We sit here stranded, though we are all doing our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it
(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)
He’s on a freight train coming up around the bend with a bunch of odds and ends on board – including Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell, Edward Taylor, and William Blake.
As the train chugs along the tracks, they sip on a few pints; make up songs together.
First Rob comes up with the verse below ; he sings it in a loud voice:
And, as a vapor, or a drop of rain
Once lost, can never been found again ....
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies down with us in endless night
(Robert Herrick: Corinna's Going A-Maying)
Bill chimes in:
Every morn, and every night
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to endless night
(William Blake: Auguries Of Innocence)
Bob finishes it off:
And stopped into a strange hotel
With a neon burning bright
He felt the heat of the night
Hit him like a freight train
(Bob Dylan: Simple Twist Of Fate)
Everyone has a few more sips, and Eddie starts a new one:
Who spread its canopy, or curtains spun
Who in this bowling alley bowled the sun
Who made it always when it rises set
To go at once both down, and up to get
(Edward Taylor: The Preface)
Andy jumps in with:
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life
(Andrew Marvell: To His Coy Mistress)
And it’s closed out by Bobby:
I shook his hand, and said, "Goodbye"
Ran out to the street
When a bowling ball came down the road
And knocked me off my feet
(Bob Dylan: 115th Dream)
A couple of bottles of wine are opened up; Rob takes a gulp from one of’em; breaks into a hymn:
In the hour of my distress
When temptations me oppress
And when I my sins confess
Sweet Spirit comfort me
(Robert Herrick: His Litany To The Holy Spirit)
They’re all having a great time; Bob takes a mouthful, and comes up with this mournful ending:
In the time of my confession
In the hour of my deepest need ....
There's a dying voice within me
Reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger
And in the morals of despair
(Bob Dylan: Every Grain Of Sand)
It’s all in fun, serving as a bit of distraction from being stuck on the freight train that’s running on tracks
…. ’til Rob gets a bit to tipsy, raises his glass, and proposes a toast to Andy’s girlfried whose name is Juliana:
Breathe, Julia, breathe, and I’ll protest,
Nay more, I’ll deeply swear,
That all the spices of the east
Are circumfused there.
(Robert Herrick: on Julia’s Breath)
Without thinking, Bob steps in between them when Andy pulls out a penknife, and threatens to kill Rob right there and then; ad libbing, Bob picks up his guitar, and sings a song in opera style to Rob, who’s scared ….I mean, really scared:
Idiot wind
Blowing through the flowers on your tomb
Blowing through the curtains in your room
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)
Anyway, all hell breaks loose with fists a-flying, bottles a-breaking, ….the engine, boxcars …. everything jumps off the tracks, ….everybody gets scalded by the steam.
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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 episode 36 of “All Directions at Once”, a series which considers Bob Dylan’s songwriting in the order in which he wrote the songs. The most recent episodes are….
In 1974 Bob Dylan wrote “Tangled up in Blue” and from that a whole album that emerged from a way of seeing time, possibilities and people slipping in and out of our experience.
In 1975 he wrote Isis, and a collaborative album concerning unexpected people in unusual places.
And in 1976…
So 1976 gives us one song: Seven Days a song of lost love, and nothing more. But at least it was a sign that Bob the composer was not going to vanish again as had happened in previous periods of silence after earlier bursts of high quality songwriting.
The song was first played in a concert on 18 April 1976, got five outings and was then dropped from the repertoire. Then on 19 April 1996 it suddenly reappeared, was performed 13 times, and then dropped again.
My suspicion is that this was one of those songs that Bob liked and felt worked, but that he also felt something was not quite right with the composition, and no matter how he varied the performances, it just wouldn’t come good.
And my thoughts on this are heightened by the fact that the following year he wrote “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)”, the third of the songs written in the Street Legal sequence, wherein he reused a little of “Seven Days”.
If you listen to the lines
seven more days she’ll be comin’
I’ll be waiting at the station
and compare with
do you know where we’re headin’?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?
you will see what I mean.
It is of course impossible to know what it is in a song that makes Bob consider it for album inclusion and regular outings at the gigs, but maybe it is the huge leap musically from the verses to the “middle 8,” that ultimately made him think of “Seven Days” as merely a source of spare parts for later music.
For what it’s worth, that’s my view because the song doesn’t quite hold together as, for example, with the wait for a childhood friend, interrupted by the kissing and thieving passage – then back to the childhood friend now described as the beautiful comrade from the north.
But what I never could was see a link that Heylin suggests exists between this song and an early favourite of mine, “Darling be home soon” by John Sebastian of the Loving Spoonful, the song and used in the film “You’re a Big Boy Now”.
There are loads of versions of “Darling be home soon” (truly one of the great romantic rock songs of all time) on the internet. I’ve previously given a link to John Sebastian performing it solo at Woodstock. This time I’ll offer the song from the movie.
My point is that Sebastian’s concept is that
And I see that the time spent confused
Was the time that I spent without you
which is not at all related to Dylan’s vision in Seven Days. But Señor was the song from Street Legal that really did survive for Dylan in the next era of his songwriting and was played 265 times between June 1978 and April 2011. So a little element of Seven Days did live on. And as we consider this new year of compositions what we also have to take into account here is that sometime around this period Dylan converted to Christianity.
So maybe those first feelings of the adoption of religion is what “Changing of the guards” has within it. Maybe it is even what the title means. Michael Gray however found the song not to be a step into the future but an exploration of Dylan’s previous 16 years which takes us back to 1961 and songs such as Song to Woodie, Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues. and Man on the street.
If so, Dylan may even have intended to go back to the year before, the year from which we have his earliest pieces, but then “Seventeen years” has an extra syllable and doesn’t scan readily with the music.
Other critics have found “Changing of the Guards” obscure, but then surely that is what Dylan has ever been. What is “My love she speaks like silence” if not opaque. Indeed what is the meaning of the title of that song? And if obscurity is to be criticised, why is “Love Minus Zero” not hammered by the critics, rather than praised?
Which question raises the next point, why does meaning matter in songs, when it most certainly doesn’t matter in lots of visual art? Which in turn means I am in danger of re-running the whole argument about Dylan being accurate with his descriptions of real people, when visual artists have no such requirements thrust upon them.
But it does annoy me that some self-appointed Dylan critics take everything so literally, and demand such tedious and boring accuracy in lyrics. I suppose for them all poetry is failure because roses aren’t always red.
Dylan did however on this occasion answer his critics when saying of the song “It means something different every time I sing it. ‘Changing of the Guards’ is a thousand years old.” Which also takes me back to comparing Dylan’s writing to abstract art – it means something different every time I look at it.
So the first of the seven songs of the year was ambiguous. And the ambiguous possibilities of song were followed up with the second composition: Is your love in vain? – and the ambiguity can be heard with this version.. and please stay with it to the instrumental break near the end. It is so wonderful – and thank you Filip for introducing me to the recording.
“Is your love…” was also hammered for its supposed misogyny. Indeed it has always seemed to me if we are going to go down this road, that gets rid of the blues as an entire genre, not to mention the first twenty odd years of rock n roll. Which in turn means that my rock n roll dance partner and I can’t dance to “Shake Rattle and Roll” any more just because it starts
Well get out of that bed, wash your face and hands
Get out of that bed, wash your face and hands
Well get in that kitchen
Make some noise with the pots and pans
Fortunately we can, because she doesn’t take it personally.
Loads of people wander through life bemoaning the fact that they can’t find the perfect partner that will either fit in with their life or take them out of this hell into a perfect existence. Indeed many of us who have ever thought about finding a perfect partner invariably create both an imaginary friend and an imaginary world for that friend to live in. That’s what we do. That’s life; that’s imagination. It might be a world of two equals, it might be a world in which one looks after the home and the other goes out to work… are certain models of existence now to be rejected because they don’t fit with a specific style of life laid down by a record reviewer?
Quite honestly it doesn’t bother me at all that Dylan goes through a period where he says he just wants a woman who can cook and sew. If he finds a woman who loves him and wants to make a home for him, while recognising he spends much of the year on tour or in the studio, and they are both happy and both willing partners in the arrangement, I personally don’t see the problem.
So Dylan is no longer the bright boy on the block describing the freak show and the strange world around him. Now he’s the man who must be criticised, just as he was for “Mozambique”. Suddenly it is not enough that the songs have fine melodies, interesting chords sequences, clever arrangements and fascinating lyrics. No, now they have to be about the right thing. They have to be politically correct. And just remember: this is Dylan we are talking about.
And because of this many critics miss the fact that the melody of this song is far more interesting than in many Dylan songs, and it works perfectly around the lyrics and their meaning. For most women and men who have wealth or fame or some special talent or any combination of these, are aware of others who fall for the image of what they are, rather than what lies beneath. What these critics can’t understand is that the questions Dylan poses are not sexist, but the problems faced by those in the public eye and those with a unique talent.
And the fact that the slow plodding descending bass of Dylan’s original can be transformed into the bouncy fun of the Stanislaw Sojka version above, is further testament to the song’s vitality. In Dylan’s version it is the slowness of the steps down hill accompanying the opening line which cries out, “I’ve done these steps too many times.” In the Sojka version he’s nudging her in the ribs and saying, “you ok?”
Besides, the genius megastar asking how he can do his job and be himself at the same time is perfectly valid. And the fact that he’s still balanced is shown by
I have dined with kings, I’ve been offered wings
And I’ve never been too impressed
My point is, after the last album which was full of other people (some real, some not) and other places, Bob is now writing songs about his life and his world. And what he gets in response is Jon Pareles saying, “Dylan still needs a producer” is just too simplistic.
Yes the song in its original form is slow, and yes as we can hear above it could also go fast. What’s wrong with that? Real life takes ponderous steps much of the time, (or at least mine has). But maybe music critics (or at least the ones I have met) don’t want realism. They’ve just had a fantasy album from Bob, now they want another one, rather than one about himself.
Well, hard luck. Bob is talking about a real simple dilemma within his life, not delving into a fantasy land inhabited by Louie the King, not attacking TS Eliot for his behaviour towards his first wife, not knocking the pretentiousness of the girl who laughed at Napoleon in rags, not listening to the central heating pipes in Louise’s attic, not portraying an exploding island. He’s in the ordinary world, and maybe that’s it. Dylan isn’t supposed to get real.
And, at least according to David Weir, he’s not supposed to be a “devious, selfish, misogynistic, naive, self-deceiving egotist.” Except I don’t think he is, any more than most of us are. He was looking inside himself and noticing it was pretty dark in places, but not as dark as Dylan could ultimately imagine.
Maybe the problem for some critics is that Dylan is singing about his life and not fantasies or the eternal verities – and yet for me that is the key to this work. It is the eternal verities and his real life as seen through personal conflict and experience mixed up with real everyday life.
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
Tom, get your plane right on time
I know your part'll go fine
Fly down to Mexico
Doh-n-doh-de-doh-n-doh
And here I am
The only living boy in New York
It is tempting to regard one of Paul Simon’s Very Great Songs as an answer song to “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. “Tom”, “Mexico”, “New York” and further down a fitting text fragment like
Half of the time we're gone
But we don't know where
And we don't know where
… a poetic leap from Dylan’s song to “The Only Living Boy In New York” is not that big. Unverifiable reports further state that Dylan was present as an observer at the recording of the song and expressed his admiration. An attractive, but presumably rather romanticised story. Perhaps distilled from a report that can be verified, from Dylan’s interview with USA Today, April ’99, prior to the American tour the two greats undertook together that year:
“I mean, Paul’s written extraordinary songs, hasn’t he? I consider him one of the pre-eminent songwriters of the times. Every song he does has got a vitality you don’t find everywhere. . . I’ve always liked “Only Living Boy from New York” [sic] and other songs from Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
But alas, there is no bridge to Tom Thumb; Simon’s song is a barely disguised salute to Garfunkel. “Tom” was Garfunkel’s stage name in the early years, when the duo still called themselves Tom & Jerry, and Art indeed is in Mexico, shooting his part in Mike Nichols’ film adaptation of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1970).
Still, real covers follow in abundance after the sixties. After big guns such as Gordon Lightfoot, Nina Simone and Judy Collins, the whole premier league picks the song up, in the following decades. The Scottish legend Frankie Miller in 1973, “the only white guy that’s ever brought a tear to my eye,” as Rod Stewart has stated, Linda Ronstadt, Sir Douglas Quintet, and of course the usual suspects – Grateful Dead, Robyn Hitchcock, Jimmy LaFave, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Bryan Ferry…
Bryan Ferry’s cover is on the tribute album Dylanesque (2007), which, in keeping with Ferry’s trademark irony, is anything but dylanesque – but his Dylan love is genuine, that’s for sure. The first song on his first solo album (1973) is an unforgettable Ferrynisation of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, and is also the first of a long line of reverences. In interviews, Ferry is never less than respectful, in extremis, of course, in the Dylanesque interviews. “There’s a richness in the words which offsets the simplicity of the music sometimes,” and…
“It’s the quality of the writing, really. The vocabulary, the imagery, the poetry of it all. So I think they’re open to interpretation. Especially the early songs because he only played them on (acoustic) guitar.”
For “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, Ferry chooses, as with his 2007 adaptations of “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and “If Not For You”, a similar guitar chug like Dylan happens to use – remarkably – also for his later renditions of “Desolation Row” (on MTV Unplugged, for instance). In general, the album – outside of Dylan circles, obviously – is well received; it sells well (gold within a few weeks) and most reviews are friendly to downright positive.
The more vicious reviewers blame Ferry for stylish soullessness and treating the song “as if it were just an assemblage of syllables and notes like anything else he could rubber-stamp the “Bryan Ferry” brand onto,” but actually precisely that creates the same, appealing tension as it did in Hard Rain. Less neurotic maybe, this time, and more rock ‘n’ roll… but also with a particularly attractive harmonica, very elegant.
The song is almost impossible to spoil anyway. The music has, as Ferry says, a simplicity that also gives the lesser gods a chance to shine – and that same simplicity allows a wide range of interpretation. The irresistible String Cheese Incident turn it into a calypso-flavoured Latin dance, the trashy Blue Birds are pleasantly disrespectful (among more trashy covers on the cheerful tribute collector Outlaw Blues, 2008), the beautiful guitar miniature that Wall Matthews makes of it (with dramatic vocals by Aleta Greene) or the psychedelic soul ballad by Wendy Saddington (with The Copperwine, 1971)… they are actually all beautiful. In the category Weird Yet Charming, Lisa Hannigan scores the highest. Recorded June 2008 accompanied by a cheap glockenspiel, a guitar and a xylophone, in Dick Mack’s pub in Dingle, County Kerry, on the Atlantic coast:
But probably the most beautiful of the twenty-first century is put on the album Fresh Horses by Jim Byrnes in 2004. Brilliantly arranged mash-up of folk, blues and rock full of small, loving, unobtrusive accents under the surface (extra guitars, percussion, organ), and with two pianos, as it should be.
Actor, blues musician and three-time Juno Award winner Jim Byrnes was born in St. Louis, on Highway 61. – what more do you need to know about somebody?
Paul Simon plays a Dylan song now and then. “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, “Don’t Think Twice”, “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. But he never flies down to visit Tom in Mexico. He gets all the news he needs on the weather report. And it’s always raining in Juarez.
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
Only “Untold Dylan’ brings to its readers the possible link between the seventeenth century Baroque poet Robert Herrick (who combines Christian and mythological imagery), and the song lyrics of Robert Zimmerman.
The mother of the Metaphysical-like poet is named Julian/Julie/Juliana; he’s infatuated with a gal by the same name in the lyrics below, and it is not always from an idealistic Platonic point of view. More Freudian perhaps, and certainly anti-Puritan.
With the rhymes: ~ ‘goes’/’flows’/’clothes’:
Whenas in silks my my Julia goes
Then, then methinks how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes
(Robert Herrick: Upon Julia's Clothes)
No, Johanna is not the name of Bob Dylan’s mother; it’s Beatrice, the same as Dante’s motherly guide to Paradise in “The Divine Comedy”. But anyway …
With the rhymes:~ ‘showed’/’flowed’/’corrode’:
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)
When it comes right down to it, the Cavalier poet of yore thinks Juliana’d be a nice piece of ass:
Then, Julia, let me woo thee
Thus, thus to come unto me
And when I shall meet thy silvery feet
My soul I'll pour into thee
(Robert Herrick: The Night Piece: To Julia)
The intended motive of the singer/songwriter’s narrator in the song beneath be not that spiritual for sure; in Greek/Roman mythology concerning the Underword, departed souls must cross the River Styx; beyond which lies angelic Elysium (Heaven), and snaky Tartarus (Hell).
A little irony is the narrow path:
Well, I’m preaching peace and harmony
The blessings of tranquillity
Yet I know the time to strike
I'll take you 'cross the river dear
You've no need to linger here
I know the kind of things you like
(Bob Dylan: Moonlight)
In a number of Herrick’s poems, exhibited is the flowery Rococo style, supposedly existing in Heaven:
Dew sat on Julia's hair
And spangled too
Like leaves that laden are
With trembling dew
Or glittered to my sight
As when beams
Have thy reflected light
Danced by the streams
(Robert Herrick: Upon Julia's Hair Filled With Dew
Rococo be the following song lyrics – in ancient methodology a coin was placed on the mouth of the corpse to pay the ferryman for taking it across the river:
The trailing moss, and mystic glow
Purple blossoms soft as snow
Step up, and drop the coin right in the slot
The fading light of sunset glowed
(Bob Dylan: Moonlight)
The Metaphysical-like poet fancies that his beloved (though she’s like an earlier version of Dr. Frankenstein, and doesn’t return love to her creation) will miss him when he’s sailing off to sea:
But yet for love's sake let thy lips
Give my dead picture one engendering kiss
Work that to life, and let me forever dwell
In thy rememberance, Julia. So farewell
(Robert Herrick: His Sailing From Julia)
Akin to the sentiment expressed in the verse beneath by what could-be the reincarnation of Robert Herrick himself:
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
In his review of the covers of “Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues” Jochen indicated that he really didn’t appreciate the Judy Collins version.
Now although we don’t meet up to discuss the articles on this site (what with him being in the Netherlands, and me in the middle of England) I do find that I agree with most of his thoughts about music and lyrics. But here I find myself totally at odds, for I find Judy Collins one of the most exquisite re-interpreters of Dylan’s work.
So since I have the benefit of being the person who decides what is published on this site, I thought I’d use that position of power to try and explain why I like Ms Collins’ version of Tom Thumb, and several other Dylan classics.
First a moment of background. Ms Collins, as you may know has been making albums from the start of the 1960s, (and is indeed even older than me) and rose to fame in 1967 with Both Sides Now. But long before that she was achieving fame – not least as a child prodigy classical pianist.
Obviously you can read all about her music, and her sadly troubled life, elsewhere on the internet, but I just want to focus on her Dylan interpretations, starting with one that I recently got carried away by, in my “All directions” series… Time Passes Slowly…
What I wrote about there was what I felt was the way in which she can deal with the ebbs and flows of this song simple song in a way that Dylan himself could not contemplate. And because of this she is able to take the middle 8 (Ain’t no reason to go) and give it a calm beauty that Dylan intends in the lyrics, but can’t deliver as he not only doesn’t have the range, but didn’t have the benefit of Ms Collins’ musical arranger. Bob of course can hear it in his head (otherwise he could not have written the piece) but it takes a voice as beautiful as Ms Collins to show us what this really means.
It works because the high point of that simple song is the middle eight, and the vocals give the music an extra urgency at that point through its harmonies with the electric guitar, while then taking us down again with “ain’t no reason to go… anywhere”).
So to return to “Tom Thumb” Jochen said…
Her “socks-off knocking” cover is introduced by pretentious flute work that one would sooner appreciate in fabric softener commercials or a nature documentary about butterflies in the English countryside than in a rendition of a folk rock classic. The harp in the second verse doesn’t make it any better, and it keeps going downhill; melancholy clarinet, increasing neuroticism in the flutes, misplaced al nientes, silences suggesting a Disney dramatic build-up and Judy’s flat vocals… no…”
What I like so much, is that Judy Collins takes these really edgy dark lyrics (“they’ll really make a mess of you” turns up in the first verse, and by the second verse “I haven’t got the strength to get up and take another shot.”
Now to add such a simple accompaniment is not that difficult, it can be used to give a sense of bleakness very easily. But no, here it is the woodwind that gives us the accompaniment – even when we are howling at the moon.
The contrast is stunning, and it works for me so perfectly because Ms Collins is so utterly controlled. It is like standing in the middle of a battle field in the first world war and listening to Mozart’s string quartet number 14. It is utterly incongruous, and I have no idea if the battle field and Mozart idea would work, but Judy Collins does make it happen.
There is a sort of sympathy and understanding of a world reduced to the simplicity of its utter collapse as expressed in the lyrics. Yes it is dark and disastrous, but somehow she is sailing through unharmed. We don’t know how or why, and really I don’t want to know how or why, but somehow she is existing through the horrors of the lyrics.
It is, for me, the contrast of so much of daily life. Here am I, typing away on my computer, my world seems quite safe, I am financially ok, those I care about are ok, the snow in my garden is glistening in the winter sunshine, but the world around me is falling apart. The virus is still ripping its way through much of the planet, my country’s economy is destroyed, my country has a leader who appears to me (and it’s just a personal view of course) to know as much about leadership as the turnip I put in last night’s stew, I haven’t seen many of my friends for months, and… well I won’t bore you with my personal details.
What Judy Collins does, as I listen to her at this moment, is somehow contrast the good and the bad, the beauty and the ugly. I don’t understand most of the world any more, and that lack of understanding combined with a fair amount of horror and anger on my part could be expressed by jagged edges, or it can be expressed by contrasts. What Judy Collins gives me is the contrast.
A similar effect can be heard on “Like a Rolling Stone” in the introductory verse, where she resits the temptation to put any energy into “Didn’t you”. “It’s all over now baby blue” works simply because Ms Collins has such a gorgeously huge vocal range, which is what the song really requires. And she can put in different emotions, no matter which part of that range she is using.
Sometimes the arrangement ideas are so simple – on “Simple Twist of Fate”… each lines draws us forward, we don’t know if there is a beat’s pause coming up at the end of line, or how long the pauses are going to be. This makes the opening three lines, which are musically identical, all hold our attention. We really don’t know how long each note is going to be held… we are simply carried forward.
Even songs such as “Gotta Serve Somebody” which are written in a way to make the message as clear as possible, there is still some fun to be found. But it is when we get to Dark Eyes that I really found myself having to sit down and listen again and again. The voice is out of time with the piano, and through this the meanings are transformed. Through that version of the song I get a new set of insights of a song I have known and played since the day the album arrived in the UK. That version of this song really does give me a feeling that no what irresponsible nonsense the politicians of my country pour forth, I can survive and still be me. The fractional change of the orchestration for the “Drunken man is at the wheel” verse is something I can never forget. Along with the instrumental verse that ends the piece.
“I believe in you” which I have mentioned before, comes from this album, and it makes me wonder not for the first time if Judy has the same orchestrator with all her work. Whoever makes the arrangements, she or he has a remarkable understanding of what her voice can do.
I’ll stop my eulogy and leave you (if you are still with me) with one more
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
“Paradoxically, In My Life was just what we hoped it would be: the singer-songwriter material my fans expected, plus some totally unexpected selections. Dylan was represented, of course, with “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” but with orchestration by Josh Rifkin that would have knocked the socks off Dylan had he been wearing any.”
(Judy Collins, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes, 2011)
Judy Collins’ self-congratulatory autobiography is rather marred by smug, immodest and boastful outbursts, and by that standard, her comments on her recording of this Dylan cover do fit in. But the arrangement that Collins continues to extol over 40 years later does not really stand the test of time. Her “socks-off knocking” cover is introduced by pretentious flute work that one would sooner appreciate in fabric softener commercials or a nature documentary about butterflies in the English countryside than in a rendition of a folk rock classic. The harp in the second verse doesn’t make it any better, and it keeps going downhill; melancholy clarinet, increasing neuroticism in the flutes, misplaced al nientes, silences suggesting a Disney dramatic build-up and Judy’s flat vocals… no, Dylan or any other fan of the song won’t need suspenders.
But she does pick up the song quickly. Judy records the song in the summer of ’66, when the song is less than a year old. But she’s not the first. Highway 61 Revisited is in shops August 30, and four days later, Friday, September 3, the then relatively unknown Canadian Gordon Lightfoot performs on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. He plays two songs: his unforgettable masterpiece “Early Morning Rain”, which Dylan will record a few years later for Self Portrait, and before that the brand new “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. The orchestra tape features the music that can also be heard on the single; Gordon has already recorded the song before the broadcast, including the irresistible horns.
Tom Thumb is not the only overlap of both troubadours. In 1965, Lightfoot joins the artist menagerie of Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, and has, at the time of his Tonight Show debut, been performing with limited success for a couple of years now. Gordon has recorded a few singles, and has already had some hits in Canada. He is also present at the Newport Folk Festival ’65, at Dylan’s famous electric gig, performing too, a few hours before, on that same Sunday, 25 July. His setlist is untraceable, but in a David Gahr photo book is a picture of Lightfoot’s 12-string guitar, taken that very same day. On the side is a handwritten note with some eighty song titles: his repertoire includes a handful of Dylan songs (“Blowin’ In The Wind”, “Hollis Brown”, “Girl From The North Country”, “Don’t Think Twice”) and songs that Dylan has on a pedestal as well (“Wildwood Flower”, “I Still Miss Someone”, “Diamond Joe”, to name a few).
And Dylan is a more than interested listener to Lightfoot’s records, as he reveals in an interview with Jann Wenner in ’69:
“I heard the sound that Gordon Lightfoot was getting, with Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey. I’d used Charlie and Kenny both before, and I figured if he could get that sound, I could. But we couldn’t get it. (Laughs)”
Dylan refers to Lightfoot’s second album, The Way I Feel (1968), the album with the monumental “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” and the beautiful “Song For A Winter’s Night” – wonderful songs, with indeed a warm and sparkling sound completely different from John Wesley Harding’s dim, muffled sound.
Lightfoot’s Tom Thumb sounds like a rush job, though. For the single that will be released the same month of September, apparently the same master tape was used as for the Tonight Show. The sound is unbalanced, fluctuating between warm and shrill, and dull and sharp, mistakes are not corrected, the tempo is unsteady, as is the volume – yet the recording has an indestructible, timeless charm. Only the tambourine could have been mixed out.
Three months later, the second professional Tom Thumb cover demonstrates the opposite of such an indestructible, timeless approach. Barry McGuire records his version of the song for his second album, This Precious Time, which was to build on the world success of “Eve Of Destruction”. It is a nice album, but it is mainly of music history value because he has old friends make their studio debut as backing choir: John Phillips, Denny Doherty, Cass Eliot and Michelle Phillips. The birth of The Mamas And The Papas, in other words, debuting their “California Dreamin’”. Having done their work for McGuire, they politely ask Dunhill Records boss Lou Adler if they may sing and record their own version over the same tape. It’s Thursday 4 November 1965, all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey – and the rest is history.
Beautiful enough, but McGuire’s approach to Dylan’s masterpiece is a catastrophe. Overacting has always been McGuire’s pitfall, but here he even seems to be parodying himself on that front; posturing crackly voice and utterly misplaced bits of parlando à la Captain Kirk’s bizarre excursions into music land (William Shatner – The Transformed Man, 1968). McGuire obviously has a bigger budget and more studio time than Gordon Lightfoot, but still: more is often less. The producer decides on an irritatingly rigid left/right stereo separation and a reverb as if Barry were standing in the empty hall of a metal factory. “Ha ha,” Barry recites, bereft of any mirth, and “How does that feel?”, concluding with an incomprehensible “Baby walk home, come on”.
Equally dated, but charming nevertheless, is the pure Westcoast of West, Ron Cornelius’ little successful band. Hazy harmonies and breezy guitar fiddling like, say, Harpers Bizarre, Peppermint Trolley Company, or one of those many, many forgotten San Francisco bands of the Summer of Love – and partly exactly because of that, of that abundance, West never really floated upwards, presumably. Cornelius, however, remains infested with the Dylan virus. The B-side of their Tom Thumb single features “Baby You Been On My Mind”, and their second LP Bridges (1969) features a rare, and very enjoyable, “Down Along The Cove” cover. Produced in Nashville by Dylan producer Bob Johnston, who then invites Cornelius to help on Leonard Cohen’s Song From A Room and Dylan’s Self Portrait sessions. Apparently, Dylan likes what he hears; on New Morning Cornelius plays again, and after that he remains Cohen’s side-man for most of the 1970s (he has a co-credit on “Chelsea Hotel No. 2”).
In between, he makes one beautiful, totally ignored solo album (Tin Luck, 1972). “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” he never plays again.
The sixties still have some more obscurities to offer (obviously). Like the enchanting, but not overly talented Marianne Faithfull carbon copy Deena Webster in a touching old-fashioned Lady Jane arrangement;
On the otherwise equally moving LP Tuesday’s Child (1968), there are at least equally charmingly failed versions of The Bee Gees’ “New York Mining Disaster 1941” and Donovan’s “Colours”, but also a still special “House Of The Rising Sun”. Where Deena suddenly sounds like Joan Baez, by the way.
Also from the Westcoast comes the act that is even a few degrees more obscure than Cornelius’ West: the psych-folk duo Maffitt / Davies. Not only the beauty, but also the injustice is comparable; their only LP, The Rise And Fall Of Honesty (1968) is a gem of harmonies, Americana and guitar tapestries. The opening track is another wonderful Dylan cover, the spectacularly orchestrated “Just Like A Woman”.
Still, forever lost in the rain of Juarez, bizarrely – the record was never even re-released on CD.
Worth mentioning furthermore are at most Jennifer Warnes’ soulful attempt to emulate Dusty In Memphis (See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me, 1969) and Alex Campbell’s ludicrously hopping tune (At The Tivoli Gardens, 1967), but every sixties cover pales, of course, in comparison to the icy grandeur with which Nina Simone takes Dylan’s song into the stratosphere (on To Love Somebody, 1969, which also features her covers of “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and “I Shall Be Released”).
Sweet Nina, the goddess of gloom.
Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part IX, the finale: The after-the-sixties covers
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
Bob Dylan Showcase: write the music to a Dylan song
You might recall that a while back we introduced the Bob Dylan Showcase in which readers of Untold Dylan could send in a recording of themselves performing a Dylan song, or a song that related to or was inspired by Dylan’s work in some way.
The collection of recordings we mustered are of course still online and you can reach them via the Untold Dylan Showcase Directory.
Included in this series were a number of songs to which Dylan had written the lyrics, but for which neither he nor anyone else had written any music, and so some of these were completed, allowing the composers to claim, quite reasonably, to have co-written a Dylan song. All such songs are listed in our alphabetical index of Dylan songs.
As with all nice ideas, gradually its time passed and we moved on but in doing so, two sets of Dylan lyrics were left.
and I did say in my last post about this idea, “If you can write the music to either of these songs, please record it and send it to tony@schools.co.uk If you don’t Tony will have to do it himself, and you don’t want that.”
Well, you were warned, so I’ve composed, and now present, for the first time
“California Brown Eyed Baby”
by Bob Dylan
and Tony Attwood
Here is one version of the lyrics – but there is another with a couple of variations which I have used as they were slightly easier to set…
Anyway it is just meant as a bit of fun. And if you want to join in you can have a go with Bowling alley blues which I must warn you is fiendish in the extreme.
But equally please do go back to the entries that we had from readers of the site and if you have a recording of yourself or your band or your mates, and it in any way relates to Dylan, please email me the file – send it to Tony@schools.co.uk
Thanks.
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
Robert Herrick and Edward Taylor are church leaders, but as poets they have a Baroque bent; and, though devoted to their respective religions, express puzzlement at the way God treats humankind:
Hence they have borne my Lord; behold! the stone
Is rolled away, and my sweet Saviour's gone
Tell me, white angel, what is now become
Of Him we lately sealed up in the tomb
(Robert Herrick: His Coming To The Sepulchre)
A reference to biblical scripture:
The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene
Early, when it was dark unto the sepulchre
And seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre ...
She supposing Him to be the gardener
Saith unto Him, Sir, if they have borne Him hence
Tell me where you have laid Him
(Book Of John 20: 1,15)
That’s a theme also detected, scrambled up, in the following song lyrics:
Someone hit me from behind ....
As I walked out in the mystic garden
On a hot summer day, a hot summer lawn
Excuse me, ma'am, I beg your pardon
There's no one here, the gardener is gone
(Bob Dylan: Ain't Talking)
Below, borrowing a bit from a song by another, mixed up is the medicine – the Dylanesque rhyme twists abounding ~ ‘gone’/’stone’; ~ ‘gone’/’lawn’; ~ ‘pardon’/’garden’.
A country dance was being held in the garden
I felt a bump, and heard an 'Oh, I beg your pardon'
Suddenly I saw polka dots and moodbeams
All around a pug-nosed dream
(Frank Sinatra: Polka Dots And Moonbeams ~ Burke/Van Heusen)
In the following poem, a warning that life lasts but a little while, and so ought to be, at least moderately, enjoyed while one is able:
Our life is short; and our days run
As fast as does the sun
And as a vapour, or a drop of rain
Once lost, can never be found again
(Robert Herrick: Corrina's Going A-Maying)
Seems, in the humourous song lyrics below, to be a warning heeded to extremes by some:
You promised to love me, but what do I see
Just you coming, spilling juice over me
Odds and ends, odds and ends
Lost time is not found again
(Bob Dylan: Odds And Ends)
The poet, in the verse beneath, has the unique hope of an everlasting life – though it lies not in Nature, but in his art:
All things decay with time: The forest sees
The growth and down-fall of her aged trees
The timber tall, which three-score lustres stood
The proud dictator of the state-like wood
I mean the sovereign of all plants, the oak
Droops, dies, and falls without the cleaver's stroke
(Richard Herrick: All Things Decay And Die)
A harder-than-an-oak hope expressed in the quote below:
The lights on my native land are glowing
I wonder if they'll know me next time 'round
I wonder if that old oak tree's still standing
That old oak tree, the one we used to climb
(Bob Dylan: Duquesne Whistle)
This is the 30th article in our unique series looking at the artwork on Bob Dylan’s albums. A full list of the articles in the series is published here.
The album: Dylan
Released: November 16, 1973
Illustration: Richard Kenerson
Art-director: John Berg
The exact date Bob Dylan signed a contract with Asylum is nowhere to be found. Some suggest there may be no contract at all. According to Rolling Stone, it was a gentlemen’s agreement, sealed with a handshake.
Therefore it is not clear what the arrangements are for the Dylan album, in the switch from the singer to another record company, after 12 years with Columbia Records.
According to one story, the album is seen as an act of revenge by his old firm, to ridicule the renegade artist by releasing substandard material. Others think it is the last straw, after which Dylan closes the door and makes the switch. Away from the firm that sees him as a has-been and would rather lose him than keep him.
Anyway, for the first time ever, Bob Dylan has no say in the cover of one of his records.
As asking Dylan to pose for a cover photo is not an option, the graphics department has to work with existing material. A photo by Al Clayton is chosen. Curiously, it was previously printed on the inner sleeve of Self Portrait. The photo, taken on May 3, 1969, shows Dylan, along with some musicians, listening to a playback of a recording, while his son Jesse is playing on the floor.
Richard Kenerson uses an enlarged view of Dylan’s head from this photo as the basis for a screen print. The portrait in profile is placed in front of a metallic, silver-colored background and then enhanced with a red, yellow, purple and black stripe. It remains a guess as to the intention.
Dylan’s head from this photo as the basis for a screen print. The portrait in profile is placed in front of a metallic, silver-colored background and then enhanced with a red, yellow, purple and black stripe. It remains a guess as to the intention.
There is not much more information on the cover. And a little piece of information provided, raises further questions: “Back cover photograph and album design by John Berg.”
Remarkable, because the image of the front is simply reproduced once more, albeit in a more sober version without the colored stripes. Perhaps Berg provided the photo placed over it: something that most resembles boulders in a river bed.
A few weeks after the album was released, there is a single: “A Fool Such As I”.
Apparently, a more recent photo of the singer has been found to promote it. Its’ a black-and-white photo, taken during the filming of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Dylan is shown squinting into the lens, with a look that is somewhere between amused and annoyed. Wouldn’t this have been a better image for the cover?
This is episode 35 of All Directions at once, in which I am trying to explore Dylan’s songs in the order they were written, and seeing how they interlink, rather than treating each song as a separate entity.
As we have seen in recent episodes the theme throughout Dylan’s writing of 1975 has been of people and places, without an over-arching desire for a portrayal of reality.
Indeed what boring songs these would have been if strict reality, instead of reality extended into fantasies had been the central concept. Imagine how “Mozambique” would have sounded if it had lines telling us that the country had just come out of a long and devastating civil war, instead of being a mock tourist advert.
It seems to me, by the time the pair got to the end of their work together they had really got the hang of the relationship and were able to launch into much more exciting and interesting works of fiction inspired by facts. If only they had had time, or the inclination, to develop this side of their work further we could have had a second album of collaborative fiction, rather than having to wait a couple of years for “Street Legal” (although in the end it turned out to be worth the wait).
And it clearly was Levy who was not only creating the lyrics, but also pushing Dylan into the Mexican feel. True, Bob had been in Mexico in 1972/3 but there seems to be little influence on his music from this period – until now.
But since Levy stated in an interview that the two writers wrote the opening of “Durango”, and then Levy finished it off, perhaps (according to Heylin) to Dylan’s slight annoyance, we do have to see this as primarily as Levy composition.
So maybe the Mexican input was Levy’s all the way through these tracks, although another or parallel explanation, given to us through Dale Ward who kindly wrote into this site, is that there exists a Durango in Colorado near to Aztec, New Mexico. What’s more Dale tells us the town of Aztec contains a large set of Anasazi ruins…
But whatever the source, this is one of those songs where we have two excellently arranged different versions – the slow version on the album, and the upbeat Biograph live version. Heylin makes it very clear that it prefers the Biograph version, but I fear he misses something profound in the original album version, namely the extraordinary way in which Dylan plays with the timing.
Indeed I can’t imagine how the song was possibly recorded with the whole band playing together (as is Dylan’s preferred style), as there are so many twists and turns in the way the lyrics influence how the music is performed. Sometimes an extra beat appears at the end of a line, sometimes the line takes an extra beat or two at the end. The time signature changes wildly as we go; I can imagine Frank Zappa rehearsing this to perfection, but not Dylan!
The only thing I can think is that they multi-tracked the whole thing, and then kept the Dylan lyrics and gradually replaced all the instrumentals around that. Certainly there is a hell of lot happening in there, and the normal odd slips by the instrumentalists that we get on Dylan albums are all missing.
But whatever the explanation, what we have here is the summation of the work of these two fine artists, by this time utterly used to working together. And I think, despite the way the songs slip into each other on Desire, with Black Diamond Bay seeping out of Durango, it is worth just occasionally playing the sequence in the order the songs were written. It does give a different understanding to this period of work.
As for the song itself, is there a more evocative opening of any Dylan song than this?
Hot chilli 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.
Sold my guitar to the baker's son
For a few crumbs and a place to hide
But I can get another one
And I'll play for Magdalena as we ride.
What works so brilliantly here is that within eight lines we have the whole picture, just through the simple selected images. Our minds create the actual images, but the essence of the situation is there, clearly painted in eight lines. Songwriting at its very very best.
Then the Spanish phrases set the scene… Here are my simplistic translations of the Spanish in case you need them (but really my Spanish is poor to non-existent so please do give me a better version if you can)
No llores mi querida (Do not cry my darling)
Dios nos vigila (God is watching over us)
Agarrame mi vida (hold me, my love, my life)
And we have the history and culture mingled with the hopes of the poor.
Past the Aztec ruins and the ghosts of our people
Hoofbeats like castanets on stone
At night I dream of bells in the village steeple
Then I see the bloody face of Ramon.
And just as I am sure you can improve on my language skills, so I quickly found when I first reviewed this song we have many readers more versed in Mexican history than me, and indeed having been corrected earlier by Francesco also on this site, I am happy to agree that the Ramón and Magdalena are linked by Dylan to Pancho Villa.
I am not in a position to judge what is real and what not, but David did add the interesting thought that “Dylan is exercising poetic license here with respect to the Aztec ruins. Northern Mexico, where the story takes place, was never part of the Aztec empire and no Aztec ruins are found there. Ruins from other pre-Columbian peoples are found in the area, though, for example at Casas Grandes.” He adds in relation to another comment, “Tom is correct that the ‘serpent’s eyes of obsidian’ refers to the Feathered Serpent.”
The song was played 38 times by Dylan between October 30 1975 and October 17 2015. It is, for me a most fitting and insightful end to an era in Dylan’s writing. With the death of the outlaw at the end of the song, the curtain comes down on a singular period in Dylan’s career. When he took up songwriting again, we found we were in a new land.
But although the collaboration between Dylan the Jacques Levy ended here, Bob now retained the notion of writing about people and places, as the next song he composed was Sara.
Clearly Dylan was writing about his wife in general, since he says her name four times in each chorus, but whether he was writing about her in specifics is another matter. No one ever said songs have to be true, and the songs written just before Sara made no attempt to fix exact reality.
But it is hard to relate “Sara” back to earlier compositions this year. And what a change it was musically, for we come out of all those Mexican rhythms and find ourselves in a waltz. Although to be clear – the theme of the album of people and places is of course continued.
Musically the song is at the very least highly unusual for Dylan – perhaps even unique for Dylan in that it is in a minor key modulating to the relative major in the chorus before returning to the minor in the last line. Dylan uses minor keys rarely, and this sequence never before nor (as far as I know) since.
The chord structure, for anyone used to playing Dylan, is truly unexpected:
The verse: Em Am D Em (repeated)
The chorus: G Bm Am D C Em (repeated)
In effect the verse is in E minor and the chorus is in G major. And it works perfectly to give a strange backdrop to the lyrics – lyrics which talk of the background environment as well as the lady in the song.
But is it about Sara Dylan? Yes and no. Maybe and perhaps. Up to a point; but really it doesn’t matter. It is a beautiful reflective love song. The fact that we have all heard that she took half the earnings from the songs written during the marriage is really not too important in the context of the song, unless Dylan wants to write a song about that. Here he doesn’t; he wants to write a song about his love for Sara and what brought them together.
It won’t all be true, and it doesn’t have to be true. After all why would it? Dylan is the ultimate storyteller. He gets ideas from the real world and spins them into his tales – a perfectly reasonable and legitimate approach to songwriting. After all we don’t expect any of the other songs on this album to be true, so why should this? Maybe he did drink white rum in a Portugal bar, but whether he did or not doesn’t actually affect the song.
But as our correspondent Jake said, in response to my earlier review, “Sara, whoever she is, seems strangely absent. She is there, as the character’s love interest, object of devotion, etc, but we don’t learn much about her.”
Which is indeed true. As Zaphod said in a comment, “Why is she gone? Has she changed? Her love for him died? It made me sad, remembering a loss of my own.” Oh I can so relate to that!
Looking at and listening to Dylan’s songs for the remainder of the year – this unique year of people and places – I find myself now seeing Dylan as pondering. He’s done the phenomenal series of songs with Levy, he’s written Sara, and now…
It’s a song of stepping apart, of being removed. There’s a real feeling (for me if no one else) of being unsure of where to be, where to go. It is a song of separation and distance, which makes sense after “Sara”, but considering that this comes from the same year as “Isis” it hardly seems as if it could be the same composer. Although from Isis to “Sign Language” is quite an interesting journey in itself.
If we compare this with the opening of the last song written with Levy, we have…
Hot chilli 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.
There is comparison in the sense that Levy took the world around the central character and turned it into a way of setting the song quickly. Dylan was, perhaps, attempting to do the same, but the level is so prosaic (what is there that is interesting about eating a sandwich?) that (for me) it doesn’t work.
And perhaps Dylan felt this, which is why in effect the song writing stopped – and why there is that reference to Link Wray. This is back to the old Dylan, citing those who have influenced him. The journey really has finished – however far you want to be from Isis and Durango and the rest we surely are now there.
We’re almost at the end of the year – but Dylan still had two more little surprises in store. The first is the improvised “Patty’s Gone to Laredo”. It is not possible to put up here a copy of the single Dylan recording, and no one else seems to have recorded it, so in case you don’t have access to the song, I’ve put up a version I’ve recorded – not to try and suggest a particular insight or ability on my part, I assure you, but so you can get an idea of what the song is about, (or isn’t about, since it clearly was improvised and is far from being finished) in case you are interested and don’t have access to the single Dylan recording.
Then, finally, after all this there was indeed one more song, “What will you do when Jesus Comes?” from Renaldo and Clara.
Chris Hughes in Blasting News suggested that the post-existentialist experiences a life in which, “We need life to be occupied 24/7. We need to worry about work, money etc, because these worries distract us from existential worry. Only, if we find living difficult and troublesome, do we forget to ask, what is the point of living? The awkwardness of living provides an escape from the awareness of the futility of it all. The tedium of living needs to be horrible so that we don’t have to confront the horror that, in the end, it may all be pointless anyway.”
So when Jesus returns for the Second Coming there is every chance that we’ll be so busy with the mundane reality of life that we don’t even notice.
It’s a thought. And indeed given all the songs that have come before in this extraordinary year, he could have a point.
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
Little Tommy Thumb,
With his little pipe and drum,
Is come to give you a dance;
And Lovechild so taper
Will shew you a caper,
Dunoyer brought from France.
She is pleas'd that you look
Into her little book,
And like her songs so well,
That her figures you know
Before that you can go,
And sing them before you can spell.
From the original of “Tommy Thumb’s Song Book for all little Masters and Misses; to be sung to them by their Nurses ’till they can sing themselves.” By Nurse Lovechild. To which is added, a Letter from a Lady on Nursing from 1744 unfortunately no copies have survived, but a reprint from 1788 is most probably identical to that original. From the sequel, Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book Voll. II (also from 1744), at least one original copy has always existed, since long safely in the British Library, and in 2001 a second copy was found.
Both song books contain the kind of songs Dylan has a soft spot for, the songs he refers to in the interview with Ephron and Edmiston in the summer of ’65, three weeks after recording “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”:
BD: It’s weird, man, full of legend, myth, bible and ghosts. I’ve never written anything hard to understand, not in my head, anyway, and nothing as far out as some of the old songs. They were out of sight. E/E: Like what songs? BD: Little Brown Dog, “I bought a little brown dog, its face is all gray. Now I’m going to Turkey flying on my bottle.”
Dylan improvises on “Little Brown Dog”, which he will record in 1970 as “Tattle O’Day” (but which will not be released until 2013, on The Bootleg Series: Another Self Portrait). A year before that, he has already written “Who Killed Davey Moore?” on the format of Tommy Thumb’s “Who Killed Cock Robin?”, more exuberantly he will demonstrate his love in 1990, when he makes a record filled with nursery rhymes (under the red sky), and in between he lives out that side of his creativity on far out songs like “Quinn The Eskimo” and “Three Angels”.
It all makes it a little more likely that the title choice for “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” is a tip of the hat to that antique nursery rhyme collection. And not, as many commentators like to point out, to Rimbaud – who indeed does mention Tom Thumb, once, in the English translation of “Ma Bohème” (“Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way”, the translation of Petit-Poucet rêveur, j’égrenais dans ma course des rimes).
Little Tommy Thumb,
With his little pipe and drum,
Is come to give you a dance
The basis is bare and simple. Three chords, a common blues scheme, six verses, no chorus. But the packaging is all the more beautiful. One of the most important pillars of the mercury sound is the find to use two pianos, a honky-tonk and an electric Hohner pianet. This was quite unusual in the pop music of the sixties and came about more or less by accident. After all, Al Kooper had sneaked into the “Like A Rolling Stone” session hoping to play guitar at a Dylan session. He is already in the studio, waiting for Dylan, when a guy unknown to him arrives with a guitar case:
“The guy just shuffled over into the corner, wiped it off with a rag, plugged in, and commenced to play some of the most incredible guitar I’d ever heard. And he was just warming up!”
Kooper is intimidated, backs down, a bit embarrassed, and docilely takes his place on the other side of the window again, in the control room. And limits himself to what producer Tom Wilson has given him permission to do: watch a Dylan session. But the band struggles with “Like A Rolling Stone” and when organist Paul Griffin moves to the piano, Kooper sees an opportunity, slips in, and clandestinely plays an uncertain organ part on the next take.
“If you listen to it today, you can hear how I waited until the chord was played by the rest of the band, before committing myself to play in the verses. I’m always an eighth note behind everyone else, making sure of the chord before touching the keys.”
Wilson is not too impressed, but Dylan is immediately touched. “Turn the organ up,” he says, while listening back to the take. Kooper is on cloud nine, he’s in and he’s also a bit confused. Producer Tom Wilson, of course, has a point when he objects: “That cat’s not an organ player.” Dylan couldn’t care less. Kooper spends the rest of the day, and is eventually on the final version too, playing the organ. Afterwards Dylan asks for his phone number. “Which was like Claudia Schiffer asking for the key to your hotel room.”
Dylan remembers Kooper’s added value to the mercury sound and indeed uses the phone number – and so guitarist Kooper suddenly becomes a keyboardist and six weeks later, 2 August 1965, he is in the studio again for the rest of Highway 61 Revisited. Mike Bloomfield is also back, as is Paul Griffin (“probably the best damned studio keyboard player in all of New York City and certainly the funkiest”). Kooper switches between organ and electric piano today – on Tom Thumb he plays that Hohner pianet. The strolling rhythm section, Griffin’s tinkling piano and Bloomfield’s languid guitar do build the melodic, unworldly backdrop for the kaleidoscopic lyrics, but the spaced-out, detached quality is mainly down to Kooper, who indeed plays just behind the beat here too, deploying his aural tapestry between the one and the two.
In his autobiography, Kooper recounts his newly acquired status as a keyboardist with infectious self-mockery;
“For kicks, I’d go out and buy all the records that aped the Dylan sound. I’d take them over to Dylan’s house, and we’d play them and laugh. The imitation Kooper organ was one of the stellar attractions. I had a “style” based on ignorance. And then to hear these great musicians imitating my inexperience!”
… but he underestimates, or downplays out of modesty, the irresistibility of the rough and rowdy, the tension that the Japanese call wabi-sabi (侘 寂), the beauty that is found in inadequacy, in transience and in authenticity – in perfect imperfection.
Nurse Lovechild is pleas'd that you look
Into her little book,
And like her songs so well,
That her figures you know
Before that you can go,
And sing them before you can spell.
To be continued. Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part VIII, the finale: The covers
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
Robert Herrick generally writes simple musical poems, often containing a mixture of Greek/Roman mythology, folk lore, and Christian thought about the joys of youth, and the pleasures of sex – in spite of the spectre of Death; nonetheless he can be grouped with the Metaphysical or Baroque poets because of his use of conceits, and his seize-the-day philosophy:
Gather ye rosebuds while thee may
Old Time is still a-flying
And the same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying
(Robert Herrick: To The Virgins To Make Much Of Time)
Referencing a poem by Shakespeare in which the Bard notes that a work of art outlasts the beauty of a youthful actor:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
Thou art more lovely, and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And summer's lease hath all too short a date
(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18)
In the poem below, it be a female Muse that inspires:
I must confess, mine eyes and heart
Dotes less on Nature than on Art
(Robert Herrick: Art Above Nature:To Julia)
In the following song lyrics, the ‘rose’ is again a symbol of youth as well as of physical love; fade it may, but regenerated it can be:
Now when all the flower ladies want back what they have lent you
And the smell of their roses does not remain
And all of your children start to resent you
Won't you come see me Queen Jane
(Bob Dylan: Queen Jane Approximately)
In the following double-edged lyrics, the creation of a beautiful piece of art apparently has side benefits:
I'm going down to Rose Marie's
She never does me wrong
She puts it to me plain as day
And gives it to me for a song
(Bob Dylan: Going To Acapulco)
These creative artists imagine within Nature a spirituality, both dark and light, that lies beyond that which is revealed by the physical world:
I sing of times trans-shifting; and I write
How roses first came red, and lilies white
I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
The court of Mab, and of the fairy king
(Robert Herrick: The Argument Of His Book)
So be it as well in the song lyrics quoted beneath – albeit the character of Mab is somewhat humorously darkened:
Charotte's a harlot
Dresses in scarlet
Mary dresses in green
It's soon after midnight
And I've got a date
With the fairy queen
(Bob Dylan: Soon After Midnight)
In the poem below, there’s a hedonistic theme ~
Let us eat, and drink
For tomorrow we shall die (Isaiah 22:13):
Born I was to be old
And for to die here
After that, in the mould
Long for to lie here
(Robert Herrick: Anacreontic, A Drinking Song)
Too in the following song lyrics:
I was born here, and I'll die here, against my will
I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still
Every nerve in my body is naked and numb
I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from
(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
We have been considering Bob Dylan’s compositions in 1975 in the order they were written, and what is so noticeable is that while in 1974 Dylan had the theme of relationships at the heart of almost all his songs, now in 1975 as he worked with Jacques Levy he wrote about individuals and places.
This change of direction does not normally come across in the reviews of Dylan’s compositions which either contemplate each song individually, or instead take a whole album, and then ignore all that has gone before when considering the next album.
Yet here, as we have moved through each song in 1975 was can see the two writers moving through make-believe people and real or imagined places, occasionally incorporating actual locations and participants, but with the people seen in a way that some critics felt was wrong because they were not accurate enough.
And we can notice that when Bob and Jacques have played with places and developed a fictional place from a real place, no one seems to mind. So one rule for the people, another for the places it seems. The critics demand that reality is required; but only up to a point.
Moving on we find that “Black Diamond Bay” does two things: it describes the volcanic eruption from the perspective of those affected, and sees it also from the point of view of those who merely consume the story as a piece of news. This is a very different take from the earlier compositions for the album in that previously the perspective is that of the singer or central character. The inspiration was the novel “Victory” by Joseph Conrad and Conrad is indeed pictured on the sleeve, but the imagination both musical and poetic, is from the two men working together.
And of course no one objects that the story told is not accurate. They get the notion of fiction at this point, even though they could not cope with the fictionalisation of real people in the earlier songs.
For myself, and it is just my view, with such a mix of songs and viewpoints, it is as if the composers are jointly telling us that in the end there is no reality. It is all perspective – which is of course the opposite of what the critics have said – and personally I’d always prefer to think about Bob’s broader message through a collection of songs, rather than labour through the argument of accuracy. Because in the end, no description is ever accurate.
And now, at this point, to show how far this can be taken we have, as a wonderful bonus, Jacques Levy’s fabulous recording which not only gives us his version of the song, but a brief introduction.
What fantastic piano playing! What a vision! What fun!
So we can now see what Levy and Dylan were playing at: it wasn’t just extending the reality of the people portrayed in the earlier songs, but it was a case of exploring how far reality and fiction could be pushed and merged, merged and pushed, step by step taking the project ever forward. Once again, by considering the songs in the order composed we can, not for the first time, understand the overarching concept of shifting realities, which those who insist on the notion of “one song at a time” fail to perceived.
For me, the Levy rendition is invaluable because, it strengthens the whole concept of the ever changing reality, with people swimming in and out of the frame, with nothing quite certain. The gambling and the Panama hat all fly back to “Victory” but much else is new.
It is above all, such extraordinary vibrant fun – and also explains my sudden venture into quoting PG Wodehouse in the “Does Dylan really care about these people he writes about” episode. Yes they care, but these people remain characters. As Bob himself once so famously said.
All these people that you mention, yes, I know them,
they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name
And then there was a break.
Of course the Dylan/Levy partnership needed the occasional break and time to explore other ideas, as much as any other combination of writers. Indeed after writing “Black Diamond Bay” both men might well have been inclined to take a bit of time reflecting on what else was possible.
And this was certainly the case with their next composition was “Catfish”: another look at an individual person, felt through an exploration of what might be possible in a different way of doing things – rather as Mozambique is.
It is a slow atmospheric blues with a reverberating harmonica played throughout – while the blues band does its blues band thing. So here we are again playing with an event (this time a sports event) turning it into an aesthetic moment that speaks to us about the essence of human life, exactly as the blues can do.
I must admit my first thought was to doubt whether the two composers were deadly serious in what they were doing here; but that view changed with the Joe Cocker version (below) shows us exactly where this song can be taken. Sometimes it does take another performer to show us just what is possible…
So the character and place theme is continue through the pitcher Jim (Catfish) Hunter, who at his National Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Day Speech in 1987 is reported to have said, “Winning isn’t everything. Wanting to win is.” Although it is not a style of life that I aspire to, I can see his point.
Thus, we continue, people and places, places and people – it seems so obvious, but it is anything but, for I certainly can’t think of another set of songs that are so diverse and yet which so successfully extend a theme. However it is interesting that no one seems to complain about the portrayal of Catfish as they do about other people in these songs.
And then we are off to Mozambique
I’m sticking with the album version here, rather than a live version, because for me, Bob never quite conveys the simple elegance of the song when playing it live. Returning to this version I find it held back just enough to make it shine forth.
This song has been highly criticised as being rather trivial and trite – a throw away – as if every song has to be a “Johanna” or “Desolation Row”. But why? Of course if one does not understand that this is an album about people and places, then the question arises, what is Bob Dylan doing singing about Mozambique tourism? Isn’t there a cause he should be chasing down at this point? Where is the protest or the blues?
Well no there isn’t, and that is the point of the album; and how difficult is that to grasp? After all the lyrics make it clear enough, and it is not as if Bob has not changed directions a thousand times in the past.
Indeed if we had here an album which contained some of Dylan’s earlier themes, and then he threw in Mozambique that would be rather strange, but no, this is not that sort of album at all. If you want a word for it, it is a travelogue. But more than that, it is a beautifully executed travelogue.
And if you want it to mean more, it is surely a sarcastic commentary on the super rich travelling to a country gripped by a civil war which lasted 16 years and which ended just before the song was written and recorded. A country in which most of the land is owned by women, many of whom are led into forced marriages. Did the critics really think Bob and Jacques didn’t actually get that?
But we move on, and as we shall see in the next episode, there are still places to go and people to see. And anyway what is so wrong with that? If we don’t go and look, how on earth will we ever know?
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
A piece of hop with black coffee and a shot of tequila
By Jochen Markhorst
I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they’d stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to call my bluff
I’m going back to New York City
I do believe I’ve had enough
When, at the beginning of Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles sets out with Faust, the Devil first takes the old scholar to the pub, to Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig. For, as both Goethe and the Devil know: “Alcohol… because no great story started with a glass of milk.”
The clichéd pub-crawlers’ excuse has long been disproved, of course. First by Anthony Burgess and the film version of his A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971), later by Luc Besson’s Léon (1994), the moving contract killer who starts every job with a good glass of milk, and finally by the most spectacular story that starts with a glass of milk: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009). Though, to be fair, Alex and his droogs at the beginning of A Clockwork Orange are drinking “moloko-plus” there in the Korova Milk Bar, milk laced with the customer’s drug of choice.
But in 1965, when Dylan is writing his “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, alcohol was still the go-to beverage to get a good story started. Burgundy, in this case, mainly for rhythmic reasons presumably.
The opening of this last verse, I started out on burgundy, but soon hit the harder stuff, retroactively suggests something like a narrative. Similar to the structure of a farcical film like The Hangover (2009), for example.
The Hangover story, after a character- and set-introducing prelude, actually begins with a morning hotel room scene in a bewildering state of decomposition. Alcoholic bodies are scattered haphazardly throughout the suite, a chicken is walking around. One of the main characters sort of wakes up. He barely has the strength to get up. Gravity fails. With the last of his life force, he drags himself into the bathroom to pee, where he is snarled at by a vicious tiger. In a cupboard, they find a baby unknown to everyone present. One of the main characters has disappeared. The rest of the film is a quest to find out what on earth happened last night, in the hope of finding Doug, the missing friend.
We get the solution to the mystery, as we do with Dylan, in the last part. The clumsy Alan wanted to increase the party atmosphere by sneaking xtc pills into the opening toast with Jägermeister, but mistakenly used roofies. After that, the men went crazy. I started out on Rohypnol, but soon hit the harder stuff.
It is a tried and tested narrative structure: first the consequence, to arouse curiosity, and only later, to satisfy that curiosity, the cause. Usually humorous, especially when the cause turns out to be alcohol. Rudyard Kipling already used the trick, in his Departmental Ditties, Barrack Room Ballads and Other Verses (1890). Like in the hungover “Cells”, which opens like a Hangover scene:
I've a head like a concertina: I've a tongue like a button-stick:
I've a mouth like an old potato, and I'm more than a little sick
… only to reveal the Tom Thumb– and Hangover-like cause a little further on:
i started o' canteen porter, i finished o' canteen beer,
but a dose o' gin that a mate slipped in,
it was that that brought me here.
And Kipling was not the first, of course – already with the medieval François Villon we find ballads that tell the cycle of events in a rather reverse order, as Dylan puts it. Dylan says this in 1968 in response to John Cohen’s interview question about the songs on John Wesley Harding. Reflecting on the phenomenon of “real ballads”, by which Dylan – rightly – means narrative poems, he takes “All Along The Watchtower” as an example:
“… which opens up in a slightly different way, in a stranger way, for here we have the cycle of events working in a rather reverse order.”
So not that strange or different, actually – we’ve been telling “the cycle of events in a rather reverse order” for centuries.
Dylan himself has been doing it since before John Wesley Harding. The last verse of “Desolation Row”, the I received your letter yesterday couplet, opens up the possibility of interpretation that all the previous verses express the contents of that letter. And well, even the embryonic “Ballad For A Friend” (1962) opens with its finale (“Sad I’m a-sittin’ on the railroad track”) and only then reveals the cycle of events that has led to the narrator being so sad on the track.
The last verse of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” offers a similar possibility of interpretation. Now, with this hindsight, we understand why the narrator was walking around so hazily, lost in the rain, in an exotic setting, why he didn’t have the strength to take another shot, why he felt so bad that he asks my best friend the doctor for advice, how he ended up in the room of a lady of questionable repute, and why his deranged senses thought to register “boasting authorities”, “ghost-like Angels” and duty neglecting sergeants-at-arms. Blame the harder stuff.
Details of the plot are, as we have seen, owed to Kerouac, but apparently also to Brother Bill, William Burroughs, who describes a similar decline in his taboo-breaking debut Junky. Especially when he once again tries to kick the habit with the help of alcohol, which requires increasingly harder stuff:
“At first I started drinking at five in the afternoon. After a week, l started drinking at eight in the morning, stayed drunk all day and all night, and woke up drunk the next morning.
Every morning when I woke up, I washed down benzedrine, sanicin, and a piece of hop with black coffee and a shot of tequila.”
And the attempts to get rid of the junk with the help of peyote lead to Tom Thumb-like hallucinations (“I looked in the mirror and my face changed and I began howling”). The book ends with Burroughs’ intention to travel south from Mexico to Colombia in search of the mythical drug yage;
“Maybe I will find in yage what I was looking for in junk and weed and coke. Yage may be the final fix.”
… but as we know, and as Dylan, sitting at a café table in Greenwich Village with Burroughs in the spring of ’65, knows first hand, Brother Bill is going back to New York City. He did believe he had enough.
In Auerbachs Keller, the devil entertains the clientele by magically making Rhine wine, Champagne and Tokayer (not Burgundy) flow, but Faust is not impressed. Mephisto therefore takes him to one of his servants, who brews the harder stuff in her Hexenküche, in her witch’s kitchen. After that, things get pretty out of hand. Only decades later, at the end of Faust II (1831), Faust returns to his old life.
He’s had enough too.
To be continued. Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part VII
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
Here are more poems with rhymes for ‘door’ by famous poets who have influenced Bob Dylan to one degree or another.
Only this time it’s left up to the readers of ‘Untold Dylan’ to decide which of his songs that also contain ‘door’ rhymes best correspond to a poem cited; ie, in regards to meaning:
And yet the threshold of my door
Is worn by the poor
(Robert Herrick: A Thanksgiving To God For His House)
[For example-
John Wesley Harding
Was a friend to the poor ...
He opened many a door
(Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding)]
Here then are more ‘door’ poems:
Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door
“Sir, let me see your works, and you no more”
(Alexander Pope: Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot)
The parlor splendors of the festive place
The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door
(Oliver Goldsmith: The Deserted Village)
Beneath them sit the aged man, wise guardians of the poor
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door
(William Blake: Holy Thursday)
What loud uproar
bursts from that door
(Samuei Coleridge: The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner)
Sleeping, most probably, when at her door
Arose a clatter might awake the dead
If they had never been awoke before
(Lord Byron: Don Juan, Canto I)
He will awake no more, oh, never more
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The white shadow Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
(Percy Shelley: Adonais)
A chain-dropped lamp was flickering by each door
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound
Fluttered in the besieging wind’s uproar
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor
(John Keats: The Eve Of St. Agnes)
And as thee cock crew, those who stood before
The tavern shouted, “Open the door
You know how little while we have to stay
And once departed, we may return no more”
(Edward Fitzgerald: The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam)
The boat is drawn upon the shore
Thou listenest to the closing door
(Lord Tennyson: In Memoriam)
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door
Come away, children, call no more
(Matthew Arnold: The Forsaken Merman)
I have been here before
But when or how, I cannot tell
I know the grass beyond the door
The sweet keen smell
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore
(Dante Rossetti: Sudden Light)
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, let’s out no more
(Christina Rossetti: Echo)
If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door
Watching the full-starred heaven that winter sees
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more
“He was one who had an eye for such mysteries”
(Thomas Hardy: Afterwards)
‘Well, it's sugar for sugar
And salt for salt,
If you go down in the flood,
It's gonna be your own fault.’
Part 1. The Prague Revelation: Sugar for Sugar
‘Dylan opens the year with one of the most remarkable performances of the “Never Ending Tour,” despite still visibly suffering the after effects of the bug (at several points he sits on the drum rise, scrunched up in some discomfort)… the shock of the evening is not in his song selection.. but the fact that he performs almost the entire show without a guitar.. harmonica in hand, making strange shadow-boxing movements, cupping the harmonica to his mouth on nearly every song, blowing his sweetest harp breaks in years.’
Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)
‘Anyone who has watched a sunrise over the ancient city of Prague will feel they have visited a city of magic & wonder. Anyone who has heard Dylan’s performance on the 11th will have felt a similar sense of awe.’
Andrew Muir (One More Night: Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour)
On March 11, 1995, Dylan descended on Prague to kick off the year’s tour with a sizzling three night stand. These concerts would astonish and tame a pretty unruly audience with a series of masterful performances that have gone down in NET history. It is possible to argue, as I will here, that the NET reached a peak in 1995, with these Prague concerts as the jewels in that crown. It would reach another peak around 2000.
At the end of the last post (see NET, 1994, part 5), I suggested that the NET had been on a rising curve since 1991 as Dylan struggled with his voice and the task of welding his band into a responsive vehicle for his wonderful songs. As we saw, 1994 was a lift off year, with an especially powerful set of acoustic performances, but in 1995 he soars into the stratosphere with some of his best performances ever, many of them from those three days in Prague.
The story of these concerts has now become part of the Dylan legend. Apparently he had the flu and was not up to playing the guitar. At least not until the 13th, the third and last concert, when he begins to get back into it. So mostly he fronted the audience with just his voice and his harp. This was new; Dylan had always put his guitar between himself and his audience – unless playing piano.
The flu might have knocked out his guitar, but his voice is capable of reaching a clarity and luminosity rarely heard since the 1960s. He can still give his voice a tearing edge when he wants to, but by softening the tones, giving them a quiet intensity, he achieves the vocal mastery we so much love in Dylan.
It’s tempting to think that these performances are so good because Dylan is not playing the guitar. An heretical thought but a persistent one. Mr Guitar Man’s insistent, complex, heavy electric guitar sound is not to everybody’s taste. But there is more to it than that. These performances are the fruition of a long development.
And in reading this and the next couple of posts, you have a treat in store. I’m swerving from my usual practice of concert jumping to focus on Prague, 1995, working my way across the three concerts with some thirty performances lined up for you. I won’t try to follow the set-lists through as he plays them, but rather jump around to create my own extended set-list. I’m eager to get started.
So I’ll start right from the beginning, the opening song of the first night, March 11, ‘Crash on the Levee (Down in The Flood)’. The performance of this bluesy, irreverent song from the Basement Tapes (1967) is nothing too special, although the energy is all there. There are hints of Dylan’s vocal power and the possibilities to come. After a bit of a shaky start, he soon finds his feet and away we go. A great song to get the energy pumping. A settling-in song.
Crash on the Levee
The recordings of this first night are somewhat sharper than the second and third nights. You can hear that clearly in the difference between the following two performances. This one is from the first night, the 11th:
Ballad of Thin Man
And this is from the second night, the 12th :
These performances show how effective the softly-softly approach can be, giving the song, with its bizarre characters and situations, a sinister touch. It also allows Dylan to stretch his voice on the high notes to dramatic effect. I prefer the second one, but that may just be the recording. And, as Dylan takes a rest at the end, the band find their feet without Mr Guitar Man.
There can be few performances of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ as gentle and tender as the Prague versions, despite a couple of slip ups with the lyrics. By slowing the song right down, and taking advantage of the echo of the venue’s sound system, this nostalgic rendition of Dylan’s great hymn to escapism achieves a plaintive quality I haven’t heard in previous performances. It’s eerie, like an echo from the past. The invitation to go
‘down the foggy ruins of time
far past the frozen leaves
the haunted frightened trees’
has never sounded quite so ghostly. Listening to that ‘spirit voice’ reminds me of these lines from Percy Shelly:
‘Oh! there are spirits of the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As star-beams among twilight trees:—
Such lovely ministers to meet
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.’
Thinking of Shelly, a Dylan like character, at least in my mind, I’m reminded of Matthew Arnold’s description of Shelly as ‘a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.’ I invite you to contemplate that quote as you listen to these two performances by our contemporary Shelly.
The first one is from the 12th. A particularly plaintive, wistful harp.
Mr Tambourine Man (A)
This second is from the 13th. Except for a stuff up at the beginning with the lyrics, this is another superlative performance, equally ethereal.
Mr Tambourine Man (B)
And while on the subject of Dylan’s sixties classics, while he didn’t favour them as heavily as he did in 1994, we have two wonderful performances of Dylan’s masterpiece ‘Desolation Row.’
In this song we meet some of the denizens of Dylan’s circus, a host of crazy characters, all the outsiders and fucked-up ones, all in drag disguise (‘I had to rearrange their faces/ and give them all another name’). This song, along with ‘Visions of Johanna’, stands at the apex of Dylan’s post protest sixties song writing. This first performance on the 11th is wonderful by most standards, although it lacks the harp break, and Dylan’s voice feels a bit under-recorded. In the light of the second performance, however, from the 12th, it sounds more like a rehearsal. The sharp-edged harmonica from the second performance caps it all off.
Desolation Row (A)
Desolation Row (B)
There are only a few videos from these Prague concerts and they tend to be patchy and too dark. The only one worth watching to my mind is ‘Shelter from the Storm’ and even then it is interspersed with stills. It does however give the flavour of the performance, Dylan’s constant, restless movements on stage, that ‘strange shadow boxing’ referred to by Heylin.
This slow, soft version, from the 11th, stands in stark contrast to the harsh, fast 1976 performance. After a super-slow start, it kicks into an easy rhythm, and it soon begins to sound more like a love song than other performances. That easy pace allows Dylan to stretch his lungs. Listen to the magnificent vocal performance starting around 2.15 mins. (I have added the sound file in case the video should one day vanish).
Shelter from the Storm
‘Lay Lady Lay’ began life as a seductive, somewhat tongue-in-cheek number from Nashville Skyline, 1969, became a raucous cry of desire during the Rolling Thunder Tour (1975/76), to become here a tender, passionate love song. Again the hero of the story is Dylan’s voice. He whispers, entreats and cries out for love. It is from the 13th, Dylan has picked up the guitar for this one, and Mr Guitar Man is in excellent form. You’ll be hard put to find a better performance of the song.
Lay Lady Lay
While on the subject of tender love songs, let’s consider ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’. Not only is it one of Dylan’s most affecting love songs, dealing with the feelings we have when about to be separated from someone we love, but perhaps his most successful conversation songs. Bits of conversation and dialogue are a hallmark of Dylan songs, but in ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’ we have a full two-sided conversation. The boots themselves become emblematic of all those strange exotic places his love will be visiting. His love, about to depart, presses him on the matter:
‘Ah, but I just thought you might want something fine
Made of silver or of golden
Either from the mountains of Madrid
Or from the coast of Barcelona’
But all he wants, of course, is his love.
‘Oh, how can, how can you ask me again?
It only brings me sorrow
The same thing I would want today
I will want again tomorrow’
I don’t know we can say that Dylan has ever written a tear-jerker, but this comes pretty close.
My problem here is I have two versions both dated 13th March. They can’t both be right. I’m pretty sure that this softer performance is really from the 13th. Dylan fumbles the lyrics again near the beginning but soon finds his feet. My info has it that Dylan is playing acoustic guitar on this one.
Boots of Spanish Leather (A)
And I’m guessing from the sound quality that this next one is from the 12th. Either way, we have two stand-out performances of the song. And in both cases we get those ‘sweetest harp breaks’ that Heylin refers to, the first being more ethereal than the second.
Boots of Spanish Leather (B)
In the early sixties, Dylan would kick off his concerts with ‘The Times They Are A-changing.’ Sung in a strident, challenging voice, as he did then, it sounds like a call to arms. Sung in a more reflective tone, it becomes a meditation on time and eternal recurrence. Performed slowly it becomes, in Dylan’s soft Prague voice, tinged with sadness.
The times they are a-changing
For us, it’s a good place to pause before the next instalment, The Prague Revelation Part 2, Salt for Salt.
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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 episode 33 of the series “All Directions at Once” which considers Bob’s compositions not as a series of isolated songs, but as a constant evolution of Dylan’s talent, with each song related to the world around him, and what had gone before.
A full index of the articles in the series appears here
In my last piece I meandered around the issue of how real people (whether they be still alive or no longer with us) are represented in songs, and why some people get so worked up about the issue of accuracy within song lyrics.
Not everyone is of course worried by such matters. The Allmusic review of the Joey calls it, “One of the finest songs on Desire” and notes that regardless of the questionable character the song is about, “it’s a beautiful creation. Dylan sings many of the verses, especially One day they blew him down in a clam bar in New York... with heartbreaking skill and timing, and is very persuasive in his evocation of Gallo’s life, whom he sees as a decent, kind man, a “king of the streets” and a man with morals (“But Joey stepped up, and he raised his hand/Said ‘We’re not those kind of men’…”)
Rolling Stone however took a different line, arguing that, “When Bob Dylan sings about historical figures, he often gets a lot wrong. “Hurricane” is riddled with errors, and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” is almost worse. “Joey” has some issues too, but it’s mainly objectionable for the simple fact that it glorifies a vicious mobster. Judging solely by the song, one would think he was a saint. It does this across 11 minutes, and is ultimately interminable.”
So we must face the question, does accuracy matter in songs? And if yes, then we ask, why does it matter in this particular art form, when it doesn’t seem to matter in any other?
Between 1987-2012 Dylan played “Joey” at concerts 87 times, mostly, according to Heylin, forgetting the words along the way, including apparently in Brixton in late March 1995, “the night after they buried East End hoodlum Ronnie Kray.”
The accuracy of lyrics in songs never worries me, largely because to be worried I’d have to have some sort of dividing line such as, “If the person is alive or has been dead for less than 20 years, the song should be accurate…” which actually seems rather daft.
So my problem with the song, in all the years before I picked up on who Joey was (and it really wasn’t that easy to get that information in England in the days before the internet) was musical. It just doesn’t have enough musical or lyrical fascination to carry the length. In which regard it is the opposite of “Isis” which pushes out such a huge amount of energy one can hardly catch one’s breath.
But many others liked the song. In a readers’ poll conducted by Mojo magazine, “Joey” was rated the 74th most popular Bob Dylan song of all time. In a Rolling Stone survey of the 10 worst Dylan songs of all times, “Joey” got listed along with “If Dogs Run Free” and “Wiggle Wiggle”. Dylan seems to have responded by playing each of the last two named songs over 100 times in concert.
Levy did however have an interesting comment saying that, “I think the first step was putting the song in a total storytelling mode, I don’t remember whose idea it was to do that. But really, the beginning of the song is like stage directions, like what you would read in a script: ‘Pistol shots ring out in a barroom night…. Here comes the story of the Hurricane.’ Boom! Titles. You know, Bob loves movies, and he can write these movies that take place in eight to ten minutes, yet seem as full or fuller than regular movies”.
And of course all of us are used to films of life stories being inaccurate – they have to be in order to become watchable movies, because the reduction of the events of maybe 30, 50 or even 70 years to two hours means a lot is cut.
What I guess those who don’t like what’s going on here are unhappy about is the age-old concept of “poetic licence” (which the Oxford Dictionaries define as “The freedom to depart from the facts of a matter or from the conventional rules of language when speaking or writing in order to create an effect”). It is a phrase that has been with us since the 18th century, so we’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea – and indeed I think as a culture we are totally used to and accepting of the concept – except when it doesn’t fit with the social or political views of critics like Heylin.
Of course ultimately poetic licence can go so far that the resultant artwork becomes a parody of the facts of the case. But mostly judgement in such matters is clouded by belief. Indeed as Picasso said in 1948, in Russia they hated his work and loved his politics, whereas in the US the situation was reversed.
And as so often I am drawn back to Dylan’s comment, “I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours,” which comes down to the fact that if we have the talent we can put our ideas across with artistic licence, and those who want to share the visions can then do so. As for everyone else, just look and listen elsewhere.
My view, for what it is worth, is that people who argue to the contrary, fail to understand the nature of poetry. For as Dylan Thomas said, “A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.” And as Plato said in the Republic, “We are, at all events, aware that such poetry mustn’t be taken seriously as a serious thing laying hold of truth…”
But we should never forget that Dylan’s works are songs, for the most part consisting of music and lyrics, mostly doing what songs generally do which is to offer the listener an emotional experience (in contrast, shall we say, to the official record of a day’s proceedings in court which aim to strip out emotion and give us facts).
Once more we can turn back to “Times they are a-changin'” for guidance. It is an emotional piece in which the overall emotional content suggests that things are really going to get better, because that’s what we all want. The logical analysis shows us that what the lyrics actually say is the change will happen come what may, but emotionally many listeners to the song feel that they are part of making this change happen.
In my view, it is worth noting both what the lyrics say, and what the emotion is that is generated, and indeed many far more astute that myself have explored this field. I would note, for example the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman who theorised that “people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e. its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.”
If we go back to “Isis” that suggests (and I think rightly) that we might judge the song by how we feel when Dylan sings
She said “You going to stay?” I said "If you want me to, yes"
We none of us have clear access to all our past memories, because our memories are filtered and jostled around by other memories all the time, so somehow our brains pick and choose the memories we consider to be the points that define who and what we are.
The arts are part of this, and we hold on to art works, or moments from the art that moves in time (such as songs) – but what we hold is always incomplete. In relation to the songs we know what we feel; it is moments from the songs – lyrical and musical phrases.
Of course there is nothing wrong with highlighting key moments from songs to help us highlight what we are. People who do this, so the theory of Selective Exposure Theory goes, and who manage to focus on happy memories, are happier people. People who don’t actively redefine their memories and so pick up the peak of negative memories as much as positive memories, tend to be more miserable. Listening to Dylan and remembering key phrases from the songs can indeed make many of us very happy. Analysing the songs and complaining that the lyrics are inaccurate just… well, nothing much. Certainly there is no uplift if that is what one considers to be important.
But we can (and I believe many people do) select moments from songs which embody what we love about the song. The critic however ignores all this emotional response, because she or he has to write a logical piece which ignores the fact that the art work is an emotional experience. The critic tends to reduce the song to the logic of whether the reportage is accurate or not.
And issues of accuracy bedeviled this series of joint compositions, as we can also see through the next song the duo composed: “Rita Mae”, a song which according to a lot of commentators (as Jochen has noted before) comes from Bertha Lou.
But this song has more than a strong link to an earlier piece, but it is also known for being about (in full or maybe just in passing) the writer Rita Mae Brown.
When I suggested this might be the case, Claudia Levy, Jacques Levy’s widow, wrote back to Untold Dylan saying that suggestion was wrong, saying the Jacques held Rita Mae Brown in high regard, and that the song was a parody of prevalent attitudes toward women.
As Jochen noted in his review, in the Prism Films interview in 2004, in which he describes the song as “a simple fifties rock thing, which is part of my background and Bob’s background too.”
Obviously one can judge by reading Rita Mae Brown’s works, if you don’t have the time, these phrases certainly help give an insight…
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.
Good judgement comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgement.
About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all.
I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.
Apparently the song was written in the same week by Levy and Dylan as the duo wrote Joey, and being so utterly different in style and in the nature of the lyrics it might well have been an antidote to all the work on Joey.
But it was thought to be worthy enough to be kept and it was as the B-side of Stuck inside of mobile and be put on the “Masterpieces” album.
So we have now had in quick succession two songs about people: Joey and Rita May. And then immediately after that the two songwriters came up with a third: Hurricane.
Indeed, from the commentaries written concerning this period, after Joey there was a definite determination to continue with the notion of songs in the “outlaw” mode of writing. But once again the criticism of the accuracy of Dylan’s portrayal of the outlaw which surfaced with “Only a pawn” and continued through to “Joey,” turns up again.
Meanwhile most commentators don’t consider the music Dylan composed for the song, within which there is something extraordinary; a power, the drive, the energy, as Dylan’s vocalisations are combined with the most amazing improvised violin counterpart throughout, making for an utterly remarkable performance.
What’s more, aside from the sheer drive and energy of the song, we are also transported along by the uncertainty of where we are – a feeling that is perfect for the lyrics. And we have the arguments against the song, which once more are simply saying there is something wrong with the song because it isn’t accurate. No one seems to think too much about the music.
So we start with a minor (Am) and shift to F – back and forth back and forth for four lines of power, drive and uncertainty, until we get to the chorus where are rocking instead from C to F major before chords tumble over each other as we have the last line of the chorus, “Put in a prison cell but one time he could have been the champion of the world”.
The question that arises is thus simple: is the art affected if the songs are not historically accurate? If the art is propaganda on behalf of a prisoner, does that make it any less a piece of art? Really, I can’t see how.
Eventually it was ruled in 1985 that Carter had not received a fair trial and he was released. In 1988 the prosecution said they would not seek another trial and the case came to an end. But the arguments went on, with those against the version portrayed in Hurricane saying there is no mention of the boxer’s criminal past and a reputation for a violent temper continued their arguments. But still I argue, this is art – art doesn’t have to be accurate or complete. It offers insights not total truth. If you write a love poem you mention the beauty, not the clicky knee. To move away from all this would move us away from all poetry, and all art. (I just wish someone would one day turn up a love poem written by Clinton Heylin; it would be something to behold).
But there is one more thing that I want to mention about this song. What we do get in this work is something that we don’t see too often in Dylan – an onrushing, never stopping, full speed story line, from the opening
Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
onwards to…
Three bodies lyin’ there does Patty see
And another man named Bello, movin’ around mysteriously
This is the power and drive and storytelling of Isis, transformed into a re-write of a real-life story. It is a phenomenally hard thing to pull off – to keep the format of the song, but having it streaming forwards throughout with the storyline coherent and driving.
In the end I do think poetic licence allows the artist to emphasise one approach against another without seeking to balance the evidence, and without any attempt to consider opposing views. My view, for what it is worth, is that people who argue to the contrary, fail to understand the nature of poetry, of song, and indeed human emotion.
As Dylan Thomas said, “A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.” And as Plato said in the Republic, “We are, at all events, aware that such poetry mustn’t be taken seriously as a serious thing laying hold of truth…”
So Dylan has given us songs about real life people and situations. The question now was, could this be done with the same level of detail, by creating a series of fictional tales?
We were about to find out.
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
In his words below, a Puritan poet takes a poke at the established Church of England – apparently suggesting its corrupt clergy are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and they will be sent directly to Hell; they’ll get no second chance to redeem themselves:
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more
(John Milton: Lycidas)
In the biblical verse below, Jesus informs apostle Peter:
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven
And whatever thou shalt bind on earth
Shall be bound in heaven
And whatever thou shalt loose on earth
Shall be loosed in heaven
(Matthew 16:19)
Taken, at least by religious literalists, to mean humans head off somewhere beyond the clouds to God’s Heaven, or down to Satan’s subterranean Hell after they die – depending on whether they are judged by Saint Peter (who holds a golden key and an iron one) to have been naughty or nice.
That verse (from the New Testament) revises the rather earthly one below (taken from the Old Testament) in which ‘the prophet’ predicts that, in order to rid Judea of corruption, God will install the son of Hilkiah as controller of its coffers; the “Promised Land” will be reformed, its false idols smashed:
And the key of the house of David
Will I lay upon his shoulder
So he shall open it, and none shall shut
And he shall shut, and none shall open
(Isaiah 22: 22)
In many of his song lyrics, Bob Dylan presents a metaphorical middle path that leads to ‘a golden mean”. For instance, the singer/songwriter mixes the Puritan view – that worldly success achieved by the sweat of one’s own brow be a sign of God’s approval – in with the view of Persian Dervish poets like Rumi and Saadi ~ that one needs to empathize with all the Almighty’s s creatures.
Below, some words of an American Romantic Transcendentalist writer:
Barefooted Dervish is not poor
If fate unlock his bosom's door
So that what his eye hath seen
His tongue can paint as bright as keen
And what his tender heart hath felt
With equal fire thy heart shalt melt
(Ralph Emerson: Saadi)
Though written by a Puritan poet in America, the images in the following alliterative lines paint a rather pantheistic picture of the Cosmos:
I kenning through astronomy divine
The world's bright battlements, wherein I spy
A golden path my pencil cannot line
From the bright throne unto my threshold lie
And while my puzzled thoughts about it pore
I find the bread of life in it at my door
(Edward Taylor: I Kenning Through Astronomy Divine)
Likewise, by extented metaphor, the accumulation of material things for their own sake, and having lustful thoughts are seen to detract mankind from seeking his spiritual soul; Blakean be the following lines:
You want clear spectacles, your eyes are dim
Turn inside out, and turn your eyes within
Your sins like motes in the sun do swim; nay, see
Your mites are mole hills, molehills mountains be
(Edward Taylor: The Accusation Of The Inward Man)
Taylor-like, in form and content, with the inclusion of dark sunglasses, be the song lyrics below:
With your silhouette where the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims ...
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I put them by your gate
Or sad-eyed lady, should I wait
(Bob Dylan: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands)
Below, a New England Puritan poet confronts the Gothic-like memory of her shut-in past; she’s estranged from it now:
I years had been from home
And now before the door
I dared not enter, lest a face
I never saw before
Stared stolid into mine
(Emilk Dickinson: I Laughed A Crumbling Laugh)
The great influence of Emily Dickinson on the writings of Bob Dylan largely ignored:
Now I'll cry tonight
Like I cried the night before
And I'm 'leased on the highway
But I dream about the door
(Bob Dylan: I'm Not There)
Do you have a tale to tell via Untold Dylan?
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost
For his book Dirty Boulevard – The Life And Times Of Lou Reed (2016), Aidan Levy interviewed childhood friend and bassist of Reed’s first band LA And The Dorados, Richard Mishkin:
“We really loved Bob Dylan,” Mishkin says. “We would sit around in Lou’s apartment and learn the chords and fingerings to every one of his songs.” Not only did Dylan have a nontraditional singing voice and a quirky style and phrasing to match, he didn’t have the typical good looks of a star. He was also a Jew. Despite all this, Dylan became the yardstick that his contemporaries were measured against. He never let the times shape him; he shaped the times. Lou idolized Dylan and aped his rhythm guitar style, but soon jettisoned the harmonica to avoid comparison to the throngs of campus Dylan imitators.
It is, John Cale tells, exactly what initially bothered him. He hears Bob Dylan, when Reed plays him “I’m Waiting For My Man” and “Heroin”. “I missed the point because I hated folk songs, and it wasn’t until he forced me to read the lyrics that I realized these were not Joan Baez songs.” But it is unmistakable, indeed. For the early Velvet Undergrounds song “Guess I’m Falling In Love”, Reed borrows the opening words of “Absolutely Sweet Marie”;
I got fever in my pocket
You know I gotta move
Hey babe, I guess I'm falling in love,
… and even more Dylanesque is the dismissed “Prominent Men” that Lou Reed recorded with John Cale in their little flat on Ludlow Street, just before the Velvet Underground really started, before Maureen Tucker joined the band;
The harmonica, the guitar playing, Reed’s nasal way of singing, the Dylanesque opening line Through all of the highways, the byways I’ve travelled and the linguistic pleasure of a socially critical text in a “One Too Many Mornings”-like verse like:
The streets that have life with the cat's underbelly
Aligned with their tracks of a thousand good-byes
A poor woman screams with the heat of disaster
As the prominent men sit and strengthen their ties
… it is quite understandable that John Cale thinks his new friend Lou is a Dylan clone.
But Lou Reed hears it too, throws away his harmonica and his acoustic guitar and – thankfully – takes new paths. He does not dismiss Dylan, however. In interviews he keeps expressing his admiration, he openly acknowledges Dylan as the greatest rock poet and his contribution to Dylan’s 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration in 1992 is an undeniable highlight: a blazing performance of the obscure Infidels outtake “Foot Of Pride”. True love, we understand later, when Reed is asked about his remarkable choice of songs:
“It did that, because I thought it was one of the funniest songs ever written. I was listening to it almost every day because it made me fall down laughing. You know: Did he make it to the top? Well yeah, but then he dropped. Some really, really funny lines in that thing.”
And when, in the twenty-first century, he records Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” (for Wim Wenders’ The Soul Of A Man, 2003), he almost automatically shifts into Dylan mode – presumably Lou got to know the song through Dylan’s version on his 1962 debut album. In between those embryonic Dylan copies, the open reverence and the late imitation, Dylan echoes keep recurring in Reed’s work. Like from “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” in a 1978 Street Hassle outtake, in “Here Comes The Bride”:
Somebody call his Aunt Carrie
And tell her that her nephew Jimmy
Is comin’ in from Vermont via the coast
And somebody call up his old man
Tell him that his son’s arriving
And he’s looking like a ghost
The song is released on Reed’s own Biograph-like compilation box, the less than enthusiastically received Between Thought And Expression (1992). The box, like many compilation albums in those years, is released in the wake of the success of Dylan’s Biograph, but like many of those releases, it too makes the mistake of being little more than a slightly pimped up Best Of or Greatest Hits.
Unfortunately, “Here Comes The Bride” is nowhere near the allure of “I’ll Keep It With Mine”, “Up To Me” or “Abandoned Love”, one of the many highlights of Dylan’s box set of original material. Lou Reed’s “Here Comes The Bride” suffers from exactly the same flaw that he blames others for: he doesn’t really try. It’s a song Reed can do in his sleep, a lazy mix of “Sweet Jane” and “Walk On The Wild Side”. But: with another Dylan echo, in this case a Jimmy who is arriving from the coast, looking just like a ghost. The beautiful title of the compilation box, by the way, Reed took from the very Dylanesque opening verse of his magnificent, hypnotic Velvet Underground song “Some Kinda Love”;
Some kinds of love
Marguerita told Tom
Between thought and expression lies a lifetime
Situations arise because of the weather
And no kinds of love
Are better than others
Dylan, for his part, still seems to be varying his Kerouac impressions in this sergeant-at-arms couplet. “Angel” is, obviously, one of the most frequently used nouns in Desolation Angels, and an angel-looking-like-ghost is also encountered, in Chapter 55:
“I look at Pat and he looks like somebody else—Not only that but soon as we’re in the kitchen and he’s walking beside me suddenly I get the eerie feeling he’s not there and I take a good look to check—For just an instant this angel had faded away.”
… although images and word choice may have entered Dylan’s associative mind from other angles too, of course. Anyway, the verse breathes the same uncanny atmosphere as the superhuman couplet from “Desolation Row”,
Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
… with the threatening, alienating presence of a nameless authority abusing its power. The same oppressive menace as in Kafka’s The Trial – although this particular Tom Thumb couplet pushes the Kafka associations more towards the fascinating, gruesome short story The Penal Colony (1919). The story in which the soldier is cruelly punished, though not for leaving his post, but because he fell asleep at his post. One of the very few stories, by the way, that received kind-of-approval from Kafka himself. Close friend and executor of the will Max Brod found a short note in Kafka’s study, addressed to him:
“Of all my writings the only books that can stand are these: The Judgment, The Stoker, Metamorphosis, Penal Colony, Country Doctor and the short story: Hunger-Artist. . . When I say that those five books and the short story can stand, I do not mean that I wish them to be reprinted and handed down to posterity. On the contrary, should they disappear altogether that would please me best. Only, since they do exist, I do not wish to hinder anyone who may want to, from keeping them.”
When Brod read that, Kafka had already succumbed. Starvation, presumably – the tuberculosis had so damaged his throat that he could no longer eat. On his deathbed he edited his last work, The Hunger Artist. And then he left, looking just like a ghost.
To be continued. Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part VI:
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
Who is the most profound and insightful reader? An academic? A student, perhaps? A literary critic?
Well, none of them. At least the way I see it; the greatest attention to the various levels of any text is paid by its translator. And why, you may ask. Because to translate a piece of prose or poetry and to do it properly and adequately you need to fully understand (and enjoy) the original.
As far as I could judge so far, none of the regular Untold Dylan contributors are currently translators (although one was in the past I believe). If I’m wrong, just correct me and tell me to go somewhere else where I rather belong.
But if I’m right, I assume this is partly why nobody here has written anything about Tarantula. The possible authors either read it and didn’t like it at all or the they didn’t read it (I mean, really READ it) so they don’t have much to say about it.
I translated Tarantula into Polish three years ago. I was even nominated in 2019 for the most important Polish award in translation (I lost but so did three other nominees, still, it was one of the five best translated books in 2018). But I write this not to boast but rather to explain I really had to dig deep into the matter and found some revelatory material there.
Of course, I’m a foreigner to the English-speaking world, to the American culture and spirituality of the Sixties. Therefore I can’t understand each and every possible level of meanings and senses hidden within Tarantula. What I could – and had to – do was to project myself on the text and at the same time to imagine a Polish world of Tarantula, its Polish sensibility, its Polish resonance, its first reason for being translated. To put it shortly, I had to READ it core-deep.
When the publishing house I collaborate frequently with asked me if I could face the task I said, “no”. Not because I didn’t like it. But because I didn’t know it. All I knew was the pusillanimous gossip, ironic hearsay, disdainful remarks by people very proud of their own mediocrity who just “knew better”. I said no because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get through and succeed. And afraid all my effort and hard work would be in vain because nobody would read it. Who needs Tarantula?
Eventually, I agreed because they told me no one else would. I thought it might cost me, maybe, a whole year to do it. I finished my translating job in three months. As I explained later, I’d been in a trance, and that trance was arguably the only reasonable way to say the same thing in Polish. A shot of Tarantula language proved enough. Those who read the original and then my Polish version said later on, I succeeded. Polish Tarantula is adequate, is Dylan-resonating, is in harmony with the original.
Asked to write an intro spur on the back cover, I wrote a pastiche of what waited for the readers inside (here’s my rough translation into English): “reader / at home in a bus on a beach & wherever you may be holding this book / stop wondering if it’s a novel & how t call what you try t read / reader you’re much wiser & bolder than yr habits / tarantula is a spider / tarantula is a trance”.
What struck me when I started a hard job to promote the book all over Poland was that the book really worked when read aloud. The things that seemed enigmatic, confusing or horrible at first sight proved entertaining and funny when they were put into sounds. My friend, an avant-jazz clarinettist even planned to record his improvs around my Tarantula readings. Perhaps one day we’ll do it. All in all, people looked incredulously into the book but they immediately queued for it when they heard it read. (It’s the best way to absorb poetry, by the way – to read it all by oneself, aloud).
But what was really revelatory was its content, as I saw while translating. Maybe Tarantula is a bit outdated nowadays in America but it really sounds very up-to-date in Poland. In 1966 when it was mainly written, in 1969 when it was “booklegged,” or in 1971 when it finally came out officially, we were still deep in the gloomy reign of so-called communism where life was stable, dull (or tragic at times) and very quiet, with a quietude of a concentration camp. People loved and hated, were born and died, worked and bought food but had just three newspapers, three radio and two TV channels to choose from (and each and every one sold the same bullshit). We didn’t know all that media hullabaloo and political racket you Westerners ate each morning for breakfast.
What I’m trying to say is Tarantula is so rich, vibrant and cacophonous that it resembles the modern world. It arguably IS the modern world. The way the words climb on each other, their hasty running hot on each other’s heels, their chaotic hubbub – ain’t it just like the day you go into a shopping mall? With so many different musics coming from each shop, meddling and mixing into an end-of-the-world soundtrack? Ain’t it just like the night you surf the Internet among hyperlinks, headlines, pop-up ads and news, each one pretending to be the most important?
The abundance of people, creatures, objects of desire and of repugnance, factitious fictions and fictitious facts, figures, proverbs and off-the-cuff quotes within Tarantula is overwhelming. It may not be the book you like or want to return to. It certainly is not something we would talk about had Bob Dylan not written outstanding songs before publishing it. But it is not gibberish. There’s much more to it than meets the common sense. (Neither our world nor Tarantula observe the rules of common sense).
For me, Tarantula is a photograph of our world. And if somebody translated it into Polish back in 1972 it would not have been understood at all, nobody could have grasped its warning. I was lucky and happy to be able to do it in the last weeks of 2017 because then I knew what I was dealing with.
We now have over 2000 articles on this site, and many of them are personal tales about attending a concert, listening to Dylan, cover versions, or the individual writer’s own appreciation of Dylan and his music.
These articles are written for Untold by Dylan fans, and if you have a view of Dylan that you feel could be of interest to others, we’d love to hear from you.
To see the variety of approaches we have included in this site, just go to the top of the page and look at the various headings under the picture – each one contains an index of articles on a Dylan theme. Or look at the latest series listed on our home page. If you write a piece you can add to these, or create your own theme, or simply send in a one-off contribution. As long as it gives a different insight into Dylan and his work, we may be well interested in publishing it.
Sadly, we don’t have the funds to pay, but Untold Dylan does have a very wide readership, so your work will be seen by a huge number of people. If you have an article please email Tony@schools.co.uk If the article is ready, please attach as a word file.
One other thing: we never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts. Thanks.
And one other, other thing: we also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active 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
So maybe the Mexican input was Levy’s all the way through these tracks, although another or parallel explanation, given to us through Dale Ward who kindly wrote into this site, is that there exists a Durango in Colorado near to Aztec, New Mexico. What’s more Dale tells us the town of Aztec contains a large set of Anasazi ruins…