarf’ reminds me of something out of a David Lynch movie, and there are plenty who were there at the time who think the ‘motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen’ to be Brigitte Bardot in this poster famous in hippy apartments far and wide in the 60s.  The motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen?…

It’s a nice idea, but the term ‘black Madonna’ has other connotations. Representations of the Virgin Mary as black go back a long way in East European history.

But I digress. This is another top performance of the song. All it lacks is a harp solo. There is some fancy guitar work by Mr Guitar Man to push the song along and bring out its underlying urgency.

Gates of Eden

Another song which should need no introduction to Dylanites is ‘Visions of Johanna’, probably Dylan’s greatest song, at least in terms of the lyrics. I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the post 60s performances of the song. Nothing matches the bleak, subterranean intensity of the 1966 performances. And while it lacks the sinister edge of the album version, this 1995 performance is sensitive and moody enough to satisfy. (21^st of June)

Visions of Johanna

I have two offerings of Dylan’s great ode to escapism, Mr Tambourine Man. I’m a fan of these slow versions of the song. Arguably the faster versions belie the weariness of the opening verses:

‘My weariness amazes me
I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
and the ancient empty street’s
too dead for dreaming.’

This sounds convincing sung in a slow weary voice rather than the upbeat sound of the original (1964) and early performances of the song. This is another song in which the ageing of Dylan’s voice works in his favour.

Mr Tambourine Man

This second offering is very similar, and comes from that wonderful Bethlehem concert on 13 December. The sound is a little sharper on this recording. And the weary, contemplative harp solo is incomparable. We’d have to go back to the sweeping 1966 performances to match it.

Mr Tambourine Man 

Normally, I’d be more excited over this strong acoustic performance of ‘Tangled Up in Blue.’ It sounds rough and raw, more like a well-known 1975 version albeit slower. Great as it is, it is disappointing that he misses out the verse beginning ‘She lit a burner on the stove…’ Everything else is in place for an outstanding performance. (21^st June)

Tangled up in blue

While 1993 was the great year for extended epic performances, Dylan continued to deliver epic versions of his greatest anthems.

This ten minute performance of ‘The Times They Are A-changing’ doesn’t feel too long or over-extended. With the audience joining in on the punchlines, this has to be an exercise in nostalgia. The vocal is more world-weary than strident, which suits the song’s underlying fatalism well. Remember, honey, when the times were a-changin’ with such righteous force and it was all about youthful idealism? All the bad guys were going to get out of the way if they couldn’t lend a hand. Well… times are still a-changing and there’s nothing we can do about it, but it may not always be for the best, you know. The bad guys are still there. The more things change the more they stay the same, as the saying goes.

There’s something of a broken-hearted feel to this performance (shouldn’t things have changed by now, honey?)

Whatever the torments of time, this is an oddly sad but rousing way to end a concert (Bethlehem again) and for me to top this collection of Dylan in acoustic mode, 1995.

See you soon with the last part of this tour through some of Dylan’s key performances in this outstanding year.

The times they are a-changing

Kia Ora

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

There is an index to the complete series of All Directions at Once here.

The most recent articles prior to this one are

• All Directions 36: all hail the new direction
• All Directions 37: but which direction? Bob’s 1977 solution
• All directions: the end of Street Legal – filling in the gaps.
• All Directions beyond Street Legal: Bob and Helena unravelled (partly)

By Tony Attwood

My whole point in writing this long and convoluted series of articles under the title “All Directions at Once” is that if we consider Bob Dylan’s songs in the order in which they were written, and relate each song to what has gone before and what comes after, we get insights into Dylan’s writing, beyond those we can glean by listening to and considering each song in isolation, (as has been the convention over the years).  And with this series approaching a moment where uniquely in his career, Bob Dylan gave himself over to one, and only one, subject for around a year and a half, the lead in to this unique period is quite important to understand.

I have, through the series, noted already several religious influences on Bob in the years leading up to 1978, but over and above these, as I have tried to show, the decade was dominated by a series of unique impulses and events which led to a series of very distinguished albums, each with their own feel.

However after writing the main body of songs for Street Legal in 1977 Dylan really did meander around various themes and ideas in 1978, finishing off the album, working with Helena Springs and then travelling in all directions ending his compositions for the year with “Slow Train” and “Do right to me baby”.

It is possible to see religious elements within these songs, but I suspect that if we didn’t know what Dylan spent all of 1979 writing about, we wouldn’t particularly call them religious songs.  Indeed if the idea that “Slow Train Coming” had never been expressed and if we knew nothing of what was to follow, would anyone have said, “That’s about religion?” or even “He’s become a Christian.”  I very much doubt it.   For “Slow Train” has lyrics which hardly touch on religion, and even when they do, we mostly only see this  because of the knowledge we now have of what came the following year.

Thus for me, 1978 was not a year of getting to grips with the religious theme that Dylan would embrace in 1979. In song writing terms it was much more of a meander as Dylan tried to discover what to do next.

What we have, after the collaboration with Helena Springs ended, is a set of eight songs, of which Slow Train was the penultimate, and the first of which was Stepchild.  All eight are listed here, but this article takes us through the first six.  The remaining two are considered in the following piece.

1. Stepchild
2. You don’t love me no more
3. This a-way that a-way.
4. Take it or leave it
5. Daddy’s gonna take one more ride
6. Legionnaire’s disease
7. Slow Train
8. Do right to me baby (do unto others)

Thus in this and the next article I shall look at these songs in terms of  their relationship to each other and to what was to come, wondering if Bob knew where he was heading after writing the stunningly amazing “Stree Legal”.

1: Stepchild

Mr Tambourine, who most certainly knows a thing or three about Dylan’s performances has the first song in the series listed as an outtake from Street Legal (hence the image below).  Such info as I have gleaned suggest it was written after the co-writing sessions with Helena Springs meaning it was composed after the track selection for the album, but it could have been considered as an alternative to “New Pony” or “Baby Stop Crying” which we considered in some depth in the previous article in the series.

I find this song a really curious notion but perhaps “You treat me like a stepchild,” is a phrase that might be used in the USA.  It’s not a comment I have come across in the UK.

But we must admit this is a very secure blues performance, and BobDylan.com has it noted as being performed 53 times between September and December 1978.  Dylanchords has three sets of lyrics, in case you want to delve deeper.

It’s a straight 12 bar blues (which would make it an alternative to “New Pony” if it were considered for the album, and it really works.  Bob back to his roots, and performing with a real vigour.

Solomon Burke released his own version…

https://youtu.be/jy7wAKCwz4M

But the theme is odd given that by this time Dylan was a step father having adopted Sara’s daughter Maria.  Maybe that is just a reflection of the turmoil that Dylan found himself in, after the difficult divorce and the challenging of access arrangements for the children.  Or maybe the word “stepchild” has different connotations in the States.  If so, do let me know.

2. You don’t love me no more

As for the next song,  (also sometimes known as “I don’t love you no more”) there are suggestions by some writers that Dylan is not necessarily the composer, but there is no evidence I have seen, and the official Dylan site says he is, so I’m sticking with that.  If he were not surely there would have been complaints by now.

In the recording below it is the opening track in a soundcheck.  It is particularly interesting because the song has a properly written ending which exists outside of the sung material – a fulsome coda no less (to use the correct Italian term).  Something rather rare for Bob – and indeed not that common in pop, rock and blues in general).

This sounds like an evolution from the Dylan/Springs collaboration, and rather a good one.  That’s not to say Ms Springs had anything to do with it, but maybe Bob still had that sort of music in his head as he was sketching out songs for his next album.

Here we have it from September 1978:

What makes the song work so well is that the chorus, “You don’t love me no more” is based on three chords that make up thousands of pop songs (described in music as tonic, flattened 7th and sub-dominant) while the intervening verse sections go into a series of minor chords.  This really is musical experimentation for Bob.

I think what we have here is a sketch – a very well worked out sketch, but like the other songs after the Helena Springs period Dylan is working his way into a new set of musical forms.

3.  This a-way that a-way

The next piece, “This a-way, that a-way” then takes the song-writing journey onto another track because yes there is now a slight hint of the religious songs to come.

https://youtu.be/XoMwETzP-0c

Dylan seemed to be toying with two ideas: “the world is stuck, there is nothing to be done, that’s all there is” in this song along with  “life goes on, so it goes.”   Now of course those are not religious messages, but can be preludes to deciding that the only way out is belief.

If I am an illusion,
It’s a waste of time
If I am an illusion
I’ll be gone in time
Let me go this way, let me go that
Better to move that way than steal like a cat
This a-way, that a-way

4.  Take it or leave it

And now we have the real leap into the halfway house between moving on in general, and moving onto Christianity.

https://youtu.be/Ad78KjHdU6M

Interestingly, “You don’t love me no more” is dealing with the same sort of romantic troubles, but in a much more upbeat manner, and is being positive about the end of the affair – “Down the road I go”.   Take it or leave it has a form of hopelessness about the whole situation which is there from the jagged guitar introduction.

Although somehow I can hear elements of Slow Train in this piece.  I know it doesn’t sound like Slow Train, it is just… well, that’s how it feels.

The song is not listed on the official BobDylan.com site in the index of songs but it does have a page of its own which tells us it was played just once on 7 April 2018.  No lyrics are included.  One would only find it by doing a Google search.  (It is also, I should report, on my computer at least, one of those crazy wonderful moments where on Google, the Untold Dylan link appears above the link to the official Bob Dylan site.  I know its probably just a trick of the algorithm, but it still makes me feel good.)

5.  More than flesh and blood can bear (Daddy’s gonna take one more ride).

In these sound check recordings we also get a new version of “More than flesh and blood can bear” which in the first round of decoding the sound check tapes I copied down as Daddy’s gonna take one more ride.

https://youtu.be/JJ2BfbrH4oM

The song of interest here is the last on the recording and it comes in at around 16 minutes 40 seconds.   It has changed somewhat from the earlier version but it is interesting not just for that but because it is being played just before “Slow Train Coming” was composed.

I'm going down to find a church that I can understand
I need new inspiration and you're only just a man.
And with the blackjack table I can't play another hand,
The meat you cook for me is blood red rare 
It's more than flesh and blood can bear 
More than flesh and blood can bear 
Take the saddle off your horse and give yourself a chair 
More than flesh and blood can bear.

It is indeed a very curious set of lyrics – that church reference might suggest this is the first overtly Christian song, and yet the lyrics immediately go somewhere else.  Personally I think Bob was making them up as they go along, but whether he was or not, “Take the saddle off your horse and give yourself a chair,” is one of those priceless Dylanesque lines that need  to be cherished.

6.  Legionnaire’s disease

I wish I had a dollar for everyone that died within that year
Got ’em hot by the collar, plenty an old maid shed a tear
Now within my heart, it sure put on a squeeze
Oh, that Legionnaire’s disease

Granddad fought in a revolutionary war, father in the War of 1812
Uncle fought in Vietnam and then he fought a war all by himself
But whatever it was, it came out of the trees
Oh, that Legionnaire’s disease

Reading that in 2021 my main thought is, thank goodness Bob didn’t try a song about coronavirus.  “Dylan is a-searching.  Dylan is confused.  Dylan is uncertain.  He doesn’t quite know where to go,” is how I hear it.

What else are we to make of this?  Perhaps the best thing to say is that Bob was experimenting, trying anything, everything, feeling something that was building up inside him but not being sure what it was.  Maybe he was just clearing the air, clearing his thoughts, before coming up with a singularly superb piece of writing…

The remaining songs from the year are covered in the next episode.

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

Previously in this series

• Bob Dylan: Who Died On The Cross Anyway?
• Bob Dylan: Who Died On The Cross Anyway? (Part II)
• Bob Dylan: Who Died On The Cross Anyway? (Part III)

By Larry Fyffe

New Testament Mary Magdalene,  mythological Zeus, and an Old Testament Daniel-like image appear in the following song lyrics, giving the cowboy-western narrative a quality of timelessness.

It is not at all clear if the central characters in the story will survive; neither God, therein associated with the serpent Satan, nor the Olympian God of Thunder, appears to be on their side; this time, the two drifters may not escape. Nevertheless, there’s hope that the piece of writing itself, along with its music, will outlast the critics.

Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman:

The way is long, but the end is near
Already the Fiesta has begun
The face of God will appear
With His serpent eyes of obsidian ....
Quick Magdalena, take my gun
Look up in the hills, that flash of light
Aim well my little one
We may not make it through the night
(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango ~ Dylan/Levy)

The Daniel-like image above appears in another set of song lyrics. The ancient jackal-headed Egyptian goddess Anput is assigned to protect the body of Osiris. Symbolizing chaos, Seth, his brother, be a jealous god, associated with snakes, akin to the Christian Satin. Seth, at one time depicted as a nice guy, cuts his brother to pieces. Osiris is a symbol of order, married to their sister Isis.

In the lyrics below, imitating the Post Modernist style, the singer/songwriter messes up the Egyptian mythology even more:

His eyes were two slits that would make a snake proud
With a face that any painter would paint 
             as he walked through the crowd
Worshipping a god with the body of a woman well endowed
And a head of a hyena
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)

So it goes – them times, they are a-changing – in the following song lyrics, it could be argued that the nursery rhyme “big bad wolf” is protecting the cat who’s stuck down the well (Dylanologist David Weir tends to put a Christian spin on Dylan lyrics that he looks at; Kees de Graaf always does):

The cat's in the well, the wolf is looking down
He got his big bushy tail dragging all over the ground
( Bob Dylan: Cat's In The Well)

https://youtu.be/bboaKIQgw-0

In the Holy Bible, though not Gnostic per se, the book of Ezekiel and the book of Revelations are certainly gnostic-like in style and content.

The Old Testament verse below is said to be about the inter-relationship of Jehovah’s creations – humans, wild animals, domesticated ones, and fowls:

As for the likeness of their four faces
They had the face of a man
And the face of a lion on the right side
And they four had the face of an ox on the left side
They four had the face of an eagle
(Ezekiel 1:10)

The New Testament verse below is said to be about a lion king who saves mankind by fathering a lamb who then ascends to Heaven:

And the first beast was like a lion
And the second beast was like a calf
And the third beast had a face as a man
And the fourth beast was like a flying eagle
(Revelation 4: 7)

Inspired by an Irving Burgie song, the following lyrics links a love relationship gone sour to the two biblical verses above; the song’s Creator, a mixer of myths, determined not to be sacrificed:

Beat a path of retreat up them spiral staircases
Pass the tree of smoke, pass the angel with four faces
Begging God for mercy, and weeping in unholy places
Angelina
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)

Angelina’s the modern Whore of Babylon; that is, America sitting sidesaddle on the Golden Calf.

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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 Jochen Markhorst

More Than Flesh And Blood (1978) part I: Lousy poetry

II          Johnnie, that’s called songwriting

In 2004, English music journalist and author Peter Doggett writes the wonderful article “Whose Masterpiece Is It Anyway?” for the fanzine Judas! about Dylan’s recording sessions with Leon Russel in March 1971. Those are the sessions that yielded “Watching The River Flow” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, and when Doggett interviews Leon Russel about it over thirty years later, the pianist still has vivid and colourful memories.

Russel apparently has Dylan’s sympathy and admiration. Not only does Dylan accept Leon’s invitation to record something together, he also agrees to a special request from the long-haired music beast. Russel has heard the stories of a Dylan who writes his songs between the studio racket, ping-ponging musicians and the coffee ladies, the Dylan who, while the producer and musicians are listening back to the recording, is already working on the next song.

“I’d like to see you do that!” I begged him and begged him, and after a little while he agreed to show me. So I called my guys – Carl Radle on bass, Jimmy Keltner on drums, and [Jesse] Ed Davis on guitar – and we went up to Blue Rock Studios in the Village, and I cut these two tracks for Bob. It took about 30 minutes. Then Bob came down, and I said, “let me see you write songs to these”.

And Dylan, Russel tells, does allow Leon to hang around him all afternoon and look over his shoulder as he writes:

“He let me watch him as he wrote the songs Watching the River Flow and When I Paint My Masterpiece. That song actually refers to that event: There’s a line in there that goes, `You’ll be right there with me when I paint my masterpiece’ – he was referring to me watching him write!”

It is a charming and informative report, but one insight remains underexposed: Russel had already recorded the music, or at least the basic tracks. When Dylan arrives the track is played, on repeat, while Dylan writes the words to it. “And then when he’d got the words the way he liked, he cut the vocals.”

Both songs are in the name of Dylan alone; neither Russell nor anyone else has credit for either song. Evidently, the accompanying music is considered trivial confectionery; the lyrics are the song. Russel doesn’t make a point of it – he neutrally calls it “a chord sequence” that he got from somewhere, and for “Watching The River Flow” he copies a riff he’s used before (for “Dixie Lullaby”, from his 1969 debut album). No big deal, apparently.

It is a mentality in which Russel is not alone. Music history has dozens of examples of relatively unknown sidemen who didn’t think or realise that they had actually made the music for which the bandleader got the credit. A most remarkable example is told by Keith Richards in his autobiography Life (2010) and concerns Chuck Berry, or rather his pianist Johnnie Johnson:

“I asked Johnnie Johnson, how did “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Little Queenie” get written? And he said, well, Chuck would have all these words, and we’d sort of play a blues format and I would lay out the sequence. I said, Johnnie, that’s called songwriting. And you should have had at least fifty percent. I mean, you could have cut a deal and taken forty, but you wrote those songs with him. He said, I never thought about it that way; I just sort of did what I knew.”

… Johnnie Johnson even uses comparable wording as Russel to downplay the importance of his contribution (“sequence”, “blues format”).

In that interview with Peter Doggett, Russel reveals even more intriguing details about the origins of the accompanying music:

“When he first started writing it, he wrote, I left Rome and landed in Brussels/With a picture of a tall oak tree by my side – I think that he thought the changes that I’d played were “A Tall Oak Tree”, though they were actually “Rock Of Ages”, which I think “A Tall Oak Tree” was taken from as well. Anyway, he changed those lines later.”

Shortly afterwards, Dylan visits his old comrades in arms of The Band who are busy recording their fourth LP, Cahoots. The record is almost entirely written by Robbie Robertson, but a Dylan song can never hurt, of course. Dylan donates “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, with minor lyric changes; the line “with a picture of a tall oak tree by my side,” is changed to “on a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried.”

Russell’s analysis of the deleted words is the second glimpse he gives into Dylan’s songwriting process. Choosing “painting a masterpiece” as a metaphor for “writing a song” is quite clear, obviously, but how Dylan incorporates Russell’s observing presence in the line she’d be right there with me when I paint my masterpiece is a beautiful, uncloaking insider’s tip. Just like this second piece of information, that the words tall oak tree enter the song because Dylan thinks he hears “Tall Oak Tree” in the chord sequence.

“Tall Oak Tree” is a song that keeps buzzing around in Dylan’s head throughout the 1970s. We know this thanks to the entertaining Billy Brunette, who in the 2015 podcast StageLeft cheerfully talks about his adventures as guitarist in Dylan’s band (in 2003 he replaced Charlie Sexton for the eleven concerts in Australia and New Zealand) and shares his private memories of Dylan:

“We talked a lot about my dad and my uncle. He was a fan of some of their music. He was a big Rick Nelson fan. So, he really liked that stuff and… I had actually met him in the seventies, and he told me that my Dad’s song, “Tall Oak Tree”, he said he realised that was the first ecology song ever written. And I called my dad the next morning, and I said ‘Hey Dad, I ran into Bob Dylan’. That’s neat, you know.”

Presumably this is a memory from around 1977. At that time Billy frequents the Sundance Saloon in Calabasas, where colleagues like Leon Russel, Emmylou Harris and Jackson Browne regularly enjoy a quiet beer – and so does Bob Dylan, who lives nearby (Calabasas is a town in the Santa Monica Mountains, about twenty miles from his home in Malibu). Billy’s uncle is Johnny Burnette, together with Billy’s father Dorsey one of the founding fathers of rockabilly. In fact, rockabilly is called rockabilly because Dorsey and Johnny in 1953 wrote the hit “Rock Billy Boogie” about their new-born sons Rocky and Billy.

Billy’s father Dorsey scores a hit with “Tall Oak Tree” in 1960, and there are hints that Dylan played the single more than once; the B-side features “Juarez Town”, whose setting returns in “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and whose La Bamba drive echoes in “Like A Rolling Stone”. The A-side then Dylan thinks hearing in Leon Russell’s template for “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. He recycles the words tall oak tree for his lyrics, and in 1978, when he is tinkering with songs with Helena Springs, another lyric fragment reverberates:

The Creator looked down
And saw everything was love, love, love.
Then he took a bone
And a piece of mud --
He made a man and a woman
To be flesh and blood.

Though, in the context of this particular song, sung by this particular power lady, tracing “flesh and blood” back to Aretha would be more obvious:

A woman's only human
You should understand
She's not just a plaything
She's flesh and blood just like her man
If you want a do-right-all-day woman (woman)
You've got to be a do-right-all-night man (man) 

To be continued. Next up: More Than Flesh And Blood part III: Do right man

————————-

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 (only German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

Dylan songs are different; different because in most cases the first time we know about the song is through a Dylan recording, and the temptation is to hear that first song as the “real” version, the “definitive” version.

But even if that view wasn’t overthrown before, it was certainly challenged by Jimi Hendrix’ “Watchtower” and the fact that Dylan himself adopted the Hendrix version as his own concert ender for a number of years.

And as we have noted, Dylan has occasionally recorded two or more different versions of his own compositions before deciding which is the one he wishes to release.  He has also regularly revisited many other compositions of his own, producing completely new musical versions, and indeed often changing the lyrics.  Surely the point (and indeed the message, from Dylan) is that there is no definitive version of any song.  The songs are there for interpretation.

And surely we should not ever challenge such a thought.  After all, aficionados of the classical romantic tradition of instrumental music will have their favourite renditions of the masterpieces – and there we have all the notes written down, and even the tempo indicated by the composer.

Indeed perhaps we are misled by the phrase “cover version” because that makes it sound as if what is offered to those of us interested, is a mere copy or even a pale rendition of the original masterpiece.

But in fact it can be argued that by giving us different versions of some of his songs Dylan has not only opened the door for those of us who enjoy his work to understand that the songs can be rendered in very different ways, and that in so doing, our understanding and enjoyment can be enhanced.

And with works as complex as some of Dylan’s, that can be very important because there is so much in some of the songs, alternative approaches to the music do indeed give us deeper understandings of what it is that is within the song.

For this is the real point: the songs are living entities bequeathed by Dylan to the world, and I suspect that he if he were ever to express and opinion on the matter he would suggest that the continuing reworkings of the songs enhance their meaning and their value.  Certainly I would argue that it is the fact that so many of his songs invite us to reinterpret them that proclaims their value.

Of course other songwriters have had their songs reworked by other artists, but I am struggling to think of many songs that have evolved so comprehensively as some of Dylan’s work through this re-working.

Let me give but one example.  You would not be here, kindly giving me a few moments of your time, if you did not know the original version, but just in case you haven’t played it for a few years here it is…

Earlier this year, Far Out magazine wrote on this piece, “Arguably one of Bob Dylan’s most beloved songs of all time, the singer was only 21-years-old when he wrote the number. Debuted in the smoky Gaslight Cafe in New York, Village performer Peter Blankfield, who was there, recalled: ‘He put out these pieces of loose-leaf paper ripped out of a spiral notebook. And he starts singing [‘Hard Rain’] … He finished singing it, and no one could say anything. The length of it, the episodic sense of it. Every line kept building and bursting’.”

But now consider the Rolling Thunder version.  Here the song has a bounce and vigour completely missing in the original.  Not that the original needed a bounce, because when we first heard that acoustic version it was utterly new, amazing, shocking and overwhelming.  Simply to be there was enough.

In 1962 nuclear war and the falling of Hard Rain was not only a real threat; what was threatened was the end of civilisation; quite possibly the end of the world as we knew it.  And we have to remember that the song was written in the summer of 1962, before the Cuban missile crisis (16 October 1962 – 28 October 1962), even though in 1965 Bob suggested he had written it after the crisis (he later recanted).

In 1975 he could look at it again, and this time put in a bouncy beat and an almost jaunty rhythm, almost making it a celebration of the fact that the end of the world had not happened.   I hear it now as a way of punching the air as if to say to the world, it doesn’t matter what you do to me, I am still here, so is my blue-eyed son, so is my darling young one.   Remarkably the song which seems so portentous at first, is now bouncing along saying, “You won’t get us, it doesn’t matter what you do.”

But allow me for a moment to jump forward again because I would like to go onto Laura Marling whose version of the song I discovered through having the TV series “Peaky Blinders” play it.

It was not so much that this version of the song related to the series, but rather that it seemed to me to be part three of a song that was with me all through my life (I was alive but rather young when Freewheelin’ came out).  But in my teens I understood the threat of nuclear war, and so just the Rolling Thunder version seemed like a song saying “We’re still here”, hearing the new version in 2017 with its extra pace and additional vitality really did make me stop and think, “my goodness, against all the odds I seem to have survived.”

And indeed I can remember on the evening that I first heard this version thinking, “I have lived through some of the most extraordinary parts of my country’s and this planet’s history.  The threats, the dangers, the poverty, the hypocrisy… they are all still here, but we are still here too.   We haven’t conquered the solar system, nor put an end to war, nor eradicated disease (quite the reverse if 2020 is anything to go by) but we are amazingly still here, and (I’m rather glad to say) so am I.

I can still listen to all three versions that I have selected here, (and of course there are many, many more) with great joy, for they illustrate the power, and the energy, and the pure timelessness within the song.

Earlier today I suggested to Jochen that we might do a new series of articles on Dylan covers, and I wondered if he would be interested in contributing.  In reply he said, “On my external ‘Dylan Hard Drive’ are more than ten thousand covers by now… Lovely, lovely idea. And of course I’d be happy to put forward names & titles for your shortlist.”

We haven’t agreed a format, or an approach, or anything else, although we have looked into this arena before.  Indeed the article “The 100 Greatest Cover Versions of Bob Dylan songs ever” is one that gave me huge pleasure, because through it I discovered all sorts of versions of Dylan songs that I would never have otherwise come across.  Indeed “De swalkers flecht”  is still played from time to time in my house, even if it is never heard anywhere else in England.

What I do want to do is build an even larger index of the best cover versions of Dylan songs, and collect together some articles (with musical illustrations of course) examining why these cover versions are to be cherished.  And as we go, we’ll build an index.  You may know the Alphabetical Index of Dylan songs on this site; I am thinking we could have a second copy of the index to the songs, but just for cover versions.   So the same list of 623 Dylan compositions, and each time we have a review of the cover/s of that song, or indeed a review of the way Dylan himself has changed that song, it would be indexed there.

It’s a big project, but then, so was doing a review of each of the 623 songs.

If you want to take a song and write about the way it has been changed over time, as ever just write it in Word (if at all possible, it really does make life easier) and provide the links to the examples.  And unless I have a real problem with it (which is very rare) I’ll publish it.

And if you just want to say draw our attention to an unusual cover version, without giving us your  thoughts on why you like it, ok, I might still put it up so that others can share your enthusiasm.

If however you feel this is a tedious load of old balderdash (which is to say, nonsense) never mind, I’m sure another idea will be along shortly.

If you have an idea or an article, please do email Tony@schools.co.uk and in the subject line write “Beautiful obscurities.”  And as I say, please do send your article in Word, if at all possible.

And in case you missed the relevant episode of “All Directions at once” this is the sort of extraordinary reworking that I have in mind.

What else?

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

Previously in this series

• Bob Dylan: Who Died On The Cross Anyway?
• Bob Dylan: Who Died On The Cross Anyway? (Part II)

By Larry Fyffe

In a number his song lyrics Bob Dylan mixes ancient Greek/Roman mythologies, and stirs in pieces of the Jewish and Christian religions, wherein featured are great escapes from death, and narrow escapes they are. In “Drifter’s Escape”, the person on trial, who is easily conjectured to be Jesus, is saved from being crucified when a lightning bolt strikes the court house; thrown down by (who else?) Zeus, the Thunder God. In a typical Deconstructive reversal of the standard model, Christ is saved from sacrificing Himself; He is supposed to die for the good of all humankind.

Zeus also pops up in the aforementioned “Jokerman”. Part of the song references the a mythological story about the Thunder God in which he disguises himself as Alcmena’s husband; has sex with her, and out of the union the strongest man in the world, Hercules, is born. Needless to say Hera, Zeus’ wife, is as mad as a hurricane, and sends a couple of poisonous snakes at midnight to bite Hercules, and Alcmena’s other child. Hercules grabs a snake in each fist, and strangles them both. The young Hercules laughs – he’s not going to be sacrificed for someone else’s misdeeds:

You were born with a snake in both of your fists
While a hurricane was blowing
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

As he grows up, Hercules is subject to fits of mad rages and consequently kills a number of innocent people due to his strength, and so he decides to sacrifice himself. But he’s rescued from the flames by Hebe, the Goddess of Eternal Youth; she’s the daughter of Zeus and his older sister Hera; Hebe’s associated with spring, and Hercules gets to stay forever young with her on Mount Olympus:

Shedding off one more layer of skin
Keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

According to the Holy Bible, Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, has a dream about an idol that’s  broken up into prices by a stone. That stone, according to the Hebrews, represents Jehovah; and Christ, according to Christian authorities; some consider the rock as symbolizing the apostle Peter. In any event, the idol that’s said to represent earthly kings is destroyed:

This image's head was of gold
His breast, and his arms of silver
And his belly, and his theighs of brass
His legs of iron, his feet part of iron, and part of clay
(Daniel 2: 32, 33)

Playing humorously with myths and religion which many Post Modernist-influenced artists are wont to do, in the lyrics below, the above idol gets turned on its head, perhaps indicating like a stern father, Jehovah’s a-gonna crush the human Jesus with stones, and sacrifice Him for claiming He’s God’s son, that He walks on the Sea of Galilee, and calms the stormy weather –  miracles that, of course, only Daddy can do:

Standing on the waters, casting your bread
While the eyes of  the idol with the iron head
Are glowing
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

The King also gets angry at three Jewish servants who will not worship the golden idol that he erects to himself; decides to sacrifice them in a fiery furnace. Nebuchadnezzar witnesses them being rescued from the flames, akin to Hercules, by what he calls an ‘angel’ sent  by Jehovah; the name ‘Jesus’ is not uttered – it’s the Old Testament:

I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire
And they have no hurt
And the form of the fourth is like the Son of God
(Daniel 3: 25)

The singer/songwriter of  “Jokeman”  continues on with the fun – the only thing we’re sure about Bob Dylan is that his name is not Bob Dylan:

A friend to the martyr
A friend to the the woman of shame
You look into the fiery furnace
See the rich man without any name
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

Mary Magdalene is oft considered a former prostitute, and tradition has it that Peter is crucified upside down in Rome at his own request.

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

Updated 6 March with a third cover included – see below.

Dylan Obscuranti is an imaginary album consisting of both lesser known Dylan songs performed either by himself or other people, and re-worked versions of songs which take the song into somewhere completely different.

This is not the first Dylan album we have created.  Earlier we invented “Bob Dylan 1980” and we have also created “The Lost Album” which could have replaced “Down in the Groove” and (in our view) done a much better job of it!   Now I am at it again with Dylan Obscuranti.  You can hear the opening tracks on our You Tube channel or via the articles…

• Track 1 – Angelina but not as we know it
• Track 2 – Tomorrow is a long time
• Track 3 – I’m not there
• Track 4 – Mama you been on my mind
• Track 5 – Love is just a four letter word
• Track 6 – To fall in love with you
• Track 7 – Restless Farewell sung for Frank Sinatra
• Track 8 – Ballad for a Friend

Track 9 is Dusty Old Fairgrounds, recorded on 12 April 1963.

This song was written in 1963 (the year that began with “Masters of War” as part of a “moving on” series of songs written one after the other:

• Only a Hobo
• Ramblin Down Thru the World
• As I rode out one morning
• Dusty Old Fairgrounds

 This track was apparently intended to appear on the album “Bob Dylan in Concert”, planned for release in 1964 but then seemingly cancelled.  It seemingly appeared on what is called the “hard-to-find 50th Anniversary Collection 1963′,” although I can’t verify that.

As for the lyrics – the song is pure description.  There is no message – it is totally a case of scene setting.   Haiku 61 came up with a good summary

Melancholy clowns
From one fairground to the next
Ride the blue highways.

I would single it out for inclusion in my make-believe Obscuranti album not just because it is not known by many Dylan fans, and not just because it is such an accomplished piece of writing, and such an accomplished performance of what is a long piece, but also because I fear some may have not bothered to find the piece given that Heylin described it as another “outlandish account of his youth.”

However there is nothing here to suggest that Bob is seriously suggesting that this is the life that he has had in the past.  What he does is the opposite of this: he gets inside the music and the lives of other people are presents their realities through song.

Heylin’s comment seems to me to be at the very heart of the misunderstandings many people have about Dylan, that the listener has to believe everything he writes and sings, and that all of his work has to be taken as a statement of things that have happened to Dylan or what he feels and believes is true.

It is a discussion I have been trying to raise in relation to songs like “Joey”.  I cannot see why Dylan is not allowed to be a writer of fiction, and a writer of contemporary folk songs that do what historic folk songs have done – that is to say they exaggerate the past.  He is not a historian and has never set himself out to be: he’s an entertainer who has moved through multiple forms of writing.

Besides, cartoonists can do it with illustrative art, why can’t we have a cartoonist musician?  (Hence the image chosen for the top of this little piece).

Indeed, if I may say so, the fault is not in Dylan, but in the critics who have utterly failed to understand the traditions of music that Bob Dylan draws upon.

Imagine if Dylan had sung “Nottamun Town” with verses such as

I rode a grey horse, a mule roany mare
Grey mane and grey tail, green striped on his back
Grey mane and grey tail, green striped on his back
There weren't a hair on her but what was coal black

She stood so still, She threw me to the dirt
She tore-a my hide, and she bruised my shirt
From saddle to stirrup I mounted again
And on my ten toes I rode over the plain

they would probably have complained that the lines didn’t make sense and besides Nottingham isn’t like this, oh and it isn’t clear if he is getting on or off the horse, running or riding over the plain and anyway he’s spelled the name wrong.

Folk music and blues music are the traditions that Bob’s music has emerged from and they are traditions that have nothing to do with exact references to how life is.   So I see nothing in this to suggest that Dylan is trying to claim this is autobiographical.  Heylin to me seems to be one of those weird people for whom the whole notion of fiction and exaggeration as an art form does not exist.

In fact it is a fine representation of a way of life – not the daily 9 to 5 grind, but of travelling with the fair ground through all the different weathers and situations, living a life on the road – that image that has so engrossed Dylan across the years.

Having published this Jochen has pointed out that a missed out another cover…

The other one I had found is on the album “No More, No Less”, by Blue Ash, released in 1973.  I am told that the album was re-released on CD by Collector’s Choice Music 2008.

Dusty Old Fairgrounds starts at 3 minutes 10 seconds

Here are the lyrics

Well, it’s all up from Florida at the start of the spring
The trucks and the trailers will be winding
Like a bullet we’ll shoot for the carnival route
We’re following them dusty old fairgrounds a-calling

From the Michigan mud past the Wisconsin sun
’Cross that Minnesota border, keep ’em scrambling
Through the clear county lakes and the lumberjack lands
We’re following them dusty old fairgrounds a-calling

Hit Fargo on the jump and down to Aberdeen
’Cross them old Black Hills, keep ’em rolling
Through the cow country towns and the sands of old Montana
We’re following them fairgrounds a-calling

As the white line on the highway sails under your wheels
I’ve gazed from the trailer window laughing
Oh, our clothes they was torn but the colors they was bright
Following them dusty old fairgrounds a-calling

It’s a-many a friend that follows the bend
The jugglers, the hustlers, the gamblers
Well, I’ve spent my time with the fortune-telling kind
Following them fairgrounds a-calling

Oh, it’s pound down the rails and it’s tie down the tents
Get that canvas flag a-flying
Well, let the caterpillars spin, let the Ferris wheel wind
Following them fairgrounds a-calling

Well, it’s roll into town straight to the fairgrounds
Just behind the posters that are hanging
And it’s fill up every space with a different kind of face
Following them fairgrounds a-calling

Get the dancing girls in front, get the gambling show behind
Hear that old music box a-banging
Hear them kids, faces, smiles, up and down the midway aisles
We’re following them fairgrounds a-calling

It’s a-drag it on down by the deadline in the town
Hit the old highway by the morning
And it’s ride yourself blind for the next town on time
Following them fairgrounds a-calling

As the harmonicas whined in the lonesome nighttime
Drinking red wine as we’re rolling
Many a turnin’ I turn, many a lesson I learn
From following them fairgrounds a-calling

And it’s roll back down to St. Petersburg
Tie down the trailers and camp ’em
And the money that we made will pay for the space
From following them dusty old fairgrounds a-calling

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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 Jochen Markhorst

I           Lousy poetry

The song lyrics Dylan writes together with Helena Springs, or the songs that are in both their names anyway, mostly have a cut-and-paste character, do make a hybrid impression. Not in a positive sense, not with the synergetic added value that songs like The Beatles’ “Getting Better” and “A Day In The Life” have thanks to collaboration, or like the chilling “Where The Wild Roses Grow” by Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue.

Or Freddy Mercury and David Bowie’s majestic world hit “Under Pressure”, the song with the number one “bassline of all time”, according to Stylus Magazine‘s Top 50 Basslines Of All Time in 2005 (i.e. before Chic’s “Good Times”, before Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and before “Walk On The Wild Side”, Pink Floyd’s “Money”, “Fever”… – so, quite debatable, all in all).

Dylan doesn’t seem to take the collaboration very seriously anyway. None of the Dylan/Springs songs are selected for recording, only a fraction of the bulk of probably about twenty songs get an occasional live performance. Which seems to be due to the most likely explanation: Dylan himself is not too impressed by the songs either. Only “Stop Now” is said to have been a candidate for Street-Legal for a while – but it has since floated away over the waters of oblivion, too.

The lyrics of “More Than Flesh And Blood” are perhaps the most unbalanced in that hybrid club, or at least the most frown-inducing. Just take the opening couplet:

You’re fighting for existence, you hate me cos I'm pure
You put a hurting on me baby and you make me insecure
But to be strong, I must be weak or else I won't endure
I love you, but I love you unaware
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
I reach for you at midnight just to find you're never there
And it’s more than flesh and blood can bear

The first main clause introduces a “you” who does not have it easy: he is “fighting for existence”. In the art of song an unusual and somewhat peculiar opening. It’s a choice of words that Sir David Attenborough would use as a voice-over for the footage of a lonely penguin chick on an icy polar plain, or perhaps the caption of a poetically inclined artist under the photograph of a dandelion growing through the deck of an asphalted parking lot.

Either way, Springs and/or Dylan choose these words to introduce an antagonist. Which promises, at the very least, the portrait of a tormented soul. But in the rest of the lyrics, he turns out to be on a roll at night, hanging around at parties, driving a Cadillac and being intellectually superior (“In order to keep up with you I must go back to school,” as Helena sings in the third couplet). No elaboration, in any case, of that dramatic introduction, not even a hint of an existential struggle. The only clue is in that same opening line: you hate me cos I’m pure.

Peculiar. It is rather immodest, not to say ridiculous, to characterise yourself as “pure”, and it does not exactly push the listener’s sympathy towards the I-person. Awkwardly, it even pushes the associations to Biblical distances, to Paul in Galatians 4: “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?”

The uncomfortable confusion evaporates – briefly – in the second line, which is reassuringly “normal”. You put a hurting on me baby and you make me insecure seems to come from a Dylan on autopilot, from the walking jukebox that effortlessly finds fragments of other people’s songs to shake a copy/paste line out of his sleeve. You put a hurting on me must have come from Etta James;

Something's got a hold on me that won't let go
I never thought it could happen to me
Got me heavy without the misery
I never thought it could be this way
Love's sure gonna put a hurting on me

… from “Something’s Got A Hold On Me”, Etta’s oft-covered 1962 hit, and in all likelihood the only song in Dylan’s baggage to contain that phrase put a hurting on me.

Just as effortlessly, the songsmith finds a rhyme to that silly you hate me cos I’m pure; skilfully in the same metre, casually assonant, he plucks you make me insecure from the catalogue. From the “Stevie Wonder” drawer, presumably;

I feel so insecure 
In my mind, I can picture 
Losing you for sure 
And the pain I can't endure

There are not many songs with the word “insecure” in them anyway. The Beatles “Help!” (But every now and then I feel so insecure), but Stevie’s 1968 hit “I’m Wondering” is about the only one in which it is also rhymed with “endure” – just like Dylan/Springs’ third line does. That third Dylan/Springs line is again unendurably weak: But to be strong, I must be weak or else I won’t endure.

Joan Baez once declared with infectious self-mockery that Dylan called her self-written songs “lousy poetry”. It makes one curious about the qualification Dylan would give to a verse like this.

Motivated, probably, by Dylan’s fondness for the paradoxical inversion. Like “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” from “My Back Pages”, or like “He could die happily ever after” from “Tombstone Blues”, or like “If your memory serves you well” from “This Wheel’s On Fire”, and many more. But then again – in those mercurial sixties’ songs, the paradoxical reversals do have substance, a philosophical undercurrent or at least a comic effect. There’s none of that here; apart from the stylistically embarrassingly weak phrasing, the meaninglessness, the pretension and the lame argumentation – you make me insecure but to be strong I must be weak (?) interferes. With some good will, one may regard it as an allusion to Jean de la Fontaine’s “Le chêne et le roseau” (1668), the fable about the bragging, strong oak tree that goes down in the storm and the weak reed that survives precisely because of its weakness. However, this still does not erase the astonishment about the elementary school level of the style.

It is not a slip. The fourth line, I love you, but I love you unaware is just as clumsy as the first and third lines. If the “I” means that the antagonist is unaware of her love for him, the sentence is simply wrong. And if she means she is unaware of her own love for him, the sentence is completely bogus; after all, you don’t know what you don’t know. Either way, it remains a clumsy, laborious expression of feeling. Neither fish nor fowl.

Or rather: neither flesh nor blood.

To be continued. Next up: More Than Flesh And Blood part II: Johnny, that’s called songwriting.

—————————

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 (only German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

• All Directions 36: all hail the new direction
• All Directions 37: but which direction? Bob’s 1977 solution
• All directions 38: the end of Street Legal – filling in the gaps.

A full index of the articles in the series appears here

And so we are in 1978, which as we have seen, opened with three songs written with Helena Springs and then the final two songs required to get Street Legal up to the regulatory LP size.  After that came the rest of the co-compositions, some for which we have recordings, others being never recorded, or are simply lost.

There are seven songs listed as written with Helena Springs of which recordings have been found,  and the last time I looked only one of these is listed on BobDylan.com, although it seems his company owned the copyright to the whole collection, until this was sold to Universal.

It is commonly said that these songs were written by Dylan with a very small input by Ms Springs, but this is normally stated without any evidence.  Supporting the claim is the fact that although Ms Springs has had an illustrious career as a backing singer, she’s not known as a solo artist or composer, and indeed even Wiki, which seems to have a page on almost everyone who has recorded anything, doesn’t have a page on her.

Ms Springs later worked with the Pet Shop Boys and appeared as a backing vocalist on some of their early hits such as “West End Girls”. In 1986 she signed a solo deal with Arista records and released the singles “I want you” and “Paper Money”.

If you want to see a list of her performances as a backing vocalist – and there is no doubt she is a very good backing vocalist – there is a list on rateyourmusic

So moving on with the list of songs Dylan is credited with writing, and for which we’ve got recordings, the next song in the Dylan/Springs collection was “Walk out in the Rain”, which again Clapton recorded.

The lyrics most certainly could be Dylan’s, given all that had gone on in the previous year…

Walk out if it doesn’t feel right
I can tell you’re only lying
If you’ve got something better tonight
Then don’t mess up my mind with your crying

Just walk out in the rain
Walk out with your dreams
Walk out of my life if you don’t feel right
And catch the next train
Oh, darling, walk out in the rain

However the melody in the second and fourth lines of the verse doesn’t sound very Dylan at all, although the chorus, including its “train” certainly could be.  So it seems like a genuine co-composition. It certainly is a song that lends itself to multiple interpretations and this version makes the most of the gorgeous melody.

Next up was “Coming from the heart (the road is long)”.   Dylan did say that a full band version of it was tried out at the time of Street Legal and Helena Springs confirmed in an interview that it was the third song that she and Dylan wrote together.    Heylin liked it and included it in his list of lost Dylan gems.

Dylan did indeed play this once in 1978, and the lyrics are provided on BobDylan.com along with a recognition that it is a joint composition.

We have got to come together
How long can we stay apart?
You may get it maybe never
But it’s coming from the heart.

Your life is full of indecision
You can’t make up your mind.
We must get it in position
And move it on down the line.

‘Cause the road is long, it’s a long hard climb
I been on that road too long of a time
Yes the road is long, and it winds and winds
When I think of the love that I left behind.

But to me, the words are not very inspiring.  I looked at it about five years ago, and it didn’t do anything for me then, and it doesn’t do anything as I return to it in 2021 while writing this series – except when it hits the title line at the start of the chorus; there the emotions do work.

Maybe Bob was still thinking of his work with Jacques Levy and that he could reach those heights again through another collaboration – but I don’t think this was a period that could bring lines such as these from “Romance In Durango”

At the corrida we’ll sit in the shade
And watch the young torero stand alone
We’ll drink tequila where our grandfathers stayed
When they rode with Villa into Torreon.

Next up was “Wandering Kind” which could well be a Dylan composition throughout.  It’s a hell of a story encapsulated in a short song: you could make a whole movie out of this.  And isn’t that the way so often with Dylan?

https://youtu.be/qM_Ax0_kRgA

Continuing the co-writing affair, next is “More than Flesh and Blood”, which again does have the sound of being a Dylan rock blues song.  I think what gives me that feeling is simply how well it works; it just has a natural feel – the verse is almost totally on one chord, and then the chorus provides a relief.  There’s a progression in the lyrics too, and the band has taken care over the production with the addition of a background sax section.  Yes, I’d put this down as a Dylan composition definitely.

Of course this is not to say it is a great song by Dylan standards, but it is lively, bouncy and entertaining, and not every Dylan composition is an absolute masterpiece (although of course many of them are!)

With profound thanks to Jack Aldworth and Eduardo Ricardo from Edlis Cafe we actually do have the lyrics – they’ve appeared on Untold Dylan before but in case you’ve missed them, they are published here again below.

I would argue that although one can’t say lines such as, “But to be strong I must be weak or else I won’t endure I love you, but I love you unaware,” to make them fit with the music is pure Dylan; we can indeed say that they are the lyrics of  very practised and accomplished song writer.  Indeed if Dylan were to say “no, I didn’t write that” I would still doubt that Ms Springs did, because these lines have a sense of maturity I don’t think she had as a songwriter; they feel like the lines of a songwriter who has written shedloads of lyrics, not just turned to the job the first time.

Lines such as, “The room is going round and round and now it’s in reverse” are not profound but they are fun, illuminating, and just plain different.  If the line was there without the last four words it would be nothing of interest.  Add those four words and suddenly you have to take note.

I also love, “You drive off in your Cadillac and leave me with the mule”.  Where did that come from?

You’re fighting for existence, you hate me cos I'm pure
You put a hurting on me baby and you make me insecure
But to be strong  I must be weak or else I won't endure
I love you, but I love you unaware
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
I reach for you at midnight just to find you're never there
And its more than flesh and blood can bear


I see you at the party baby trying to converse
The room is going round and round and now it’s in reverse
Don't give into the spirit, the spirit is adverse
Beware because your feeble mind will tear
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
Don't discard the lily like the garment that you wear
It's more than flesh and blood can bear


Time regards a pretty face like time regards a fool
You drive off in your Cadillac and leave me with the mule
In order to keep up with you I must go back to school
I see that in the wicked way you stare
And that's more than flesh and blood can bear
More than flesh and blood can bear
Do yourself a favour cos I know you're never there
And its more than flesh and blood can bear

I'm going down to find a church that I can understand
I need new inspiration and you're only just a man.
And with the blackjack table I can't play another hand,
The meat you cook for me is blood red rare 
It's more than flesh and blood can bear 
More than flesh and blood can bear 
Take the saddle off your horse and give yourself a chair 
More than flesh and blood can bear.

And that last verse, if Ms Springs did write that then where is the rest of her writing?  You can’t create lines like that in a song and then stop composing.  No, this one is real Dylan – and interestingly Dylan moving into a sense of humour rather than resource and regret.  He’s worked his way out of this end-of-marriage woes.

Moving on from the lyrics what have a we got?  A bouncy three chord song with hints of concern about the “true religion” he was in the process of finding maybe.   If my understanding of the opening line is right then she’s saying that he’s trying to get into the church, while she is already there.

But what we also have is Dylan firmly moving away from the style and approach of both lyrics and music in the last album, and really writing a clever, interesting piece.  Not a great work of art, but a jolly, amusing, enjoyable sketch.

And besides, who but Dylan could or would write

Take the saddle off your horse and give yourself a chair

And this I think is the whole point of the Dylan/Springs era.

Bob had created a new set of styles and a radical new approach to songwriting both in terms of lyrics and music with the songs of the previous year.  He now needed to break away from that and find a new muse, and at the start of the collaborations, I think Ms Springs really did have quite an input.

So the songs we get are  “paying dues” and “having fun.”   But although, as I have indicated, there are items which Ms Springs is more likely to have written than Bob, simply because they are not Bob’s style, as we work through the series we get more and more of the vibrant, innovative and experimental Bob returning, after exhausting himself with the album material, and all the emotions, of the previous year.

Thus by the time we get to “I must love you too much” we can really hear that Dylan is once again enjoying himself.  Compare and contrast with the heartfelt angst of last year’s songs – this is now fun.  He’s found a new mode of expression.

Heylin makes an interesting comment that around this time Dylan started playing with the lyrics of some of these songs when they were used in sound checks, which again must have helped him move into his new mode of writing.

There were apparently more songs that were written in the Dylan/Springs era but I have not laid my hands on recordings of any of them so we have to stop here.

However I would suggest there is enough above to reveal that this was not a simple collaboration but an evolution away from the songs of the previous year, with Bob sometimes engaged more, sometimes less.

These songs emerged in different ways, and dismissing all the songs from this period as trite and of no interest is wrong… some are not that memorable, true, but others are, and should be noted.  And they are a sketchbook via which Bob cleared his mind of last year’s songs and got ready for whatever was to come next.

Expecting Rain provided a list of songs I’ve missed

• Baby Give It Up (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Her Memory (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs-Ken Moore)
• One More Time (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Responsibility (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Someone Else’s Arms (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Tell Me The Truth One Time (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• What’s The Matter (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Without You (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Take It Or Leave It (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs)
• Your Rockin’ Chair (Bob Dylan-Helena Springs) [Title uncertain?]

while Heylin went further and added another five

• Afternoon
• Romance Blues
• Satisfy Me
• Brown Skin Girl
• Miss Tea and Sympathy

and he states that over time all the songs were copyrighted.

So there we are.  Another period of Dylan’s life comes to an end.  And what next?  Well,  clearly Dylan was ready to take another leap forward.  But where?

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

Part I: Bob Dylan: Who Died On The Cross Anyway?

By Larry Fyffe

Taking ‘Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts’ as an allegory pertaining to the Holy Bible, Rosemary represents Samaria, and Lily, Judea. Big Jim represents King Solomon, ruler of the Promised Land; punished for his wayward ways by having his United Kingdom divided in half. Pick a card – Jack represents the One Almighty Jehovah, or both God and Jesus.

In the Old Testament, Aholah, akin to Rosemary, represents the northern part of Israel, and Aholibah, akin to Lily, the southern part. Displeased with their whoredom, Jehovah is not at all forgiving; there be no Jesus around in those days:

And the company shall stone them with stones
And dispatch them with their swords
They shall slay their sons, and their daughters
And burn up their houses with fire
(Ezekiel 23: 47)

In the New Testament, analogous to a divided kingdom, Jesus, Son of Jehovah, alias the Lamb, is born in a manger, but He’s said to be destined to re-unite everybody by sacrificing Himself; seems His Father is reluctant to sacrifice Himself:

And there shall be no more curse
But the throne of God, and of the Lamb shall be in it
And His servants shall serve Him
(Revelation 22: 3)

The Christian allegory breaks apart in ‘Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts’ unless one takes the Gnostic view that the spirit of Jesus has no beginning, and and has no end, just like His Father.  Both in love with the Jack of Hearts, Lily and Rosemary conspire with him to get rid of diamond-studded
Big Jim:

Backstage the girls were playing five-card stud by the stairs
Lily had two queens, she was hoping for a third to match her pair ....
She called another bet, and drew up the Jack Of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

Things happen pretty quick, and we are not sure Jack did it, but Jim ends up dead with a penknife stuck in his back. Jack’s a chip off the old block so to speak, a Jokerman; he has no intention of being sacrificed like a lamb, and like Jesus with Simon of Libya, Rosemary of Samaria takes the fall, double-crossed for the very last time:

And Rosemary on the gallows, she didn't even blink
The hanging judge was sober, he hadn't had a drink
The only person on the scene missing was the Jack Of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

As goes the allegory, having seen to it that sinful Samaria has fallen, Jack/Jehovah/Jesus being concerned at the moment with the gilded Lily, with Judea, is determined to rebuild His Temple in its capital Jerusalem:

The cabaret was empty now, a sign said 'Closed For Repair'
Lily had already taken all of the dye out of her hair
She was thinking about her father, who she very rarely saw
Thinking about Rosemary, and thinking about the law
But most of all, she was thinking about the Jack Of Hearts
(Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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 Jochen Markhorst

“Keep Your Eye On The Sparrow”, as Baretta’s Theme is actually called, is the title song of the TV series with which Sammy Davis Jr. scores a big hit in 1976, number one even in the Netherlands and in Sweden. It’s not an all-too-common expression, this sparrow monitoring, but it does occur, every now and then. An old gospel hymn is called “His Eye Is On The Sparrow” (1905) which is based – of course – on the Bible, on the sparrows in Matthew 10. Dylan is also browsing through this particular Bible book at the time of Shot Of Love (1981), as evidenced by the falling sparrow reference in “Every Grain Of Sand”, but Dylan is probably experiencing a déjà vu thanks to his old friends Peter, Paul and Mary. Though in their “Single Girl” (1964), it sounds hardly biblical, but rather corny cautionary:

When a fella comes a' courtin' you,
and sits you on his knee,
Keep your eye upon the sparrow
that flits from tree to tree

The Baretta song lacks a religious connotation as well. The little bird is mainly chosen for its playful, but otherwise empty rhyme:  

Keep your eye on the sparrow
When the going gets narrow,

and especially because it fits with the self-indulgent rhymes in the verses. Don’t go to bed with no price on your head and don’t roll the dice if you can’t pay the price and ain’t gonna fight with no thief in the night. But the best-known line is of course the one Dylan copies almost literally: don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

“Heart Of Mine” is a bit of an oddity in Dylan’s catalogue. Apart from that one one-liner, the bard also adopts the empty rhyming; in fact, Dylan writes five identical couplets under the motto rhyme over reason. The musician Dylan overrules the poet Dylan this time; rhythmically, it is indeed a sparkling, outstanding song text, with a rhythm that varies as often (almost per line) as the melody.

The opening is already special. Dylan starts singing on the second beat, like a percussion guitar plays reggae (on the second and the fourth beat), shifts to assonating triplets in the next lines (don’t let her know that you love her), leaves whole bars almost empty… particularly in combination with the melody changes, it works wonderfully.

Content-wise he limits himself, unfortunately, to five times the same message: look out kid, don’t fall in love. It may be inspired by Dylan’s own diary – biographers look for and do find candidates for the forbidden love sung about here. However, Dylan has produced better poetry to express complex feelings. Idiomatically, it is very monosyllabic (literally; of the 200 words, only thirteen have more than one syllable). In itself, that is hardly a weakness, obviously, but here the monosyllabism is embedded in easy rhymes and empty talk. In terms of word choice, only the archaic so malicious and so full of guile stands out, echoing 1 Peter 2:1 (“Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile”) – but still: this one-time outpouring of stately terminology amidst all the simple talk is alienating. It does suggest, in fact, that the poet was inspired not so much by the Bible, but by a colleague: by the brilliant, tragic Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).

Dunbar’s parents were slaves in Kentucky, but the underprivileged Paul Laurence seems to have overcome his disadvantage at an early age; at sixteen, his talent is recognised and his first poems are published (in his hometown, in the Dayton Herald). Yet despite the recognition and support of big names like Frederick Douglass, of successful schoolmates Wilbur and Orville Wright, and of rich, white admirers, Dunbar has a short life of trouble. After financial misery, racially motivated opposition, alcohol and recklessness, he dies of tuberculosis at 33 in his native Dayton.

His name and his work survive. And especially his poetry – in anthologies, schoolbooks and songs. And as an echo, too, in Dylan’s “Heart Of Mine”, which thematically mirrors Dunbar’s wonderful “The Made To Order Smile” anyway:

When a woman looks up at you with a twist about her eyes,
And her brows are half uplifted in a nicely feigned surprise
As you breathe some pretty sentence, though she hates you all the while,
She is very apt to stun you with a made to order smile.

… the first of four stanzas, in which the narrator, like the narrator of “Heart Of Mine”, warns of the devastating consequences of falling in love with a fatal woman. The choice of words in the third stanza reveals that Dylan does know Dunbar’s poem:

I confess that I'm eccentric and am not a woman's man,
For they seem to be constructed on the bunko fakir plan,
And it somehow sets me thinking that her heart is full of guile
When a woman looks up at me with a made to order smile.

… the maliciousness Dunbar warns about in general and the heart full of guile specifically, seem to inspire the opening line of Dylan’s final couplet, “Heart of mine so malicious and so full of guile”. Dylan’s twist, reversing the perspective, is more attractive, though; in Dunbar’s poem, the first person accuses the women of malice, while Dylan’s narrator searches closer to home, in his own heart, and acknowledges that his own feelings are betraying him.

Awkward, finally, is also the rather disrespectful way in which the master himself presents the song to the world: for the official release, on Shot Of Love, he chooses the sleaziest and most chaotic recording made of it, the half-serious one with Rolling Stone’s Ronnie Wood and Ringo Starr, somewhere listlessly rattling a tambourine. The decision even leads to a rare, vague mea culpa in an interview, 1984: “I chose it because Ringo and Ronnie Wood played on it.” Nevertheless, it quickly becomes clear that the song hides a small masterpiece, and the live version selected for Biograph (1985) does make up for it. On the bootlegs that have surfaced over the years, there are other, wonderful, “ordinary” recordings to be found. The one on Between Saved And Shot (1999), for instance, with a Dr. Hook-like approach, very driven vocals and an unparalleled band that is both tight and frayed at the same time.

Followers enough, too. Veteran Maria Muldaur calls her tribute album Heart Of Mine: Love Songs Of Bob Dylan (2006) and, among the other rather colourless, but okay covers, delivers a nice version (still, the opening “Buckets Of Rain” is the only real highlight of the album). Mountain’s hard rockers imagine themselves in a stadium, with lighters and all, and the Amnesty contribution by Blake Mills and Danielle Haim (Chimes Of Freedom, 2012) at least approaches the dry, garage rumble atmosphere of the original.

Much more appealing is the most famous rendition, the one by Norah Jones (together with the Peter Malick Group on New York City, 2003). Bluesy and sultry, beautiful piano, great musicians and of course she can sing, Ravi Shankar’s daughter. Her textual intervention is defensible; the cheesy If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime apparently goes a bit too far for her and is changed into the more charming Do the time, don’t do the crime, heart of mine. Still not Nobel Prize-worthy, but what the heck.

Arguably the most beautiful cover. The competitor is the relatively obscure Jason Shannon from Minneapolis. Shannon chooses an original, propulsive percussion cadence (it sounds a bit like the rattling of bare hands on a leather sofa) and superimposes rolling guitars, a tasteful organ and a modest bass. Just as restrained, and just as tasteful, is the female second voice.

Heart of Mine

According to Jason, he submitted the song for the I’m Not There cover competition. Not chosen, only awarded with an honourable mention from Columbia Records: best runner-up.

Which is like making someone happy with a dead sparrow, as the Dutch call it.

 ———-

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books 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 (German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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 Larry Fyffe

Not unlike that of Christianity, there’s the Gnostic view that Jesus be a spirit split off from the far off Monad.

Jesus, not of the flesh, is able to inhabit the physical bodies of actual human beings –  like He does with that of the Libyan Simon on the way to the crucifixion.  Simon’s horribly executed on the cross, but Christ of course feels neither pain nor suffers death; in fact, so the story goes, Jesus laughs to Himself because of the cruel joke He’s played on His followers and on His enemies alike; the oh-so-alive “Son of God” then surprises His disciples by visiting them after He is supposed to be dead.

Another legend has it that Jesus is indeed of the flesh, but He conspires with others to have Simon compelled to take His place on the cross; then sails off to sea somewhere with Mary Magdalene:

And as they led Him away
They laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian
Coming out of the country
And on him they laid the cross
That he might bear it after Jesus
(St. Luke 23: 26)

Such a tale of so miraculous an escape apparently inspires the following song lyrics:

Standing on the waters, casting your bread
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing
Distant ships sailing into the mist
You were born with a snake in both of your fists
While a hurricane was blowing
Freedom just around the corner for you
But with truth so far off, what good will it do
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

The songwriter above takes on the persona of the Jokerman:

Jokerman
Dance to the nightingale tune
Birds fly high by the light of the moon
Ooooohoh, Jokerman
(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

With lines inspired by:

There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams
Where the nightingales are singing
And the white moon beams
(There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding ~ Elliot/King)

In the following song lyrics, it looks like the narrator thereof is going off to see whether or not Jesus is indeed an everlasting Gnostic spirit whom he suspects has encased Himself in the reincarnated body of Simon the Cyrenian; living now in Libya with His spirit-partner Mary Magdalene. One thing is for sure – Mary has lots of oil to rub on His feet:

Well, I'm going off to Libya
There's a guy I gotta see
He's been living there three years now
In an oil refinery
(Bob Dylan: Got My Mind Made Up ~ Dylan/Petty)

Which brings up the possible allegories in ‘Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts’. If two-timing Big Jim is Solomon therein, then he’s confronted by Jehovah, the Jack Of Hearts (JOH) who punishes the wayward King of the diamond mines by breaking up the  United Kingdom of Israel – Lily symbolizes southern Judea, and Rosemary, northern Samaria.

Lily and Rosemary end up united only in their unhappiness with Big Jim:

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys ....
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved,
That ye tell him that I am sick of love
(Song Of Solomon 2:1; 5: 8)

If the Jack Of Hearts is instead considered to be a Christian-like combination of Jehovah/Jesus, He must be a timeless spirit. As it is claimed by the Gnostics, since otherwise the Song of Solomon allegory does not work – it’s written long before Jesus is said to be born in a manger.

In the song lyrics below, it seems that Lily cares little for the prospects of a re-united kingdom, and decides instead that she likes the Son of God’s curls (especially now that they’re sparkling with stolen gold dust) more than she loves her Father who turned against the King of Diamonds:

She  was thinking about her father, who she very rarely saw
Thinking about Rosemary, and thinking about the law
But most of all she was thinking 'bout the Jack Of Hearts
(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts)

Turns out lusty Lily is just another manifestation of the Gnostic spirit that also inhabits the physical bodies of Jungian Mary Magdalene archetypes; they are always running off with adventure-seeking, shape-shifting Jokermen, whereupon they always end up in quite a pickle:

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Dust on my face, and my cape
Me and Magdalena on the run
I think this time we shall escape
(Bob Dylan: Romance In Durango )

Meanwhile elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

This article is part of our on-going series tracing the Never Ending Tour, with commentary and audios of the performances.

A full index of all the articles tracing the tour from 1988 onward, is available here.  The previous articles about the Prague concerts of 1995 are…

• 1995, part 1: The Prague Revelation and other astonishments
• 1995, part 2: The Prague Revelation – Salt for Salt, Peak Prague
• 1995, Part 3, The Prague Revelation – down in the flood

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

Of course, Dylan’s revelatory three day residency on Prague was not the end of the 1995 story, just the beginning. He went on from there to performances equal to Prague, but not with the same consistency.

His three day residency in London, from the 29^th to the 31^st of March at the Brixton Academy, is a good example. It may well be that the recording of the London concerts was not as good. Despite their obvious audience source, there is something about the Prague recordings, how they capture the echo of the venue, and the clarity of the sound, that was not sustained in London. Yet there were some outstanding moments in London, such as this ‘Masters of War’, which equals the best of Prague:

Masters of War

For my ear, we have a ‘best ever’ performance of this song, at least in terms of acoustic versions. In my post for Master Harpist 2, I wrote regarding this performance: ‘Dylan can let rip with this song, and turn it into a howling rocker, but this performance is all restraint, a sense of holding back that emotion, which just breaks through the voice here and there, until we get to the harp, where we get a sharper, more trenchant comment. Listen to the way the guitar and harmonica surge back and forward in a syncopated manner, while Dylan’s vocal and harmonica phrasing drive the song forward. Hard to find a better Dylan performance than this.’

Another London performance we can’t overlook is this ‘Senor’, a song that takes us right to the borderlands of spiritual despair. It’s a wonderful moody song from  Street Legal (1978) and never fails to create a spooky atmosphere on stage. There is a pretty good video of this performance, and you see Dylan, once more without guitar, putting on a very Prague-like performance. (I have added the audio link in case the You Tube clip disappears)

Senor

The London concerts are remarkable for a most rare performance of ‘Joey’ off  Desire (1975). ‘Joey’ has never been my favourite Dylan song, as it appears to lionise a mafia figure. How different from ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol’ (1964) which  presents us with a harrowing tale of how a poor black woman was randomly killed by a rich crook who might have been Joey, or at least a Joey type figure. As a story, this epic failed to move me, but if any performance of the song was going to move me it would be this one. Whatever you think of the song, the power of this performance turns it into a passionate narrative of betrayal. A remarkable vocal.

Joey

‘Dignity’ was written in 1989 for Oh Mercy, but Dylan was dissatisfied with the versions they tried out. He re-recorded it in 1994, and many of us first became aware of the song from the 1994 MTV Unplugged concert. A derisive humour lies behind this song. Dignity can no longer be found no matter where you search:

‘I went down where the vultures feed
I would've got deeper, but there wasn't any need
Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men
Wasn't any difference to me’

You can listen to it as if dignity was a person, and the effect is quite odd.  I’ve just added the capital D to dignity.

‘Somebody got murdered on New Year's Eve
Somebody said Dignity was the first to leave
I went into the city, went into the town
Went into the land of the midnight sun’

This 1995 London performance recalls the MTV performance of the year before, but to my mind has the edge on the earlier performance, being a bit sharper and rougher.

Dignity

What I like about Dylan’s 1995 vocals is the understated softness of his voice when he needs it. Yes, he can yell it out, and often the songs build from soft to loud, but in the case of the London performance of ‘She Belongs to Me’ he pretty much keeps it soft and intimate, as if it were a love song instead of a cautionary account of how one can be bewitched and end up ‘peeking through a keyhole down upon your knees.’ The woman in question is a charmer for sure – but what is the cost of getting involved? Serving another’s ego?

She belongs to me.

Feel like kicking back with a bit of rock blues? A song that belts along with a steady rock pace? Something to dance to? Try this London performance of ‘Tombstone Blues’. On the album (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965) the song happens at quite a frantic pace, thirty years later it rollicks along. The lyrics come over nice and clearly too.

Tombstone Blues

Throughout Dylan’s songs there is a resistance to over-educated intellectualism. Dylan loved baiting intellectuals, wanna-be intellectuals and pretenders. In ‘Someone’s Got a Hold of My Heart’ he complains about ‘too much educated rap.’ There is an intellectual force behind his wild whirling words however, but it leans to the anarchic, the chaotic and the revelatory. In ‘Tombstone Blues’ we find this:

‘I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge’

And this fucked up world is sure going to make you sick.

‘Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero, the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, "Tell me great hero, but please, make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"’

A regular on Dylan’s set list, ‘If You See Her Say Hello’ wasn’t played at Prague, so it’s a pleasure to pick it up here, in London. These London performances make a nice complement to Prague.

The vocal is restrained, the harmonica sharp-edged and guitarist John Jackson gives the song a country twist. Again we get that easy, mid-tempo, catchy rhythm that makes these songs fun to listen to. It is less wrought than the album version (Blood on the Tracks, 1974), but no less nostalgic for that.

If you see her say hello

Before leaving the London concerts behind, here’s an unusual performance. On the last night, the 31^st of March, Dylan is joined onstage by Elvis Costello for a rousing performance of ‘I Shall Be Released.’ Dylan’s distinctive voice and vocal phrasing do not make him an easy partner in any duet. But here they take turns and sing together only on the chorus and it turns out pretty okay. The video of this one is pretty cool too.

I shall be released.

We now move from London to Edinburgh, 7^th April, for another rarity, the last ever performance of ‘What Was It You Wanted?’ (Oh Mercy 1989)

I have always admired this song for its portrayal of devastating emotional disconnection. Imagine two people sitting at a table. They are apparently having a conversation but what we hear is what just one of them is saying, or perhaps thinking. Are you listening to me? Are you there at all? It’s the ultimate disconnect.

‘Whatever you wanted
Slipped out of my mind
Would you remind me again
If you'd be so kind
Has the record been breaking
Did the needle just skip
Is there somebody waitin'
Was there a slip of the lip?’

This verse is obsessively repetitive, the same notes repeated eight times before a chord change, making it sound as if the needle really is skipping on the track itself. Very clever. Structurally it’s relentless, as is the alienation it portrays. Do we even know whom we’re talking to or what about?

‘What was it you wanted
I ain't keepin' score
Are you the same person
That was here before?
Is it something important
Maybe not
What was it you wanted?
Tell me again I forgot’

Of course people want something, even if they don’t come out and say it. So what’s their angle?

‘Whatever you wanted
What can it be
Did somebody tell you
That you could get it from me
Is it something that comes natural
Is it easy to say
Why do you want it
Who are you anyway?’

This kind of hidden agenda makes us suspicious. ‘Are you talking to me?’ Do these two people even know each other? Self doubt intervenes.

‘Is the scenery changing
Am I getting it wrong
Is the whole thing going backwards
Are they playing our song?
Where were you when it started
Do you want it for free
What was it you wanted
Are you talking to me?’

I don’t know why he left it behind after 1995, for by the sound of this performance Dylan is fully engaged with the song. It’s a great performance although Dylan’s voice is a bit soft or under-recorded at the beginning.

What was it you wanted?

While on the subject of songs from Oh Mercy, and still in Edinburgh, we find an equally committed performance of ‘Disease of Conceit.’ In 1996 this song too would be dropped from Dylan’s repertoire. It’s a very explicit song. There is nothing elusive in its imagery. It’s almost embarrassingly direct, and so suits Dylan’s understated, 1995 style.

The disease of conceit

That’s it for now. Next time we’ll be looking at some more compelling sounds from 1995. Until then, stay safe and happy listening.

Kia Ora

And elsewhere

There are details of some of our more recent articles listed on our home page.  You’ll also find, at the top of the page, and index to some of our series established over the years.

If you have an article or an idea for an article which could be published on Untold Dylan, please do write to Tony@schools.co.uk with the details – or indeed the article itself.

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

(I shall be released)

Senor