Untold Dylan

Part 1: Ramona are you betta, are you well?

Part II:   Whatever will be

by Jochen Markhorst

But biographical lines can be drawn to more ladies. Mavis Staples, for instance, would be another educated guess. As a young lad Dylan had already fallen in love with her voice (she was the youngest of the gospel group The Staples Singers), the impact of “Uncloudy Day” he still feels almost 60 years later, he says in the AARP interview in March 2015:

“One night I was lying in bed and listening to the radio. I think it was a station out of Shreveport, Louisiana. I wasn’t sure where Louisiana was either. I remember listening to the Staple Singers’ “Uncloudy Day”. And it was the most mysterious thing I’d ever heard. It was like the fog rolling in. I heard it again, maybe the next night, and its mystery had even deepened. What was that? How do you make that? It just went through me like my body was invisible. What is that? A tremolo guitar? What’s a tremolo guitar? I had no idea, I’d never seen one. And what kind of clapping is that? And that singer is pulling things out of my soul that I never knew were there. After hearing “Uncloudy Day” for the second time, I don’t think I could even sleep that night.”

… and he also remembers the youthful conviction one day you’ll be standing there with your arm around that girl as he stares at her picture on the cover of the eponymous LP from 1959. And sure enough, one day he is standing with his arm around Mavis. Hardly three years later. In the scene he meets The Staples Singers, the admiration is mutual. Besides “Blowin’ In The Wind” the sisters and “Pops” sing five more Dylan songs, and a Dylan in love even asks for the hand of Mavis. Years later, Mavis does have some regrets that she refused at the time, but they remain friends. And according to Mavis they still had an amorous period, in those years. But getting married, no. Also because, as Mavis says, she thought that Rev. Martin Luther King wouldn’t like it if she married a white man.

A link to Ramona is in line with this: the pitying making you feel that you must be exactly like them. And with some pushing and pulling, there could more biographical traces to Mavis be found, but it really is not that important – neither is all too convincing. Dylan the Poet probably composes poems like most poets do; bits and pieces, an impression here and an association there, and from the mosaic thereof he constructs a coherent, poetic image of a fading relationship.

Lyrically, it is quite obvious that “To Ramona” is not so much a work of reason as of rhyme. The sought-after inner rhymes (breathlike – deathlike, a dream babe – a scheme babe, hype you – type you), the successful alliterations (magnetic – movements, from – fixtures – forces – friend), the flowing assonances (pangs of your sadness – pass at your senses): all stylistic figures from which above all love for playing with language speaks.

The music is enchanting. Completely unoriginal, of course, but who cares. A waltz, the melody follows traditional Mexican folk clichés and resembles a hundred other songs. “The Last Letter” by Rex Griffin, for example, Leadbelly’s “Goodnight Irene”, and with some tolerance you can even hear “Que Sera, Sera” in it (unless you consider the breath-taking version of the phenomenon Marcus Miller the standard, that is).

The accompaniment is as sober as all the songs on the record, the vocals are remarkably enough close to sneering, although the lyrics are content-wise partly quite tender. Dylan does not let go of the song either. To this day he continues to play it with some regularity, sometimes excessively arranged (and very successful; during the 1978 tour, for example), more often bare and acoustic, and always the master remains faithful to the waltz rhythm.

This also applies to most covers. There are plenty of them; “To Ramona” has been popular with colleagues since its release. And the song, like “Not Dark Yet” for example, almost always retains its power – you can hardly miss the mark, apparently. The Flying Burrito Brothers deliver a beautiful version in 1971, David Gray still regularly performs an intense “To Ramona”, Lee Hazlewood, Humble Pie and even the pounding These United States: all beautiful. Above all towers the superior, affectionate version that another old master recorded half a century ago: the one by Alan Price, that is.

Rivalling Price is only a brilliantly orchestrated interpretation by the young Irish Sinéad Lohan from 1996. The very talented, dreadlocked singer/songwriter from Cork is a bright comet to the firmament, around the turn of the century, and disappears just as suddenly. Reportedly dedicating herself to motherhood full-time, back home in Cork.

Pity, because her two albums, Who Do You Think I Am from 1995 and No Mermaid from 1998, suggest that she has many more wonderful songs up her sleeve. Which is recognised. By Joan Baez, for instance, who records two of her songs (both title songs, for Gone From Danger, 1997) and the Californian newgrass trio Nickel Creek, who recorded Lohan’s “Out Of The Woods” for their platinum debut album.

About that particular song, Sinéad has mixed Dylan feelings, by the way. She tells how relaxed it was, back then, recording her second album in New Orleans. Everything was so laid-back, she says;

“No pressure at all. And I really was going to call this Time Out of Mind because that is a line in one of the songs, “Out of The Woods”. But then I opened a paper and said ‘My God! Bob Dylan has stolen my line. The cheeky git!’ So I had to change it!”

At first it sounds like the unworldly gibberish of an ingenue with a somewhat inflated self-image, and at second glance like a clumsy joke, but then one notices the name of her producer: Malcolm Burns. Burns is Dylan’s technician on both Oh Mercy and Time Out Of Mind – and for the latter album he works with Daniel Lanois and Dylan right after the recording of No Mermaid, also in New Orleans. Suddenly it’s not so far-fetched anymore, the idea that Dylan might have heard what Malcolm Burns was working on, two weeks ago, and that Dylan heard Sinéad singing:

I rollercoaster for you
Time out mind
Must be heavenly
It's all enchanted and wild
It's just like my heart said
It was going to be

In the interview with Joe Jackson for Hot Press, March 2001, Lohan does not laugh it off completely, in any case. And it has spoiled the fun of Dylan’s new album as well:

“I think people just got excited because it was Bob Dylan, making that album. So after all the hype, I was disappointed. I wanted songs that get to me. And that long one at the end (‘Highlands’) just made me go, ‘Bob, what are you doing?’ It just goes on and on! So, a lot of it is just too much. I prefer to listen to his older albums, like Another Side of Bob Dylan, which is where I got ‘To Ramona’, that was a single here for me a while ago.”

Which gives her much better Dylan feelings. Her American manager Mark Spector is an acquaintance of Dylan’s manager Jeff Rosen, who says that he played Dylan Sinéad’s cover:

“Dylan apparently heard it and said he wanted his ‘sentiments expressed to the singer’ that he ‘liked’ the version I did. That’s a nice compliment, I guess. If it’s true.”

Well, it just might be true. Sinéad’s layered, undercooled, veiled and hazy rendition is one of the most delightful covers of “To Ramona”, and that is saying something, in a playing field with The Flying Burrito Brothers, Joan Baez, Lee Hazlewood and Freddy Fender… to name but a few.

”I’ll come and be cryin’ to you”… bizarrely, it is never sung more poignantly than by some 25-year-old lass with dreadlocks from Cork, Ireland.

 ————

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville

Untold Dylan

We now have over 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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

Part 1: Can Bob Be Saved?

by Larry Fyffe

Here’s an illustration of a Post-Modern ‘cut- up’ song that I created; as the ‘composer’ thereof, I get to make the final cut; Bob Dylan And Robert Hunter get co-credits; and so does whoever sets it to music:

The Door Song


Open the door, Richard
I've heard it said before

I'll show you up to the door
I've seen this movie before

Now I'll cry tonight like I cried the night before
And I'm 'leased on the highway, but I dream about the door

You know I never seen him before
You forgot to close the garage door

Blowing like she never blowed before
Blowing like she's at my chamber door

From behind the curtain, he crossed the floor
He moved his feet, and he bolted the door

Lean up against your velvet door
Who crawls across the your circus floor

Your lover who just walked out the door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor

If not for you, babe, I couldn't find the door
Couldn't even see the floor

I could be learning, you could be yearning to see behind closed door
But I'll always be emotionally yours

Throw my troubles out the door
I don't need them anymore

The National Guard stands around his door
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more

We can hear it from the door
While the jury cried for more

I can't shoot them anymore
Feels like I'm knocking on Heaven's door

The door has closed forevermore
If indeed there ever was a door

Someone to open each and every door
It ain't me you're looking for, babe

Was a friend to the poor
He opened many a door

Outside my cabin door
Except the girl from the Red River shore

I ran right through the front door
But it was just a funeral parlor

Smoke pouring out of a boxcar door
In the final end he won the war

The song above makes sense with a little help from the readers thereof, does it not?

Footnote from Tony: I might be tempted to have a go at the music.

Untold Dylan

We now have over 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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

by Tony Attwood

A list of all the episodes of “All directions at once” can be found here.

In the last episode of All Directions at Once I pondered  Bob’s dilemmas in taking on the task of writing an album that would be the follow up to what fans and critics alike were calling his greatest album ever.   We considered the opening compositions of the new year: Money Blues, One More Cup of Coffee, and Golden Loom.

The next song Bob wrote was Oh Sister and although this is credited as a co-written song with Jacques Levy, I strongly suspect  that the main impetus for the song came from Bob, and whatever Jacques Levy did it would have been a case of helping to sort out some of the lyrics after the main theme and the music had been sorted.  If that.

And I should add that if you are totally familiar with the song you may enjoy the Live at Nippon Budokan Hall version of  this song – the whole album is on Spotify if you don’t have or can’t borrow a copy.

In “Oh sister” we can hear the same sort of reflective moodiness that there is in One More Cup of Coffee which was written just before this song. But the main point that makes me think there’s not much Levy here is that this song is part of the musical duel that was emerging at the time between Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

Joan Baez wrote “Diamonds and Rust” in November 1974, and now in 1975 Bob replied with this song: “Oh Sister”.   Although I gave a link to the song in the last episode, here’s another one, in case you missed it.

I’ve chosen this version because it was recorded soon after writing, and because it starts with the comment “by far the most talented crazy person I ever worked with” which appears to be a note to the effect that the song is about Dylan.

And it ends with this verse, which I really do think is a masterpiece within the folk pop genre…

Now you’re telling me you’re not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Because I need some of that vagueness now
It’s all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you’re offering me diamonds and rust
I’ve already paid

Dylan performed his response at the John Hammond concert in September before a specially invited audience, including Joan Baez.

Dylan introduced the song (which you can hear on the video below) with the line “I want to dedicate this to someone out there watching tonight I know, she knows who she is”

Here’s the video

The song ends

Oh, sister, when I come to knock on your door
Don’t turn away, you’ll create sorrow
Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore
You may not see me tomorrow

Now that might be enough of an interchange for most people, but no, Baez came back with “O Brother!” on “Gulf Winds” the only album she created which was entirely written by herself.  She says in her autobiography, “And a voice to sing with” that for the most part the songs were written while on tour with the Rolling Thunder Revue with Bob Dylan.

The song is available here, but it is not a perfect recording.

You’ve got eyes like Jesus
But you speak with a viper’s tongue
We were just sitting around on earth
Where the hell did you come from?
With your lady dressed in deerskin
And an amazing way about her
When are you going to realize
That you just can’t live without her?

Take it easy
Take it light
But take it

And just in case you are not convinced this is a riposte to the earlier songs, consider this…

Your lady gets her power
From the goddess and the stars
You get yours from the trees and the brooks
And a little from life on Mars
And I’ve known you for a good long while
And would you kindly tell me, mister
How in the name of the Father and the Son
Did I come to be your sister?

But this is not Baez being all nice and saying its all ok

You’ve done dirt to lifelong friends
With little or no excuses.
Who endowed you with the crown
To hand out these abuses?
Your lady knows about these things
But they don’t put her under,
Me, I know about them, too
And I react like thunder

I love this song (although not by the lead guitar accompaniment), not just because it sounds good but because Baez gets into the meat of the fight between two artists in a way that rarely happens – and certainly never happens when a journalist toddles along and asks inane questions.  This is good, insightful stuff.

I know you are surrounded
By parasites and sycophants
When I come to see you
I dose up on coagulants
Because when you hurl that bowie knife
It’s going to be when my back is turned
Doing some little deed for you
And baby, will I get burned

I won’t go on and quote it all through to the end, but consider this as a reply to Dylan:

My love for you extends through life
And I don’t want to waste it
But honey, what you’ve been dishing out
You’d never want to taste it

Dylan played the song in concert for a while (67 performances between October 1975 and July 1978) but then let it go, even though it got a good reception when played.

The copy of the lyrics supplied on the official Dylan web site has Father with the capital F, and His later, to suggest he is talking about God’s blessing on the relationship.

Oh, sister, am I not a brother to you
And one deserving of affection?
And is our purpose not the same on this earth
To love and follow His direction?

When we consider the direction of these lyrics, perhaps with the blessing of the Almighty on their combined creative talents, the power of Baez’ reply is overwhelming.  For Dylan the truth is mystical…

We grew up together
From the cradle to the grave
We died and were reborn
And then mysteriously saved

Baez however wanted nothing to do with that or with Dylan’s taunt is that that he might not be there in the future – a sort of “you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone” taken up to a spiritual level…

Oh, sister, when I come to knock on your door
Don’t turn away, you’ll create sorrow
Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore
You may not see me tomorrow

For if Baez knows anything she certainly does know who she is.

The Rolling Stone review of the album of which “Oh, Sister” was to be a part of, suggested that “the bulk of the songs are nightmares, visions of a man on the run from something he can’t define, or else stories about the fear of having nowhere to turn (as in “Oh, Sister” and “One More Cup of Coffee”).”

But watching the performance of the song with Baez in the audience I don’t get the feel of that at all.  But I am with the commentator on “Countdown kid” who says, “I have the distinct feeling that this is the one song on Desire where Levy’s contributions amounted to little more than exclaiming ‘Beautiful!’”

In the end  I think Dylan is saying, “hey lady we were ok,” and she’s saying “no man, you were awful, don’t kid yourself.”

As for the music, on “Oh, sister” Dylan uses a musical trick he developed on the last two albums of using the classic chord structure of non-blues popular song (in this case G, B minor, C, G) but then in the middle 8 using the much more blues orientated F, C, G combination, ending with the powerful held “saved” on D.  And because that’s a technique Dylan has used before, again I see Levy’s input as small or non-existent.

Through the music and the lyrics Dylan is excusing past behaviour by wrapping the song up in symbolic suggestions without very clear meaning.  And this feeling continues with the next composition: Abandoned Love.

In his review on this site for the song Jochen tells the tale:

“It is a beautiful story, even though it is a true story. On a Thursday evening in July 1975, Dylan visits a performance by his old Greenwich Village buddy Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, playing in the famous nightclub The Bitter End (which is briefly called The Other End in those days) on Bleecker Street. Elliott spots him, starts playing “With God On Our Side” and asks after a few lines if Bob might want to assist him. Pleasantly surprised, the hundred-headed audience sees Dylan taking the stage, grabbing a guitar and playing along with “Pretty Boy Floyd” and “How Long Blues”.

“He seems a little nervous, declines a first invitation to sing something, but then he exchanges his rattling guitar (he has troubles adjusting the capo) with Ramblin’ Jack’s and then starts to sing. “After a couple of lines, we realized he was performing a new song,” eyewitness Joe Kivak writes, “with each line getting even better than the last. The song was Abandoned Love, and it still is the most powerful performance I’ve ever heard.”

“Someone in the audience is so thoughtful as to make a sneaky recording that soon becomes extremely popular in bootleg circles, proving that Kivak hardly exaggerates; it is an enthusiastic, sparkling performance of an extremely beautiful song. It really must be the highlight of the upcoming LP.”

Dylan did record a studio version later, but it never made the album…

This song is bouncing along, and no matter what the words say it is hard to find it “yearning” or full of “grief” with such a musical background.  It seems to owe more to some Irish folk songs in which the subject is death, doom, destruction, poverty etc, and yet the whole piece sounds rather jolly.

The opening line of the studio version (not included in the live version) tells us exactly what is going on….

My heart is telling me I love you still…

OK, that is yearning, but then we are off both in terms of the lyrics.

I can hear the turning of the key
I’ve been deceived by the clown inside of me
I thought that he was righteous but he’s vain
Oh, something’s telling me I wear the ball and chain

Right, that is clear – he has been fooling himself, in love with the notion of being in love, upset by the parting, not by the loss, tied to the past by his own false visions – but with the implication that IT’S NOT MY FAULT and we are seeing expressed across several songs.

By the end of the song Bob has concluded that she should put on her disguise, come down from on high and let him experience her beauty and love before he walks away forever.

So step lightly darling near the wall
Put on your heavy make up wear your shawl
Wont you descend from the throne where you sit
Let me feel your love one more time before I abandon it.

Although by the time of the studio recording we have

We sat in an empty theatre and we kissed
I asked you please to cross me off your list
My head tells me it’s time to make a change
But my heart is telling me I love ya but you’re strange

So there it is.  An utterly superb piece of music in my humble opinion, but not the portrayal of a very nice person.  The best I can say is that because the next song Dylan wrote was Isis, we can see a theme relating to the power he is vesting in women.  Indeed we could say Isis is almost here in this song, on the throne, ruling, controlling.  It’s just we can’t see her – she’s next on stage.  I suspect she had to wait for Levy to give her the extra umph to make it all work.

So that is where we are at this point in Bob’s life.  A complex song with an unusual chord sequence and rhythmic structures aimed to make one feel slightly off centred, after a song with Jacques in the wings.  Now enter at last Jacques centre stage to take where Bob had got to up to another level.

Bob turned the corner away from those unusual chord sequences, enticing melodies and unexpected rhythms, and instead we get three chords over and over, a four-square thump thump beat, and Bob out hunting for a mysterious dead body, the discovery of which brings ever lasting love.

It’s good to know things are getting to be more straightened out.

Untold Dylan

We now have over 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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

To Ramona (1964) part I

by Jochen Markhorst

I           Ramona are you betta, are you well?

It is actually a rather innocent, charming scene in Dont Look Back, the ’67 Pennebaker documentary recording Dylan’s 1965 tour of the UK. It’s crowded in a dressing room-like chamber. Dylan sits against the wall and plays some incoherent blues figures on his guitar, Alan Price rummages around on a piano. Price starts in Dave Berry’s “Little Things” and laughs. “Have you seen that on television? Dave Berry? He does all this slow actions. He’s like the human sloth,” then imitating with good-natured mockery Berry’s indeed somewhat peculiar stage act, turns to the piano again and plays the song. A girl sings along.

Dylan and manager Grossman are amused. After the first chorus Dylan asks: “Hey, what’s The Animals doing for a piano player now?” He is clearly interested in Price’s answer (“Well, they got one, a good friend of mine”) and wants to know more: “Aren’t you playing with them no more?”

Price answers quickly and a little softer (“No. Finished”), mumbles something like “well that’s how things go,” collects himself and turns to the piano again to play along with Dylan, who in the meantime has started yet another worn-out blues lick on his guitar.

In historiography, the scene is rather pumped up. Dylan is said to have “rudely” interrupted a song by Price and his inquiries about The Animals would have caused an “awkward” moment. On some sites the scene is even catalogued under “Dylan being a dick” or similar qualifications.

None of this is really the case. Dylan is friendly, and even seems to have something of an awe for the man who is co-responsible for – arguably – the very first folk rock song, for The Animals’ version of “House Of The Rising Sun”. In fact, in the band biography Animal Tracks (Sean Egan, 2012) drummer John Steel claims:

“He said he was driving along in his car and the song came on the radio and he pulled the car over and he stopped and listened to it and he jumped out of the car and he banged on the bonnet. That gave him the connection – he could go electric.”

Granted, not too credible, but Dylan saying something friendly about “House Of The Rising Sun” is probably true. Approving recognition may at least have triggered Dylan’s sympathy. After all, guitarist Hilton Valentino, singer Eric Burdon, Steel and Alan Price… at some point every band member reveals that they based their arrangement on Dylan’s version – who in turn stole it from Dave Van Ronk, of course. With some scruples, though.

By the way, the Dave Berry song, “Little Things” is a lovely song, but a fairly faithful copy of Barry Goldsboro’s original, from November 1964. The most beautiful version is Goldsboro’s re-recorded version in stereo:

Barry Goldsboro: https://youtu.be/TWwab_4J9O0    

Alan Price’s spontaneous improvisation in Dylan’s dressing room seems to get a sequel; after giving his Dave Berry imitation, he goes back to playing the song on the piano, and clearly starts enjoying it. The boogie-woogie-like pattern he now plays can be heard a few years later in “Rosetta”, the hit he scores with Georgie Fame (with almost the same notes; “Rosetta” is in D, “Little Things” in D major’s twin sister, in B minor).

The divorce from The Animals in May ’65, in the same days that Dylan makes that “awkward” remark in Don’t Look Back, works out pretty well for Price. His relaunch with The Alan Price Set almost immediately results in three Top 10 hits (“I Put A Spell On You”, “Simon Smith And The Dancing Bear” and “The House That Jack Built”). And Dylan is honoured on his second album, A Price On His Head (1967), with one of the uttermost beautiful covers of “To Ramona”:

“To Ramona” is one of those wonderful songs on Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964), a record filled with delightful songs, at least half of which have become timeless classics, thanks in part to covers by big guns like Johnny Cash and The Byrds.

At the time, however, the album was not received with undivided enthusiasm. The first criticisms are already getting loud, about the 23-year-old icon betraying the “cause”. A deliberate attempt to sabotage his unwanted role as spokesman of the protest generation, betrayal of the folk scene, tasteless… there’s no holding back on Big Words. Half a century later, the bellowing is somewhat difficult to follow. It really isn’t all that different. The Times also features songs like “Boots Of Spanish Leather” and “One Too Many Mornings”, from The Freewheelin’ a-political songs like “The Girl From The North Country” and “Don’t Think Twice” have become classics. Dylan himself doesn’t fully understand the commotion either, and 50 years later he will still – quite credibly – claim: “Last thing I thought of was who cared about what song I was writing. I was just writing them. I didn’t think I was doing anything different.”

The album’s title, yes – he hated it, as he declares in 1978. Forced upon him by the marketing boys of Columbia and according to Dylan too corny, too old-fashioned, and perhaps too conflict-seeking as well. Still, songs like “All I Really Want To Do”, “Spanish Harlem Incident” or “To Ramona”… sure, the sour political critics do have a point: no trace of social criticism, nothing more than lyrical reflections on nice ladies.

But corny it is absolutely not. The lyrics are both poetic and sharp – the protagonist does not worship uncritically. Maybe he is in love, but he is not blindly in love. Her weaknesses, such as her conformism, her hollow talk and her naive idealism, the narrator sees very sharply despite his pink glasses. And he is able to express these observations in moving poetic terms;

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

… for example – just as wonderful as the continuation I can see that your head / Has been twisted and fed / With worthless foam from the mouth. Or the unbridled brio of

From fixtures and forces and friends
Your sorrow does stem
That hype you and type you
Making you feel
That you gotta be exactly like them

The key seekers who are so eager to decode every Dylan song and find encrypted diary entries have field day, this time: Joan Baez, obviously.

Joan Baez herself goes along therewith. Anyway, in her autobiography she reveals that she is at the very least an inspiration. She quotes a letter she writes to her mother in the summer of 1964 from Woodstock, where she then spends some summer days in love with Dylan, accompanied by sister Mimi and Richard Fariña:

I mean like he was still sayin “hey c’mon, c’mon” but then also too now he started reciting poetry. like it was about the time I was scratching an trying t bend his elbow off he started calling me ramona. i swear at first i thought it was some game. he kept sayin things like “no use tryin” an words like “exist” an mummy i swear he even mentioned something about crack country lips.

And in the p.p.s:

mummy, i’m fine.
dont worry about me please
everything passes everything changes

Baez quotes the letter in 1987. When the pangs of the sadness have long passed.

To be continued. Next up: To Ramona part II: Whatever will be

—–

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (German)
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville

Untold Dylan

We now have over 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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 part of the ongoing series on the Never Ending Tour.  A full index to the articles can be found here.

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

In the previous three blogs for 1994, I considered Dylan’s loving and adventurous treatment of his 1960 foundation songs. He brings that same inventiveness and passion to the 1970s material, which I’ll look at in this blog.

As we have seen, 1994 was a strong year for the NET, perhaps the strongest yet, at least since 1990, and his treatment of his 1970s songs doesn’t disappoint. We don’t often hear much of the songs from Planet Waves (1974) as those songs were somewhat cast into the shade by the grandeur of Blood on the Tracks (1974), but we can find love songs on Planet Waves that come very close to the songs on the later album, and may prefigure them.

‘Hazel’ is a good example. It lacks the cutting edge of the Blood on the Tracks songs, but has a warmth and expresses desire without the ambivalences of the later songs. This is another outtake from Dylan Unplugged, and has a rich, sumptuous sound. If the Dylan Unplugged album had only included such wonderful performances as this, it would have been a real treat. Remember that Dylan added an organ to the lineup for these performances, which helps create that ‘orchestral’ effect.

Hazel

Of course Blood on the Tracks provides most of the seventies songs performed that year, with the old favourites leading the charge. ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ gets a brisk airing. I think the 1993 performances of this song might have the edge (see NET, 1993, part 1), but who’s complaining? Dylan knows how to kick this song along, and gives a fine, spirited performance, using his guitar to drive the pace and his harmonica to add restraint and tension. A nine and half minute epic delivered with verve. The fast paced delivery makes the stories told in the song sound very exciting.

Special mention should be made to the long, slow ending, lasting almost as long as some pop songs. These slow endings have become a feature of the performances of many of the songs since 1992 and work to bring the songs to a crashing climax.

Tangled up in Blue

We have three more favourites from Blood on the Tracks, including the ever popular ‘Simple Twist of Fate’. This song evokes a brief but haunting love affair, a one night stand perhaps that lingers in the mind. Such an encounter can leave a particular kind of desolation.

‘He woke up; the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere
He told himself he didn't care
pushed the window open wide
Felt an emptiness inside
to which he just could not relate’

In this nearly ten minute electric version, Dylan slows the pace and delivers a heart-ripping vocal to an appreciative audience that cheer at every nuance. This performance follows the pattern that has been evolving with these epic versions, with the last verse being sung about half way through, the remainder devoted to Dylan’s guttural guitar work and sensitive harmonica. Dylan’s harp work is often at its best when it brings an element of poignancy and whimsicality to the emotion driving the song. In this case, regret, and the harmonica is good at regret. The harp solo on this performance is not to be missed. (Columbus, Ohio, 21/8/94)

Simple Twist of Fate

Lovers of Dylan’s album performance of ‘Shelter from the Storm’, or those who might prefer the fast, hard edged 1976 performance, won’t be disappointed by this 1994 version. All hyperbole aside, this could well be the best ever performance of this song.

Readers will know that I’m pretty wary of these ‘best ever’ claims. Often performances may be the ‘best ever’ for that year, or that tour. Or two different interpretations of a song may both be ‘best’. However it’s hard to imagine a more powerful and convincing performance than this one. The vocals have a soundboard clarity to them, Mr Guitar Man drives the song along with his dark, subterranean sounds, and the harp brings that note of reflection.

Shelter from the Storm

This song may well be the best song on the album in terms of the lyrics. I find myself savouring every line. Maybe that’s because it’s Dylan’s finest female worship song (We’ll get another one with ‘Golden Loom’). A song that celebrates women, or the divine female aspect, without any spite or ironical undercutting, and in which wry self-deprecation marks the song’s humour.

‘She came up to me so gracefully
And took my crown of thorns’

However, I’m sure there are Blood on the Track fans who might well favour ‘If You See Her Say Hello’, for its bitter sweetness. I find the sentiment a little too magnanimous to be entirely convincing.

‘If you’re makin’ love to her
Kiss her once for me
I always have respected her
For doin' what she did and gettin' free’

That’s very noble. I prefer the harder edged sentiment from the ‘rogue’ 1976 performance.

‘If you’re makin’ love to her
Watch it from the rear
You’ll never know when I’ll be back
Or liable to appear’

Ah, yes, that makes more sense to me. However this 1994 powerhouse of a performance, with its driving beat, lifts the song above any mawkishness and even convinces me. What helps is that some of the lyrics have been toughened up. In the original he sings:

‘And though our separation
It pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me
We've never been apart’

In this performance he sings:

‘And though our separation
pierced me to the bone
she still lives inside of me
I’ve never been alone’

There may not be a big shift in meaning, but there is a significant change in tone.

And if you want bitter-sweet, I’m sold on the change to the last line:

‘Tell her she can look me up
if I’m still on her mind.’

Get ready for another ‘best ever’ performance.

If you see her say hello

With its slow, sonorous beat and spooky atmosphere, ‘Senor’ is one of the most powerful songs on Street Legal. It captures that ‘end of the line’ feeling Dylan is so good at. The desire to escape meaninglessness and suffocation. When writing about this song in my Master Harpist series, I said that the song reminded me of Thoreau’s observation, ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and what is taken for resignation is confirmed desperation’.

It’s a song that suits heavy treatment, and that’s what it gets here. Dylan throws himself into the vocal and drives it forward with that insistent guitar.

Senor

I want to finish this post with a couple of rarities. In this series I haven’t always allowed space for Dylan’s treatment of other writer’s songs. There just seemed to be too many good Dylan songs to cover. However in September 1994 Dylan did a studio recording of some Elvis Presley songs, perhaps with the view to doing a tribute album. Only three songs were recorded, it seems, among which this ‘Any Way You Want Me’ stands out. Dylan’s broken voiced rendition gives the song a whole new and much rawer feeling. Quite a gem, this one.

Any Way You Want Me

As well as Presley, Dylan took part in a Jimmy Rogers tribute session. This performance of ‘Blue-Eyed Jane’ reminds us of the strong influence Country and Western had on Dylan, and the role played by the great Jimmy Rogers in shaping that music and filling the radio airways with his sad ballads. Dylan sings it naturally and with obvious affection. Here he is accompanied by Emmylou Harris.

Blue-Eyed Jane

That’s it for now. Soon I’ll be back with the final instalment of Dylan’s 1994 performances that will include ‘Jokerman’, ‘Lenny Bruce’, and ‘Born in Time’.

Until then, stay safe!

Kia Ora

If you are enjoying this series you may well also enjoy Mike’s series “Bob Dylan Master Harpist”

Untold Dylan

We now have over 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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

by Larry Fyffe

The writers of today have to deal with the Freudian School Of Thought, the Surrealist School, and that of the Symbolists, but most of all they have to deal with the Deconstructionists.

The problem of uncovering an author’s intention in regards to the meaning of a novel, a poem, or song lyrics lies not with the use of of dream-like imagery, not with sexual deflections, nor with personalized symbolism, but, assert the Deconstructionists, with language itself.

The question is: Can singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan be saved from the Post-Modernists who are scaling the walls of his castle of Art in an attempt to ravish his one true love – her/it’s name is “Language”:

In my neighbourhood, she cries both night and day
I know 'cause it was there
It's a milestone, but she's down on her luck
(Bob Dylan; I'm Not There)

Worse still, the Deconstructionists, who say a writer’s intentions cannot ascertained for certain, are accompanied by Dylan song analysts who take the easy route out, who join up with the barbarians climbing the walls whilst claiming that many of Dylan’s songs just don’t make any sense:

Like I said, 'Carry on'
I wish I was there to help her
But I'm not there, I'm gone
(Bob Dylan: I'm Not There)

Parodying the Post-Modern’s own beloved style, Dylan heaves hot, boiling water from his watchtower down upon their heads and upon those of their allies, the School of No-Sense:

Well, It's all about diffusion
And I cry for her veil
I don't need anybody now beside me to tell
(Bob Dylan: I'm Not There)

With the song quoted above, Bob Dylan takes a solid punch at these particular literary critics. The Deconstructionists, and the No-Sensists – who some critics claim are nihilistic – insist on separating the author’s intention from the work – pieces like Dylan creates -, and they leave it up to the listener or reader to disentangle the meaning thereof – a difficult chore because any meaning depends solely on the relationship of one word to another, including outright opposites and fuzzy modifiers; language accordingly, in its written form too, takes on a life of it’s own – the author is not there; instead, he gets left behind by his independent- minded lover.

So there are a number of different interpretations that can be taken from the work (though not just any) because they be entangled with one another, and therefore cannot be reduced to one Platonic absolute meaning. So saith Deconstructionists.

That is, there be supposedly no middleman, no ‘golden mean’. But the Emperor of Art strikes back – singing involves both writing and vocalizing, as well as accompanying music,  even when created in an unstructured, nonstandard way (Post-Modernists envision this to be a path out of the mess) runs up against the mood of the music, and the manner in which the singer emotes the words.

In spite of what Dylan claims, he’s standing still to assist his beloved one in “I’m Not There”.

Turning bad guys into good guys relates to the thoughts of the Deconstructionists (no matter how that term is defined (or not defined as other words have to be employed) because words such as ‘good’, they claim, can only be defined in relation to what is ‘bad’:

John Wesley Harding
Was a friend to the poor
All along this countryside
He opened many a door
But he was never known
To hurt an honest man
(Bof Dylan: John Wesley Harding)

However, woe unto those who say that the song above makes no sense since the outlaw in real life be a killer, and a racist to boot.

It all comes back home to this:

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)

And, yes to:

Outside the crowd was stirring
You can hear it from the door
Inside the judge was stepping down
While the jury cried for more
(Bob Dylan: Drifter's Escape)

The singer/songwriter applies Dylanesque ‘rhyme twists’ to his own writings:  ~ ‘poor’/’door’; ~ ‘before’/’door’; ~ ‘more’/ ‘door’. The  euphonious word ‘door’ may be taken as a symbol of escape, a euphemism for a sexual entrance, a surrealist image from a dream, and a metonymic tropic for “home” –  all depending on the context of the lyrics in which the word is used.

by Tony Attwood

The idea of this little series is to create an album of some of the more obscure Dylan works that really ought to be known better than they are.   I’m taking this approach liberally – as was evident I hope with the first track (Angelina) in which most people only know one version of the song but maybe don’t see the possibilities beyond that.

So again here – probably everyone reading this site knows the song, but maybe you’ve not yet found some of the magnificent versions that are on offer.

But what can I say by way of introduction, except “Oh 1964: what a year!”  Dylan cut his writing down; after 67 songs written across the previous two years he now limited himself to a mere 20 completed works in 1964, but less we think he was losing his touch it might be worth remembering that this year included

• Chimes of Freedom
• Mr Tambourine Man
• I don’t believe you (She acts like we never have met)
• Spanish Harlem Incident
• It ain’t me babe
• Mama you’ve been on my mind
• My back pages
• Gates of Eden
• It’s all right ma

And if you were to look at the full list for the year you’d probably include several more as being worthy of inclusion in the great list.

But “Mama” stands out, for as I have written here before, if ever there is a Dylan song in which, to understand it, you need to listen to the music not just the lyrics, this is it.

If we go back to the version on Bootleg Series volumes 1 to 3 what we find is a plaintive song with endless unexpected chord changes plus time changes and missing beats.  And we might hear that these changes are not even consistent through the song – lines that include a three beat bar suddenly become straightforward four beats.  It is very odd.

As for the lyrics, who is to say where one line ends and the next starts.  Is it

Perhaps it’s the colour of the sun cut flat
An’ cov’rin’ the crossroads I’m standing at

or is it

Perhaps it’s the colour of the sun cut flat an’ cov’rin’
the crossroads I’m standing at

It makes a difference, and maybe that’s the point, for it happens elsewhere too, giving the performer lots of choice, depending on which broken love affair and which cut to shreds emotions she or he wants to describe.

In short, this one song turns 1960’s folk and everything that has come before it on its head, not least because Dylan, in that wonderful line of his, is “pretending not that I don’t know”.

In fact I think it was when I first heard

I’d just be curious to know if you can see yourself as clear
As someone who has had you on his mind

that I thought I might give up the old songwriting lark and stick to books and magazine articles.  Who else ever came up with phrases like that in popular music?  Is he really saying he can see her clearly?  Is he fooling himself?  Or is it just one of those old throw-away Dylan phrases that the rest of humanity would struggle a lifetime to create.  Simple complexity, complex simplicity, this song has it all.

Dylan, or those controlling his early albums, didn’t think enough of it to put it on an album, but we got to know it because it turned up on the Rolling Thunder albums (which to me never did it justice) as well as the first Bootleg release, and that familiarity can reduce the impact of the song a little, which is why we should consider other people’s versions of the songs.

I’m putting this one in, just to show how (in my opinion) it can go completely wrong and lose its essence…

But maybe it is because the song can exist in so many different versions that we never had a version of it on the early albums.  Certainly the song was intended to be included either in “Times They Are a Changing” or more appropriately “Another Side of Bob Dylan” but made it onto neither because… well perhaps because the execs thought that the record buying public wasn’t quite ready for songs which changed the time signature.  Give them the good ol’ 1-2-3, 1-2-3 of Times they are a changing.   They can sing along to that.

Or maybe I am starting to fly off in my all own directions at once – but this really is a song which in its purest form delivers a rhythm and chord sequence we can’t hold down.

And maybe this is the mark of a great, great song – because it can be reinvented so many, many times. If you want to explore the depth of it try the utterly magnificent version by Jeff Buckley on “Grace (Legacy Edition)” – it is on Spotify.    Somehow he keeps the hint of the rhythmic uncertainty through the different length of the lines – nowhere else can I find a way of expressing the pain of the singer to the songwriter.  When I hear this I feel I am in the empty room with him.  And the room is still empty.

And if you think less of the Buckley version than I do, please stay with it so you do hear that last verse from about 2’45” onward.      For me, it is the definitive verse of the definitive version.

As for the critics, I despair yet again.  Heylin suggests the song fits in with “Ballad in Plain D” (written immediately after) and Ramona – but I don’t get that.  As for Oliver Trager saying it is a “straightforward love song of separation and yearning” that just misses the point so completely I wonder if the arrow he just shot might not fly round the world and hit him in the back.  For he has taken the start, but lost the end.

The chord and rhythmic changes verse by verse are the musical representation of “Pretendin’ not that I don’t know”.   That is why it all works so perfectly in the earliest versions.

“Pretendin’ not that I don’t know”.  You work it out.

Bob has played it over 200 times live (so in that regard it is not very obscure), but the performances have not always been successful in my opinion, and thus not always doing it justice.   So I won’t finish with one of those recordings but instead take my lead from Jochen’s review on this site where he said, quite rightly,

“The winner is Jack Johnson’s utterly attractive contribution to the I’m Not There soundtrack (2007). Inspired by the cadence of the flood of words, Johnson lets Mama flow smoothly into a rap on the words of “Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie”; a brilliant, marvellous find.”

Dylan Obscuranti – the tracks so far.

Track 1: Angelina but not as we know it

Track 2. Tomorrow is a long time

Track 3 – I’m not there

Untold Dylan

We now have over 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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

by John Henry

Let’s face it, “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” seems to be completely out of place on Dylan’s famous “break-up” album, Blood on the Tracks. All the other tracks (including even the lightweight “Meet Me in the Morning” and “Buckets of Rain”) relate in some way to love, the fleetingness of love, or lost love, and they are all sung in the first person—that is to say, the singer always refers to himself as “I” (although, in “Simple Twist of Fate” the first person is only brought in for the last verse). But in “Lily” we have a complex third-person narrative of several characters. What’s more it is a “Western” ballad, obviously set in the days of the American Wild West, which also sets it completely apart from any of the other songs on the album. It is worth asking ourselves, therefore, what it is doing on an album which otherwise is made up of songs with as tight a focus on love affairs and their endings as anything Dylan has ever done before, or since.

It cannot be said that Dylan had to include it to fill out the running time. He could easily have chosen to leave it off, and to include instead “Up to Me”. Here is a brilliant song, about lost love (“I know you’re long gone”), sung in the first person, which would surely have enhanced the album, and would not have seemed in the least bit out of place.

So, perhaps he included “Lily” as another example of the “no sense of time” technique of song-writing that Dylan claimed was a feature of some of the songs on Blood on the Tracks?

In an interview with Matt Damsker, in September 1978 (Bob Dylan – On This Day – September 15 | All Dylan – A Bob Dylan blog), Dylan explained the new way of writing songs he developed for Blood on the Tracks:

Blood On The Tracks did consciously what I used to do unconsciously. I didn’t perform it well. I didn’t have the power to perform it well. But I did write the songs… the ones that have the break-up of time, where there is no time, trying to make the focus as strong as a magnifying glass under the sun. To do that consciously is a trick, and I did it on Blood On The Tracks for the first time. I knew how to do it because of the technique I learned — I actually had a teacher for it…

The teacher was Norman Raeben, who actually taught Dylan painting, but whose influence clearly impacted on Dylan’s writing too (for more on this see The Mysterious Norman Raeben (archive.org) by Bert Cartwright). Writing in the Biograph booklet about Blood on the Tracks, Cameron Crowe hinted at this:

“Reportedly inspired by the breakup of his marriage, the album derived more of its style from Dylan’s interest in painting. The songs cut deep, and their sense of perspective and reality was always changing.”

The songs that fit the bill here, though, are “Tangled up in Blue”, “Up to Me”, “Shelter from the Storm”, and perhaps “Simple Twist of Fate”. These all have that disjointed, flash-back style of narration, and play tricks with the characters in the songs, so you are never sure who is who. These are the songs where the “sense of perspective and reality” keep changing, and there is “no sense of time”. Although the story in “Simple Twist” is developed in a straightforwardly chronological way, the introduction of the first person narration in the final verse makes us wonder if the man in the earlier verses was in fact the narrator, hiding his identity by referring to himself as “he”.

In “Shelter”, the first verse refers to a woman helping the singer in the past (“It was in another life time…”), but the second verse suggests we are back in the present (“And If I pass this way again…”). Two verses about the woman in the past follow, but then we are thrown by the next verse when Dylan sings “Suddenly I turned around and she was standin’ there”—as though he had not met her before. In the final verse we are back in the present: “I’m livin’ in a foreign country…” But we get the final disruption of chronology in the breath-taking line: “If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.” What a fantastic line that is. It is easily as powerful as W. B Yeats’s lines in “The Second Coming”: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” There is more of this kind of thing in both “Tangled” and “Up to Me”, especially with regard to introducing new people, or are they the same people in different characterisations? So, these two songs also fit in with what Dylan said about his new “no sense of time” way of writing songs.

But “Lily” doesn’t fit into this same category for the simple reason that the story is told perfectly straight, without flashback. The story is told entirely chronologically, and it is told without any mysterious changes in the personnel. We are introduced to the main characters in the story, and they maintain their identities throughout. Indeed, one of the strengths of the song is the way Dylan very deftly and succinctly sketches each one’s character for us.

The action takes place in a cabaret, where we are first introduced to a stranger in town, the Jack of Hearts. We then meet Lily, who is backstage before performing. Big Jim, who practically owns the town, walks into the cabaret, and is joined there shortly after by his wife, Rosemary. We learn that Jim has noticed the Jack and thinks he’s seen him somewhere before: possibly in “a picture upon somebody’s shelf”.  We soon learn that Lily and the Jack used to be intimate, and so it is easy to surmise that she has a picture of the Jack on her shelf, and this is what Jim is remembering.

Meanwhile, Rosemary has noticed Jim’s interest in the Jack across the room. Having realised that Lily must still love the Jack if she still keeps his picture, Big Jim is now jealous and even fearful of the Jack (we are told a little later that the Jack “just beyond the door he felt jealousy and fear”—this is the jealousy and fear of Big Jim, who is about to burst the door open). Rosemary evidently notices this, and also realises that Jim now has a murderous intent. This gives her an idea: Rosemary now sees a way of simultaneously escaping her marriage and doing “just one good deed before she died”.

We then learn that, after the show, the Jack has gone backstage with Lily. Clearly, Jim had seen this and he burst open Lily’s dressing room door while cocking his pistol in his hand (“The door to the dressing room burst open and a cold revolver clicked”). As Jim suspected (“Big Jim was standin’ there, ya couldn’t say surprised”), Lily had her arms around the Jack in a loving embrace. At this point, we might suppose that Jim will shoot the Jack out of jealousy. But, we soon learn that in fact Rosemary, who was by Jim’s side in the doorway of Lily’s dressing room, stabbed her husband before he could shoot—her one good deed was to save the Jack. But she is hanged for the murder the following day.

Finally, we are told that Lily finds herself alone again, because the Jack was only there with his gang who, we have learned by incidental remarks throughout the song (“The cabaret was quiet, except for the drillin’ in the wall”, “The drillin’ in the wall kept up but no one seemed to pay it any mind”), were drilling into a bank vault two doors down from the cabaret, and eventually “got off with quite a haul”. Once the gang had succeeded in their robbery, the Jack re-joined them, after his brief meeting with Lily, and the Jack and his gang escaped.

This is chronologically perfectly straightforward; the story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and they are presented in that order. The characters, once introduced, remain consistent to what we’ve been told about them. Big Jim “took whatever he wanted to and he laid it all to waste”; Lily “did whatever she had to do”; Rosemary was “tired of playin’ the role of Big Jim’s wife”. Dylan brilliantly conveys to us that Rosemary was a fundamentally good person—the only example we are given of a bad thing she’s done is that she “once tried suicide.”

Only the Jack remains mysterious—his character is not described. But there is no point in the song where we have to ask ourselves who is who, the way we do in “Tangled”. In that brilliant opening song on the album, we have to ask ourselves whether the “she” working in the topless place is the same person as the “she” who “was married when we first met”, and what about the one who “had to sell everything she owned”? There are no mysteries like that in “Lily”.

So, if “Lily” does not fit in with Dylan’s new “no sense of time” way of writing songs, but is in fact, just a good old fashioned Western ballad, we come back to the question: why was it included on Blood on the Tracks? Before going any further, it is worth saying that it is a superb song, a brilliant example of how to tell a story in a song. It is much better than most story songs, and can certainly hold its own against even the best. So, I am not saying that the song is unworthy of being included on Blood on the Tracks, I am simply pointing out that, no matter how good it is, it seems out of place on an album where all the other songs are intensely concerned with broken love affairs, and fit perfectly well into what we would expect from a “break-up” album.

The first thing to say, in trying to answer the question as to why “Lily” is on the album, is that not all of the songs on the album are about the break-up of his marriage. In fact, the only songs that are directly about the break-up are “Idiot Wind”, and “Call Letter Blues”. The blues song didn’t make it onto the album at all, and the intensely personal “Idiot Wind” recorded in New York was replaced by the much less personal Minneapolis version (where, for example, New York’s “I figured I’d lost you anyway, why go on, what’s the use?” was replaced by “Down the highway, down the tracks, down the road to ecstasy”). But, what Dylan did want to include, evidently, were songs about past loves—songs where Dylan, or at least the narrator of the song, is thinking back to “ones that got away”. This is the theme of some of the best songs on the album, “Simple Twist”, “If You See Her, Say Hello”, “You’re a Big Girl Now”, and of course, “Tangled up in Blue”. It’s easy to see how Dylan, or anyone facing the break-up of their marriage, might look back to previous lovers, and think about what might have been, if they’d married them instead.

It’s not so easy, however, to see why Dylan should turn to fantasies of the old West, as an escape from his disintegrating marriage. All we can say is that the presence of “Lily” on Blood on the Tracks makes it clear that he must have found some solace in such fantasies.

We can say this with some confidence, because fantasies about being in a “cowboy” story did not end with “Lily”. There are three of them on Desire, an album that was also put together during the protracted collapse of Dylan’s marriage. “Isis”, “Romance in Durango”, and “One More Cup of Coffee”, are all songs where the narrator seems to be a character in a tale of the old West. There are no similar Western-style ballads in Dylan’s output after Desire, so Dylan’s fascination with Western stories really does seem to have been a feature of this time of his life—while his marriage was breaking up.

It might be objected that there are a couple of outliers which suggest Dylan has always been fascinated with cowboy ballads: “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)”, and “Brownsville Girl”. But the sub-title of “Señor” suggests it is not so much a Western story as a war story—a tale that quickly moves on, in the first couple of lines, from the Lincoln County War to a much more universal Armageddon. Admittedly, “Brownsville Girl” discusses the movie of “The Gunfighter” in some detail, but that very long song isn’t really about the old West. Although, it is worth noting that Dylan does suggest at one point that he sees himself playing a part in the Gregory Peck movie:

Something about that movie though, 
                 well I just can’t get it out of my head;
But I can’t remember why I was in it 
                 or what part I was supposed to play.

Certainly, it isn’t hard to imagine Dylan playing the part of the Jack of Hearts, in “Lily”. It was in the following year (1976) that the great American beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti  included in his Who are We Now? a poem called “Jack of Hearts (for Bob Dylan)”. He surely gets Dylan dead right when he writes:

The one who bears the great tradition and breaks it
The Mysterious Stranger who comes & goes
The Jack of Hearts who speaks out

And, in the western ballads on Desire, Dylan, as the singer, is identified as the husband who leaves Isis to look for treasure in the frozen Northern hills; and the man who must leave the woman whose loyalty is not to him, but to the stars above; and as the lover of Magdalena who is shot by a rifleman hiding somewhere up in the hills.

Let’s not forget that there are also a number of scenes in Renaldo and Clara, which was also made at this time, that similarly suggest Dylan wanted to play out scenes that might have been borrowed from a Western movie. The most prominent of these are the scenes where Dylan seems to trade Joan Baez for Harry Dean Stanton’s horse. Or does he persuade Baez to distract Harry Dean Stanton by seducing him, so that he can steal the horse? We see Dylan performing “Romance in Durango” just after Baez tells Stanton that she could never make Renaldo happy.

It seems, then, that from “Lily” to “One More Cup of Coffee”, and through to the making of Renaldo and Clara, the period during which his marriage was breaking up, that Dylan was captivated by Western stories and perhaps fantasised about being a character in one of these stories. If this was so, then it is no longer surprising that “Lily” was included on his magnificent beak-up album. Indeed, as the most accomplished and dazzling of his Western fantasies, it is a very fitting and revealing addition to the songs on Blood on the Tracks.

Unless Dylan himself tells us, we cannot know why Dylan sought escape from his marital difficulties in stories of the old West. It may simply have been because Westerns had always featured largely in his imagination. In his biography of Dylan, Robert Shelton tells us that as a young boy, Dylan’s favourite TV programmes were “western adventure series”, and that “He could imagine himself as Wyatt Earp.” And it’s well-known that Dylan’s chosen name as an artist, owes as much to U.S. Marshall Matt Dillon, the noble hero of the highly successful series Gunsmoke, as it does to the poet Dylan Thomas.

Alternatively, perhaps it was the experience of working on Sam Peckinpah’s film, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid—first as composer of the music for the film, and then as an incidental character in the film. Dylan moved the family down to Durango during the making of the movie, and Sara was, by all accounts, very unhappy there. Maybe it was during this period that Dylan began to think of Western themes and stories as a way of escaping his real life, especially his life with an unhappy wife.

We can only speculate about the reasons for the connection in Dylan’s mind between Western ballads and the break-up of his marriage. But, as we’ve now seen, there is sufficient evidence in his out-put from those years to indicate that for him, they were definitely linked.

Famously, Dylan once introduced “Isis” on stage as “a song about marriage”, but perhaps the same could be said about “Lily”—it does not seem so obviously about marriage to us, but it is very clear that Dylan wanted to include it in his “break-up” album. It is, after all, the very first song in the little red notebook of the lyrics of the songs for Blood on the Tracks, which is reproduced in the Stories in the Press book, included with More Blood, More Tracks. So, all of this makes it clearer as to why Dylan included “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” on Blood on the Tracks. Although it seems incongruous to us, standing apart from the other songs on the album, for Dylan it seems to have been a song that was as close to his heart as any of the others, and had to be included among his responses to the disintegration of his marriage.

Note: The image at the top of the page comes from Long and Wasted Year

You may also enjoy

• Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts: it just has to sound good
• Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts (as I understand it): an alternative vision
• Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts: revealing the source of this and other Dylan songs (part 1)
• Bob Dylan and Damon Runyon: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts and Other Songs (Part II)
• Source of Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts (part III)

Untold Dylan

We now have over 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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by Jochen Markhorst

An index to the whole series of articles on Tombstone Blues is at the end of this piece

XIII       I walk 47 miles of barbed wire

 “I think I bought Highway 61 about a year after it came out. I mean, it was extremely ahead of its time. It was ahead of Bob Dylan’s fans’ time. There had never been anything like it. It was kind of the marriage between Bo Diddley and T.S. Eliot. He namechecks both of them. Me, hearing this as a 13-year-old, that was my Bar Mitzvah, and I’m not even Jewish.”
(Robyn Hitchcock in Friends and Other Strangers: Bob Dylan Examined by Harold Lepidus, 2016)

The multi-faceted philosophy professor Stephen Asma is a gifted blues guitarist and has had the good fortune to be allowed to accompany B.B. King sometime in the 90s. Which opens doors. It even leads to him being regularly asked by Bo Diddley, whenever Bo plays in Chicago. In 2007 professor Asma writes a fascinating piece for The New York Times, wherein among others this first experience with Diddley comes up. The week before that debut Asma of course goes feverishly through Diddley’s repertoire, rehearsing it and learning it by heart, of which he nervously informs Diddley, who arrives five minutes before the concert. The Originator is only moderately interested;

“He just looked at me blankly through his Coke-bottle glasses, plugged into his amp and launched into a loud, rhythmic riff on his trademark rectangular guitar. He never bothered to tell me what song we were playing, what chord changes were coming, what key we were in, or anything.”

Asma’s experience accurately illustrates the anecdote Levon Helm tells about Bo Diddley in his autobiography This Wheel’s On Fire. He remembers the time he played in Ronnie Hawkins’ band, when many performances still had a shared bill with other artists. Levon is all eyes and ears, from behind the scenes, when greats like Jackie Wilson, Dion & The Belmonts and James Brown are performing. And Bo Diddley, whom he admires immensely.

In 1959 they are invited to Alan Freed’s Labor Day Show in Brooklyn. Breathlessly, Levon witnesses how Diddley kills everyone with “Crackin’ Up” and with “Say Man”. But he also sees how bandleader Sam Taylor, the saxophonist, manages Diddley’s band:

“Sam searched for the key they were in. When he found it, he’d adjust the mouthpiece of his saxophone to sharp or flat to allow for Bo’s “by ear” tuning. Then he signaled the band, holding up two fingers and one across in the shape of an A, then gave a thumbs-up to tell them it was on the sharp side. […] One night I overheard one of the horn players tell his buddy: You never know what key lurks in the heart of Bo Diddley.”

Great minds think alike. It is exactly the experience that dozens of musicians in Bob Dylan’s band have had. And substitute guitarist Billy Burnette words that experience amusingly. Billy, the name giver of rockabilly (his father Dorsey Burnette and his uncle Johnny Burnette wrote “Rock Billy Boogie” in 1953 about their newborn sons Rocky and Billy), has played in John Fogerty’s band for years, is publicly famous for being a member of Fleetwood Mac from ’87 to ’95, and replaces Dylan’s guitarist Charlie Sexton in 2003 for some gigs in New Zealand and Australia. Billy tells:

“I think I learned 120 songs in like a month and a half or something. It was like… we’d only get the setlist five minutes before the show started, no, I got it twenty minutes before the show started, and there would be five new songs on it, which I had to learn really quick. So it was challenging.  (…) It was all different. He may change the key from night to night. Because it sounds better in this key today.”

That is not the only parallel with Bo Diddley. When Dylan goes electric in ’65, he seems almost deliberately looking for the excitement, thrust and ramshackle, bump-and-grind sound of “Bo Diddley”, “I’m A Man” and especially “Who Do You Love?”.

—

The first performance of “Tombstone Blues”, 24 July ’65 at Newport, is still acoustic. That is one day before Dylan will play electric for the first time, but that next day the song is not on the setlist. Five days later, 29 July in New York, “Tombstone Blues” will be played electrically for the first time (the last take, take 12, is the recording that will be chosen for Highway 61 Revisited). This first acoustic performance, however, already has the energy of Bo Diddley:

Tombstone Blues live debut Newport July ’65

The rhythm and the shuffle are not substantially different from, say, the way he plays “Mr. Tambourine Man” at the same festival a year earlier, but the tempo is twice as fast and the chord changes have been halved – and now all of a sudden it comes close to the Bo Diddley Beat. Drummer Bobby Gregg and guitarist Michael Bloomfield, five days later in New York, apparently feel the same way – all the energy, drive and neuroticism of “Who Do You Love?” burst out from the very first take. Bass player Joseph Macho, however, still plays a descending bass line in the verses, which Diddley wouldn’t approve of; after all, he stays on one note as much and as long as possible. The rhythm should provide the excitement, harmonic tension should be avoided.

Around take 7, Macho also gets the hang of it, but he remains the weakest link – most of the errors in the final version also come from his creaking, plodding bass. It’s Joe Mack’s (the stage name of the then 45-year-old Czech Joseph Macho Jr.) final contribution to a Dylan recording. That same day he will be replaced by Russ Savakus and he will not return. Immortality he has already achieved anyway; Joe is the bass player on “Like A Rolling Stone”.

In fairness though, it should be noted that Dylan cannot keep up with the pace he has set himself either – only Gregg, Bloomfield and pianist Paul Griffin have no problem with that. Al Kooper’s organ playing, just like on “Like A Rolling Stone”, is also just behind the beat. All of which, coincidentally or not, contributes to the irresistible, agitated excitement of “Tombstone Blues” and its rough, shambolic Bo Diddley-vibe.

That there is a Bo Diddley vibe rising from the song, and the album at all, is less coincidental. Bloomfield is a fan, just like Dylan himself. So Diddley gets a namecheck in “From A Buick 6” (“She walks like Bo Diddley and she don’t need no crutch”). On stage Dylan likes to shuffle on the Diddley Beat (as with performances of “Not Fade Away” and “Willie And The Hand Jive”), as a DJ Dylan plays him five times in Theme Time Radio Hour, in his Oscar-winning “Things Have Changed” he winks at Diddley’s opening line “I walk 47 miles of barbed wire” with I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road” and both “Tombstone Blues” and “From A Buick 6” do echo “Who Do You Love?” anyway:

Tombstone hand and a graveyard mine,
Just 22 and I don't mind dying.

… providing Dylan with the macabre accents, and he finds the decor a little further on:

Night was dark, but the sky was blue,
Down the alley, the ice-wagon flew

The best covers stay very close to the original. Like that of the Irish phenomenon Marc Carroll, who certainly does not sow his wild punk oats when covering his idol Dylan. Carroll’s “Gates of Eden” is already one of the most beautiful covers of this monument, his “Señor” is surprisingly respectful and loyal, but his “Tombstone Blues” is by far his most exciting Dylan cover.

https://youtu.be/l1hqtrdW5Fo

The best-known cover is probably the one by Richie Havens, on the soundtrack of the Dylan film I’m Not There (2007), and rightly so. But even more moving and exciting is the snippet (one minute and seven seconds) in the film itself:

Still, we’ll have to imagine the most beautiful cover of “Tombstone Blues” ourselves. It has never been made and it shall never be made; Bo Diddley died on 2 June 2008, after a heart attack, at the age of 78 in Archer, Florida.

Tombstone Blues:

• Tombstone Blues  part I: Daddy’s looking for the fragmentation bomb’s fuse
• Tombstone Blues II: Duck back down
• Tombstone Blues  III         Let’s Go Get Stoned
• Tombstone Blues part IV    Medicine Man
• Tombstone Blues part V: he was kiddin’ me, didn’t he?
• Tombstone Blues part VI: Under the Yellow Angel
• Tombstone Blues part VII: Found someone, you have, I would say
• Tombstone Blues part VIII       Ninety Nine Years
• Tombstone Blues (1965) part IX You must leave now
• Tombstone Blues (1965) part X   Ludwig Van
• Tombstone Blues (1965) part XI: Mozart’s weather chart
• Tombstone Blues (1965) part XII: The malicious nightingale

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (German)

Untold Dylan

We now have over 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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 article continues from All Directions 29: The greatest Dylan album ever?   A full index to the articles in this series which traces Dylan’s writing from 1959 onwards, can be found here.

—————–

By Tony Attwood

In terms of songwriting, for Bob Dylan, the year after “Blood on the Tracks” was dominated by the collaboration with Jacques Levy.  But prior to this kicking off, and with Bob seemingly not knowing how he would follow up what many considered his greatest work to date, he wrote three songs which we examine in this piece.

• Money Blues
• One More Cup of Coffee
• Golden Loom

There is also a postscript about another piece of music that was written around this time, which I feel would have influenced Bob enormously, and may have been a significant part of the reason why he then turned to working with a co-writer for his next album.

————

OK, so, imagine this…

You are recognised by millions upon millions of people as not just a genius, but THE genius in your field.  You have just created a work that by and large is regarded as your greatest achievement.  In fact some already call it THE greatest achievement in your area of work: “Blood on the Tracks”.   Hailed as your masterpiece, you know the next music you produce has got to be pretty damn good.   So what do you do?

You will know, given the way the critics work, and the oneupmanship that many critics, (and especially writers on the subject of Bob Dylan) engage in, in trying to suggest that if only the artist had listened to them, the resultant work would have been far superior, it is almost inevitable that anything you tackle is going to be considered as “not as good” as the last effort.  After all, if that last work was the ultimate, the greatest, the most magnificent album, it is going to be downhill from here on.

To overcome that problem one would need a return to the days of 1962-65, in which Dylan wrote no less than 116 songs, ranging from Blowing in the wind  to Visions of Johanna, from Hard Rain’s a gonna fall to It’s all right ma,  from It’s all over now baby blue to Desolation Row.  Everything is now not just going to be compared to those masterpieces, but now also to “Blood on the Tracks”.

The one thing Bob did have on his side however was time.  There was none of the demand for “another album” straightaway by the record company, that he faced in the 1960s, so he could take in ideas, look around, and consider the world as the writer of Tangled up in blue.  He could take his time to look afresh at songwriter, as the man who had created yet another new way of seeing the world.

And I think that is what Bob intended to do, but, as I will try and show, one thing came along which knocked him out of his security.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  Let’s start at the beginning.  “Blood on the Tracks” was released and considered an utter masterpiece.  What now?

According to such reports as are available Bob spent some time playing with the Willie Murphy Band, which certainly makes sense given the way Willie Murphy himself turned jazz-blues upside down and inside out.

Initially however Bob didn’t step out into a new dimension, and although it seems he recorded “Money Blues” with the Willie Muphy band, it appears that the song metamorphosed later.  So it is quite possible that Bob had the idea for the song and was looking to explore where it could fit into the new approach that he knew he would need for the next album.

What we know now of course is that the influence of Willie Murphy was not ultimately a key factor in Bob’s musical explorations, and that ultimately it was Jacques Levy who helped the journey into somewhere different.  But we shouldn’t overplay this collaboration as being the salvation to Bob’s conundrum of what to do next, because it is clear Bob was very open to new influences and new ideas from all sources.

So he started the year with Money Blues – a song within which there is little evidence of any new thinking whatsoever.  It is a perfectly reasonable standard 12 bar blues – nothing wrong with that, but hardly of the Bob Dylan Standard as established by “Blood on the Tracks”

Sittin’ here thinkin’
Where does the money go
Sittin’ here thinkin’
Where does the money go
Well, I give it to my woman
She ain’t got it no more

It continues in the same way until it concludes

Come to me, mama
Ease my money crisis now
Come to me, mama
Ease my money crisis now
I need something to support me
And only you know how

There was also another song recorded at this time “Footprints in the Sand” but again it seems to be just an idea being kicked around.

No, the first “real” song that Dylan wrote post-masterpiece (ie something that came after “Blood on the Tracks” and which was more than a knock-about sketch) was something Bob worked on his own, using  the influence of what he found around him.

And there’s no surprise here.  Bob Dylan has always responded to the world around him.  To the people, the ideas of the moment, the events, the local environment.  Bob Dylan picks up his influences as he passes through life.

This time (at least according to the story that we have and which seems to have been verified as at least being partially true) Bob somehow found himself in the south of France as a guest at a gypsy event; an event that  would appear to fit the bill completely in terms of the song he wrote next.  Of course the story may be utterly apocryphal, but then we would simply be looking for something else that gave Bob his new direction.  I’d sooner accept the evidence we have rather than go looking for something else that might not be there.

Interestingly both Golden Loom and One More Cup of coffee (the first two “real” songs written by Dylan post-Blood, have a vision of a life that is outside the norm, most certainly outside the hurly-burly of the life back on the road that Bob had been experiencing.   As you will know (if you have been paying attention) we are still at this moment in our story nine years away from the start of the The Never-Ending Tour.   Influences and ideas would have to come from somewhere else.

And given the reception that “Blood on the Tracks” had had, these new ideas were going to have to be good.

So the story is that Bob somehow pitched up at a Romany event in France and then wrote “One more cup of coffee” which as he himself pointed out, is Romany orientated.

(The recording below is not the “original” of course, and unfortunately I don’t know the source of this – if you know, can you write in please.  It’s rather a fine version in my opinion – and is probably incredibly famous, and it’s just me that doesn’t know who is involved).

Dylan told Robert Shelton that he had been in France with David Oppenheim, when his host suggested they visit a local gypsy festival in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in Provence, France, on Dylan’s birthday where he came across a Gypsy King in declining old age, abandoned by most of his wives and children.

But as it turns out that is only part of the story, for in June 1975 Dylan then met Scarlet Rivera  “wandering in the streets of the Village” (according to Heylin).  Rivera was unknown at the time although has since made a dozen or more albums.  And it seems her violin playing certainly had a profound influence on the way the song developed.

The song develops its “gypsy” feel through using the harmonic minor (very much a western classical concept, and itself nothing to do with Romany music) in which Dylan uses the chords that emerge from the descending version of the scale (A minor, G, F, E).  Thus it is not a Romany scale in the true sense (for which one would have to turn to the Hungarian Gypsy Scale or the Phrygian dominant scale).

There are many commentaries which suggest that the song is related to Dylan’s break up with his ex-wife, particularly because during this year Dylan also wrote Sara.   This of course might be true, but really would someone who wrote

Sara, Sara
You must forgive me my unworthiness

would also write and include on the same album

But I don’t sense affection
No gratitude or love

about the same person?  Of course he might, but I think at the very least the case is not proven.  And as I have pointed out elsewhere, the lady in this song is beautiful but remote and distant, and very much not one who gives her emotions to another…

Your breath is sweet
Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky
Your back is straight, your hair is smooth
On the pillow where you lie
But I don’t sense affection
No gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me
But to the stars above

I am willing to be proven wrong on this, but my impression (without going back through every line that Dylan had written in the previous few years) is that Dylan is exploring a completely new style of lyricism.  It is truly an imaginative and beautiful expression of emotion which is different from that expressed in “Sara” for example with

Sleepin’ in the woods by a fire in the night
Drinkin’ white rum in a Portugal bar
Them playin’ leapfrog and hearin’ about Snow White
You in the marketplace in Savanna-la-Mar

Indeed throughout “Sara” it is the children who take the stage, but not now, and not here.

The singer is on his way to the valley below, but he is only after something as prosaic as a cup of coffee.  Whether the valley below is Hades or whether it is simply a case of popping off down the hillside… well that’s for each individual listener to decide.

For me, the average punter probably doesn’t leave the great love of her life, or the guru one has just found, by saying, “I’ll just have one more cup of coffee.”  Rather, you might do that, having had a jolly afternoon or evening or poetry writing and so then you say…

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ’fore I go
To the valley below

The influence of the visit to the gypsy camp, as per the story of the old king, now surrounded by the remains of his family, comes through strongly in the second verse, emphasised all the way through by the violin playing.

Your daddy he’s an outlaw
And a wanderer by trade
He’ll teach you how to pick and choose
And how to throw the blade
He oversees his kingdom
So no stranger does intrude
His voice it trembles as he calls out
For another plate of food

The whole Romany notion of fortune telling, mystery and illiteracy (by which I mean, the past is not secured in writing, but is endlessly re-told and re-worked) is explored in the third verse, particularly with its last two lines…

But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark

She is thus the unknown, and unknowable, remote woman.  An interesting experience for an afternoon, not the love of his life.

Emmylou Harris who sings the vocals alongside Dylan, told this story about making the album, which gives us a very good insight into the way Dylan has always liked to make recordings…

“There was a fellow at Columbia that was a fan, who was like an executive producer, and I think Dylan told him ‘I need a girl singer.’ Don DeVito was his name and I got a call that Dylan wants you to sing, but that wasn’t true because he just wanted a girl singer. I mean we basically shook hands and started recording. I didn’t know the songs, the lyrics were in front of me, and the band would start playing and he would kind of poke me when he wanted me to jump in. Somehow I watched his mouth with one eye and the lyrics with the other. You couldn’t fix anything. What happened in a moment was on the record.”

There is also the story that the introduction of the bass part, which has of course become the essence of the song.  This came about because violinist Scarlet Rivera wasn’t ready.

The bassist, Rob Stoner told Mojo magazine in October 2012: “The beginning of ‘One More Cup of Coffee’… that wasn’t arranged for me to do a bass solo. Scarlet wasn’t ready. Bob starts strumming his guitar – nothing’s happening. Somebody better play something, so I start playin’ a bass solo. Basically the run-throughs became the first takes.”

Moving on, there is one final song that Dylan created before the collaboration with Levy started: Golden Loom.   It is sad that the song is largely ignored, and has been treated in such a dreadfully derisory manner by writers such as Heylin, but it is worth listening to and indeed studying through its three interwoven themes…

• The operator of a loom takes a multitude of threads and weaves them together in a strong but endlessly pliable piece of clothing.
• A storyteller presents an idea, and then another and another, and waves them together in something that mimics life, but isn’t life.
• The three spinners in Norse mythology sit and weave the lives of all mortals and create their fate – and fate is inexorable.

The loom, in short is a symbol of anything and everything that is woven together. And out of this weave comes … whatever you want.  If you are a Viking, for example, it is whatever is deemed to be your life to come.  It a rich tapestry.   It is life.

The violin plays, the band adds a lilting rhythm; for the most part it is built around two chords, just tripping us up at the end of each verse, as a wave comes in and crashes on the shore, taking us up the chords in the penultimate line (Moonlight on the water)

It is all so calm and rested

I walk across the bridge in the dismal light
Where all the cars are stripped between the gates of night
I see the trembling lion with the lotus flower tail
And then I kiss your lips as I lift your veil
But you’re gone and then all I seem to recall is the smell of perfume
And your golden loom

The stories that she has woven are still here.

The one Dylan recording that we have of this song was made on 30 July 30 1975, with some of the musicians from Rolling Thunder Revue. Much of “Desire” was recorded in this session.

So there we were.  The master had created the masterpiece in “Blood on the Tracks”, but now needed to do something more, and seemingly he felt these opening songs of the new years were not enough.  Where to turn?

We know the answer of course, he turned to a co-writer.  But I think there is another element here as well.   And for this I have to backtrack a little, because in November 1974 Joan Baez wrote “Diamonds and Rust,” which she has openly admitted is about Dylan (although it doesn’t really need such an admission).

It is by any measure a brilliant piece of music – even more so since it is written by an artist who has only ever written a handful of songs.  We might remember “To Bobby”, and although that is a fine song, it is nothing compared with this…

Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel, over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there

In fact Joan Baez has written so few songs, we really might wonder where on earth this ability to compose such a magnificent piece of music suddenly came from, and why she then didn’t go on and write many more.

But that was a matter for the future.  The key point here is that sometime, around the time, while Bob was pondering how to write the songs to put in his new album, (a new album that would inevitably be compared with “Blood on the Tracks” he would have heard “Diamonds and Rust.”  I rather fancy that even if he had not, by this time, been thinking about writing the rest of his next album with Jacques Levy, hearing “Diamonds and Rust” would have immediately convinced him of the dangers of writing the next album on his own.

And I suspect, at this moment, Bob might have pondered, as I have done ever since, how anyone could have written a song as brilliant as this, with no antecedents.  He would suddenly have been faced with a second dilemma.  Because now not only did he have to follow “Blood on the Tracks”, he also had to reach the levels of insight of “Diamonds and Rust”.

Untold Dylan

We now have over 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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

By Tony Attwood

The fact that this is article number 2000 on this site is pure chance, but somehow I rather like the notion that article 2000 turned out to be a song called “I’m not there.”

The idea of this little series is to create an album of some of the more obscure Dylan works that really ought to be known better than they are.   I’m taking this approach liberally – as was evident I hope with the first track (Angelina) in which most people only know one version of the song (Angelina) and maybe don’t see the possibilities beyond that.

Track 1: Angelina but not as we know it

Track 2. Tomorrow is a long time

Track 3.  I’m not there

We have two recordings of “I’m not there” – one that turned up in the 1967 Basement Tapes recording, from the movie, and the Sonic Youth version…

I’m personally not convinced by the Bob Dylan version any more – it used to fascinate me but over time its allure has faded, and for it has been replaced by the version above.  Maybe I’m just getting older.  Maybe I’ve been working on this site too long – but then maybe we all should change over time.  But in case you don’t know it, Bob’s version is further down the page.

To understand the place of this song in Bob’s work we need to recall that 1967 was the year when Bob wasn’t just doing stuff in the Basement, he was specifically looking to compose a set of songs that were made available for other artists to record with the understanding that Dylan himself would not be recording them.  The list we have in the order he wrote them is…

Thing’s are all right and she’s all too tight
In my neighbourhood she cries both day and night
I know it because it was there
It’s a milestone but she’s down on her luck
And she’s daily salooning about to make a hard earned buck; I was there.

I believe that she’d stop him if she would start to care
I believe that she’d look upon the side that used to care
And I’d go by the Lord anywhere she’s on my way
But I don’t belong there.

No, I don’t belong to her, I don’t belong to anybody
She’s my Christ-forsaken-angel but she don’t hear me cry
She’s a lone hearted mystic and she can’t carry on
When I’m there she’s all right, but then she’s not, when I’m gone.

Heaven knows that the answer she not calling no one
She’s the way, forsaken beauty for she’s mine, for the one
And I lost her hesitation by temptation lest  it runs
But she don’t honour me but I’m not there, I’m gone.

Now I’ll cry tonight like I cried the night before
And I’m leased on the highway  but I still dream about the door
It’s so long, she’s forsaken by her faith, (where’s to tell?)
It don’t have consternation she’s my all, fare thee well.

Now when I’ll teach that lady I was born to love her
But she knows that the kingdom waits so high above her
And I run but I race but it’s not too fast or still
But I don’t perceive her, I’m not there, I’m gone.

Well it’s all about diffusion and I cry for her veil
I don’t need anybody now beside me to tell
And it’s all affirmation I receive but it’s not
She’s a lone-hearted beauty but she don’t like this spot and she’ gone.

Yeah, she’s gone like the radio below the shining yesterday
But now she’s home beside me and I’d like her here to stay
She’s a lone, forsaken beauty and she don’t trust anyone
And I wish I was beside her but I’m not there, I’m gone.

 Well, it’s too hard to stay here and I don’t want to leave
It’s so bad, for so few see, but she’s a heart too hard to need
It’s alone, it’s a crime the way she hauls me around
But she don’t fall to hate me but tears are gone, a painted clown.

Yes, I believe that it’s rightful oh, I believe it in my mind
I’ve been told like I said one night before “Carry on the crying”
And the old gypsy told her like I said, “Carry on,”
I wish I was there to help her but I’m not there, I’m gone.

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

We recently launched a new idea – finding songs with the same title as a Dylan song, not written by Bob.

The first episode of the new series is available here covering “You’re a big girl now” and taking us into some of the backwaters of popular music from the last century.  Now we have episode two: “Forever Young”.

Forever Young seems to be one of those song titles that has been used lots of times. Let’s remind ourselves of Bob’s take on the title, from The Band’s Last Waltz concert,

If you search for “Forever Young” in Google [at least on Aaron’s computer in the US and Tony’s in the UK- you may well get different results in other parts of the universe], the first result is not for the Dylan track. The first result is for the hit song by Alphaville. And the second hit is for a cover of the Alphaville track by Laura Brannigan. Dylan’s track is eventually mentioned after these along with similarly titled tracks by Rod Stewart and BLACKPINK.

Here is the Alphaville track

Alphaville were/are a German synth-pop band, popular in the 80s, named after the Jean Luc Goddard movie. The track concerns the fear of nuclear war and is obviously influenced by the political climate of the time. Remember, this was the time of Reagan, the Cold War was at its height, so asking “Do you want to live forever?” under the threat of nuclear war was a very bold move indeed.

Aaron’s score: Five out of five….wonderful, this is the type of 80s music I love.

Tony’s score: Three out of five.  The idea of 16 bars of music repeated over and over can work but it doesn’t really grab me or dig itself into my heart, soul, head or anywhere else.  It just goes around and around.

And since my first thought was the Jean Luc Godard movie, I thought maybe this band was taking its influences from a very diverse range of sources, so I went scouting around the rest of the band’s music, since I am not familiar with it.  What I came across was this item below,which has a very strange video.  Plus it is quite a jolly piece of music, which has the merit that one can modern jive to it.

What actually was disappointing however was that the band have a song “Dance with me” which one can’t modern jive to at all, so nowhere to go with that.

But there is a song called “Forever Young” by Rod Stewart, written by Stewart along with Jim Cregan and Kevin Savigar from his band.   It’s not something I would play over and over but it’s ok, and I wouldn’t be inclined to flip forward.  It’s a decent enough song, although I think they spin the end of unnecessarily.    And the bonus here is that the video sequence (at least in the UK at the moment) goes on to the Wilburys.

However, my hopes remained high because Aaron then says…

Aaron: The next “Forever Young” is this one by acerbic pop and rock duo Sparks

The track appeared on the bands seventh album 1977’s Introducing Sparks. It’s a much different take on the title from both Dylan and Alphavilles, this time the singer wants to stay forever young himself for purely selfish reasons (I’ll meet a million girls in a million places).

Aaron’s score: Three out of five…not Sparks’ best work but it’s punky enough for 1977. I do love the bit around the 2:30 mark (“and I don’t care what you do babe…”)

Tony’s score: One out of five.  Probably it ought to have two, but I was hopeful, since I can remember one (but only one) Sparks composition/performance.  That was “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” which was a hit in Britain.  I bought it as a youngster, and had no idea what it was about… which probably opened my ears and eyes to the fact that popular music doesn’t have to be about anything.  If you have any interest in this, the record version is followed by an on stage version recorded in 2017.  The music is identical but it is fun to see the guys.

It was nigh on impossible to get the lyrics from listening to the songs and of course in the 1970s there wasn’t an internet, so I spent ages trying to decipher the song.  Just in case you are interested here they are

Zoo time is she and you time
The mammals are your favourite type, and you want her tonight
Heartbeat, increasing heartbeat
You hear the thunder of stampeding rhinos, elephants and tacky tigers
This town ain't big enough for the both of us
And it ain't me who's gonna leave

Flying, domestic flying
And when the stewardess is near do not show any fear
Heartbeat, increasing heartbeat
You are a khaki-coloured bombardier, it's Hiroshima that you're nearing
This town ain't big enough for both of us
And it ain't me who's gonna leave

Daily, except for Sunday
You dawdle in to the cafe where you meet her each day
Heartbeat, increasing heartbeat
As 20 cannibals have hold of you, they need their protein just like you do
This town ain't big enough for the both of us
And it ain't me who's gonna leave

Shower, another shower
You got to look your best for her and be clean everywhere
Heartbeat, increasing heartbeat
The rain is pouring on the foreign town, the bullets cannot cut you down
This town ain't big enough for the both of us
And it ain't me who's gonna leave

Now we all know.

Untold Dylan

We are approach 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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

By Orlando Pascal

'You know he keeps on saying everything twice to me.'
Doubling, doubles and the mirror in Rough and Rowdy Ways.

In Pickpocket (1959) by Robert Bresson, the director likes to fill the screen with doubles.  If he has a circle on the left side of the screen, he will place a circle, or two, on the right side. A woman’s hat from behind is circular, balanced by a man looking through binoculars.  He ends scenes with an open doorway and begins the next scene with a different open doorway.  This doubling or mirroring is a technique also used in literature and music, such as the phrase and response in Schubert or Mozart, or in the writings of Dostoyevsky, who is particularly fond of inserting doubles.

The Grandaddy of doubling however must be Shakespeare and the work in which mirror images figures most is Hamlet, a play  which not only supplies the name for ‘Murder Most Foul’ but also for part  of the weft and woof of the fabric of ‘Rough & Rowdy Ways’ which Our Bard weaves into  a unified whole. In Hamlet there are doubles everywhere:  two fathers are killed ;  two sons must  revenge a killing; two kingdoms, Denmark and England (the latter where mad men  who lost their mind would not be noticed as they are so plentiful there); Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two different people yet they seem to be interchangeable.  Arguably the most quoted line, from this play and Shakespeare’s  total oeuvre, is a six word question, five of the words containing two letters and the sixth containing three letters; and two of these words are used twice. The list could go on.

Our Bard too also shows a great liking for doubling and repeating words  especially in the long song Murder Most Foul  and from the first two lines:

'Twas a dark day in Dallas, November ’63
A day that will live on in infamy
President Kennedy was a-ridin’ high
Good day to be livin’ and a good day to die'

'Was a matter of timing and the timing was right'

'We’ve already got someone here to take your place'

'Shoot him while he runs, boy
Shoot him while you can
See if you can shoot the invisible man'

' Business is business, and it's a murder most foul'

'I'm riding in a long, black Lincoln limousine
Riding in the backseat next to my wife'

'Where we ask no quarter, and no quarter do we give'

'Freedom, oh freedom
Freedom above me'

'I'm just a patsy like Patsy Cline'

'They killed him once and they killed him twice;'

'Play St. James Infirmary in the court of King James'

'Play another one and Another One Bites the Dust'

'Play "Mystery Train" for Mr. Mystery'

'Charlie Parker and all that junk
All that junk and All That Jazz'

'Play It Happened One Night and One Night of Sin'

'Your brothers are coming, there'll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What's this about hell?'

'Play Lonely At the Top and Lonely Are the Brave'

These are all doublings contained in just the one song, Murder Most Foul. However there  are also doubles reverberating  within and between the songs, such as these lines from  ‘I Contain Multitudes’:

'Pink pedal-pushers, red blue jeans
All the pretty maids, and all the old queens
All the old queens from all my past lives
I carry four pistols and two large knives'

and   ‘Ride the pink horse down that long, lonesome road’     from Murder Most Foul.

‘Play Down in the Boondocks for Terry Malloy’  is reflected in Key West :

‘Heard it on the wireless radio
From down in the boondocks - way down in Key West’

As well as these literal doublings in one song and also between the songs there are what I will refer to as ‘ghost doubles’.  There are two Hamlets in Shakespeare’s play, a father and a son, and one of them is a ghost. There are hints that the son resembles the father, in character and bearing, and so in the songs there are resemblances and twinnings .  For example, there are two references to Heraclitus  ( who believed in a unity of opposites)  and who is referred to obliquely twice in the songs on this album.  In I Contain Multitudes the line ‘Everything’s flowin’ all at the same time’ echoes the famous panta rhei, which means ‘everything flows’. All is flux.

Heraclitus is also popularly connected to the phrase   ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice’  This is mirrored in Black Rider:

‘The road that you’re on, same road that you know
Just not the same as it was a minute ago’.

‘ Follow me close - I’m going to Bally-Na-Lee
I’ll lose my mind if you don’t come with me’

Bally-Na-Lee refers to the town associated with  the Irish poet Antoine Ó Raifteirí,( who wrote  the lines: ‘My mind is now well satisfied, So walk with me  To Bally-na-Lee.’)

It stands as a kind of Tir Na Nog, a celtic magic land, half in and half out of this world. Thus the very beginning of the album is balanced near the end by another magic isle, that of Key West:

‘Key West is fine and fair
If you lost your mind, you’ll find it there
Key West is on the horizon line ‘

‘I search the world over For the Holy Grail’   must link to Indiana Jones.

The ‘Enemy of the unlived meaningless life’  must admire the examined life.

‘Play number nine, play number six’  Notice, if you flip one of these numbers, it mirrors the other ( a plot detail often used in films).

A particular succinct density of these ‘ghost doubles’  comes in My Own Version of You:

‘Can you tell me what it means to be or not to be
You won’t get away with fooling me ‘

In this couplet is twinned the two opposite Shakespearean characters of Hamlet and King Lear.  The young man, who pinpoints what Albert Camus called the only true philosophic question, and the old  once regal octogenarian, adrift in a world of nothing and nought , abandoned by his fool and reduced to a foolish old man. The once Rimbaud-like  outlaw prince of the sixties is the respected elder King of Literature and contemplates his life his kingdom and the valley below.

A third kind of doubling exist in the songs, where lines or expressions from  his earlier songs throughout the oeuvre are quoted or referred. An example here is ‘The man who fell down dead, like a rootless tree’.  This man obviously should have heeded advice and strapped himself to a tree with roots.

‘I’ll pick a number between a-one and two
And I ask myself, “What would Julius Caesar do?”

He is not here choosing 1.25 or perhaps 1.7. he is choosing either one OR two. That is, do you lead your life selfishly, looking out for number one, or do you connect with another and share life in a meaningful loving  way? Without dialogue there is no community. Caesar looks out for number one.  Walter Benjamin once conceived of writing a book composed entirely of quotations, where the juxtapositions of two or more  seeming unrelated quotes would create a third meaningful and  magical connection. Everything is connected and the whole universe has already been created,  come together; what is the connection between creation and invention?  Does a painter create new colours?  Our Bard is very well read it’s well known, and who’s to say if Benjamin was not one of the stitches used in creating this, his very own version.

What  in the devil can it all possibly mean, all this doubling?  For Bresson perhaps it showed the divide in the main  character of the film, who hovered between being a thief and a saint, finally redeemed by Love.  For Dostoyevsky, who underwent a fake execution and was traumatised for the rest of his life, wondering if he was simply a ghost, it was a way of understanding or at least depicting his separation from life. For Shakespeare, who’s son Hamnet died aged eleven, but left behind his twin sister , in whose face her father could  daily see the eyes or glimpses of his dead son, it nurtured an obsession with twinning, which he turned to superb artistic effect.

Shakespeare sometimes played small parts in his plays and one part we know he played was the ghost of king Hamlet.   When the poet drifts into reverie he is not himself, he is not there, he is not one but two or more. Shakespeare constructed his Wooden O and portrayed the world in all its warlike, treacherous , deceitful , loving mysterious ways.

In Rough and Rowdy ways the poet, flinching at no part of the world he has seen, sees his country divided against itself, one side is red one is blue, one is white  (or pink) one is black, a country built on slavery and genocide which will not acknowledge the fact, a civil war not yet concluded,, a world in violent turmoil devouring its own tail , where relationships have all been bad, but still he’s searchin for love like he did as a boy huddled under the bed blankets  in the wintry north searching the dial for the signals from the warm south. In tales peppered with references to ancient Greece and Rome, world wars, generals and slaves and whippings, like Odysseus he has been blown off course on his journey to Ithaca and lies washed by waves gazing at the horizon line wondering what dreams may come. He  has directed his journey from Bally na lee to Key West not as a straight line, but as a circle in song, a big nought, a big O.

You don’t know me darlin’ - you never would guess
I’m nothing like my ghostly appearance would suggest
What are you lookin’ at - there’s nothing to see
Just a cool breeze encircling me

Man I could listen to these tales all day.

Untold Dylan

You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  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.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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

By Tony Attwood

There is a complete index to All Directions at once, here.

In the last episode: All directions 28: Seeing the world through a fractured glass I took a look at Idiot Wind.  Now, having look at that masterpiece it is time to ask ourselves what Dylan did next.   He had a lot of material for his proposed new album, but not quite enough.

Having told us about lost love and love gone wrong within several songs such as “You’re a big girl now,” “If you see her say hello,”  “Call Letter Blues,”  “Simple Twist of Fate” and “Idiot Wind,” Bob created another twist.  Suddenly he comes up with a song that says it isn’t all over, although he knows that ultimately the affair will die: You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go  A song that is many ways the opposite of “Idiot Wind”.

I’ve seen love go by my door
It’s never been this close before
Never been so easy or so slow
Been shooting in the dark too long
When somethin’s not right it’s wrong
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

Indeed everything about the song denies the existence of those earlier songs, “I’ve only known careless love,” suggesting that those past events were mere dalliances,  “I could stay with you forever and never realize the time…”

And yet even though this is the closest he’s ever been to perfection, he know it ain’t gonna last.

I get the feeling that having thrown everything possible into “Idiot Wind” Bob was now ready to write some less complicated songs.   True, “When you go” does have an unusual structure of three verses, middle 8, verse, middle 8, verse.  There’s no reason why one should not write that way; it’s just few had done it before, as normally we have, Verse, Verse, Middle 8, Verse, Middle 8, Verse.  It’s only a minor change but it has an effect on the listener.

The song has been seen by “All Music” as melancholy, heartbreaking, and poignant, reflecting a hopeless situation, but the music to me doesn’t sound like that at all.   Indeed Dylan used the song to bring life and fun into the performances on the second Revue tour (see below).

But it is unusual, in that it is about the future.  The classic blues and rock songs are about the past (“my baby done left me”) or the present (“I’m in love, I’m all shook up.”)

Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud
But there’s no way I can compare
All those scenes to this affair
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go

Then again, it is intriguing that not very many commentators have tackled the third line of this verse – a line on which (it can be argued) the whole of the song revolves.  In the songs of the JWH album almost every line of every song is interrogated and seen by some to be religious.  But these are just let go.

To me he seems to be saying, “yes my life has been pretty up and down and fairly wild, but I’m pulling it back together now.  Although he teases us, for Rimbaud is particularly well known for the phrase, “Je est un autre”  (“I is someone else”). Dylan wrote in Chronicles, “When I read those words the bells went off. It made perfect sense.”

Aged around 17 Rimbaud began writing to poets to try and meet up with them and explore his own ideas for his new style of writing, a style generally referred to as a precursor of surrealism.

As generally happens most of the up and coming writers of the time didn’t want anything to do with this crazy kid, hardly out of school – indeed would Richard Penniman have agreed to meet Robert Allen Zimmerman on the basis that he had just written Hey Little Richard?

Eventually it was Paul Verlaine (aged 28 at the time) who took Rimbaud in.  But Rimbaud was a wife and child beater, Rimbaud and Verlaine became lovers, Verlaine shot Rimbaud, and was arrested and went to prison for two years.   Rimbaud gave up writing and got a steady job and ultimately launched a business career.   Maybe we should remember that when considering…

You’re gonna make me wonder what I’m sayin’
You’re gonna make me give myself a good talkin’ to

Dylan is perhaps saying he has had an up and down life, and now he has a steady job – making records and doing some tours.  And perhaps we drop in the fact that Rimbaud later travelled the world and had success as an entrepreneur (although he died aged 37).  And Dylan … well he invented the Never Ending Tour and later sold his copyrights for over $300m.

Musically the song has a similar chord sequence to “You’re a big girl now” and it turned out to be one of those where over time he chose to re-write the song and to give some new sense and meaning to it. There is a real happiness and jolity here…  This isn’t a warning that the future is going wrong…

https://youtu.be/XF14OFXxNJM

And to emphasise this fact, Dylan then played it faster

And as something else, try this reinterpretation.  Just put up with the wait at the start, you might well find it worth the wait – but if you can’t wait, it starts on 25 seconds…  Once again the band gets the feel that this is good – the “when you go” is definitely hypothetical here.

To me it seems to be taking the wildness of artists and surrealism, not to mention Kafka with whom Bob had already dallied, and uses all that he has learned to shunt the past, present and hypothetical, possible, future, back and forth, as he had done with “Tangled up in Blue.”

After which he wrote “Up to me”, but then finding that the album was too long, left it off.

Which is sad because “Up to Me” may be described as “Sheltering from a Tangled Twist of Fate in the Storm.”   But of course the song wasn’t rejected totally – it is on Biograph and on “More Blood More Tracks.”

Dylan the old story teller is looking at the past, shrugging the shoulders, moving on.    We also have a double bass style that has become familiar through the songs mentioned above, a beautiful restrained style that adds enormously to the overall context of the song.

But what is so shockingly different here is the opening.  OK – this is an out-take, and maybe not the best recording available, or maybe never intended to be the final version, but it just starts, musically and lyrically.  Bang, you are in.  No preliminaries.

And lyrically there is no, “They sat together in the park”.   There is no “Early one morning the sun was shining.”  There is, in short, no placement of the characters at all.  No warm up, no opening chords.  But what a start it is…

“Everything went from bad to worse, money never changed a thing”

And we think, “what the hell is going on here?”   This is doom and gloom, but the music doesn’t represent that at all.  Even lines like “Death kept following, tracking us down” are sung in the same “Tangled” style.

This opening however does set a scene of its own, once you have heard the song several times.   Everything has gone wrong, and wrong again, and I ain’t got much time left to sort this out.  But no one else is going to resolve anything, so it is up to me.

That’s the song – but such a simplified reduction does not do it any justice at all.   For there are some wonderful lines in this song delivered by Dylan with a bounce and emphasis that shows a tremendous level of crafting.   Just listen to the line

“I was just too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity”

with its internal rhyme.  What does it mean?  We could argue about that forever either within or without the context of the song.

These lines just pile on top of each other, and drive us along in the whirlwind that the singer explores.   Indeed some of these lines are utterly classic Dylan, which makes it so sad that they exist on a song many never got to hear.  And then there is

“I’ve only got me one good shirt left and it smells of stale perfume”

How many evocative images do you want in one line?

And then

“In fourteen months I’ve only smiled once and I didn’t do it consciously”

Yes, you could build whole songs around each of these lines.  But for me the key to the explanation of what the song is all about comes with the line

“The old Rounder in the iron mask slipped me the master key”

The old Rounder, I take to be, a person up to no good, the dissolute man, the wastrel.  In an iron mask, not showing his true self, pretending to be one thing while being another.  It is a term you often find in old blue grass music.

The woman of whom Dylan is singing is, I guess, higher class than he, and he’s unable to follow her – that is the rub.  So when she is tricked away by the Rounder, he can’t follow.

“Well, I watched you slowly disappear down into the officers’ club
I would’ve followed you in the door but I didn’t have a ticket stub”

So either she’s moved up in the world and he’s tagging along – or she was always from that world.  Maybe she was a film star, or something…  But he certainly wasn’t…

"Oh, the only decent thing I did when I worked as a postal clerk"
Was to haul your picture down off the wall 
        near the cage where I used to work
Was I a fool or not to try to protect your identity?
You looked a little burned out, my friend, 
        I thought it might be up to me"

Put another way, “I’m just a regular guy trying to help you – but if you go back to your old world, beware, because there are some tricky guys out there.”

“Well, I met somebody face to face and I had to remove my hat
She’s everything I need and love but I can’t be swayed by that”

The working man, doffing his cap.with the everyday philosophy of the man of the road.

We heard the Sermon on the Mount and I knew it was too complex
It didn’t amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects
When you bite off more than you can chew you pay the penalty
Somebody’s got to tell the tale, I guess it must be up to me

As for the rest of the crew, the suspicion that they are the sophisticates, and the singer is just the postman comes with the names…

“Well, Dupree came in pimpin’ tonight to the Thunderbird Café”

There are, incidentally, Thunderbird Cafes everywhere

“So go on, boys, and play your hands, life is a pantomime
The ringleaders from the county seat 
        say you don’t have all that much time
And the girl with me behind the shades, she ain’t my property
One of us has got to hit the road, 
        I guess it must be up to me”

The ol Rounder will hit the road not the sophisticate.

As the song ends we have the ultimate Dylan farewell – I don’t want to print those lines as I don’t want to spoil it for you if you haven’t yet heard the song..  It is “And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured” only with even greater feeling.

We touch these people and know a little of their lives… this is the short story form in literature transmuted into a popular song, and it is brilliant.

How could this recording have been made, and then just left?   For anyone else it would be the summit of a career.  For Dylan it is an out-take.  He has never performed it in public.  It just is.

And it kills me every time I have the strength to put it on.  All that talent; the recording cast aside.

Which takes us on to Buckets of Rain  the penultimate  track song to be written for Blood on the Tracks, the final song on the record.  In a constructional sense I am reminded of John Wesley Harding which ends with Down Along the Cove and I’ll be your Baby Tonight, two songs which really don’t have too much (if anything at all) to do with the rest of the album).  Here on Blood on the Tracks, we get a plaintive reflective love song, and a 12 bar blues.

But there is more, for Dylan does like to throw in something different at the end, and this song certainly is different from what has gone before.  Indeed Dylan treats it as different.  He once played it as an opener at a concert on November 18 1990 but that was that – it was different enough to leave alone otherwise.

But maybe he became fully aware that the song’s music comes pretty much directly from Bottle of Wine by Tom Paxton, a very well known song in folk circles which opens…

Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine
When you gonna let me get sober?
Let me alone, let me go home
Let me go back to start over

Ramblin’ around this dirty old town
Singin’ for nickels and dimes
Times getting tough, I ain’t got enough
To buy a little bottle of wine

It is indeed possible to write a whole piece without realising that the song is lifted from elsewhere.  It is only when someone plucks up the courage to tell you…

“Bottle of Wine” is today treated as a rather quaint song which everyone can join in.

Pain in my head and bugs in my bed
Pants are so old that they shine
Out on the street tell the people I meet
“Won’tcha buy me a bottle of wine?”

being completely lost on those who engage in such activity.   It is desperate stuff made to sound jolly.

Dylan of course took the music elsewhere with a lighter shade of lyric, with lines like

Like your smile and your fingertips

and then wakes us up suddenly with

Everything about you is bringing me misery.

Indeed the first verse spells out the contrast very clearly…

Buckets of rain
Buckets of tears
Got all them buckets comin’ out of my ears
Buckets of moonbeams in my hand
You got all the love
Honey baby, I can stand

Thus we actually have the man who sees the world passing by and accepts it, changing himself as each situation demands, and thus losing himself in the world around him.

I been meek
And hard like an oak
I seen pretty people disappear like smoke
Friends will arrive, friends will disappear
If you want me
Honey baby, I’ll be here

But always we have this two way affair of delight and anguish

I like your smile
And your fingertips
Like the way that you move your lips
I like the cool way you look at me
Everything about you is bringing me misery

Quite what the red wagon and bike have to do with anything I am not sure but the ending is upbeat.

I like the way you love me strong and slow
I’m takin’ you with me
Honey baby, when I go

In a sense it is a summation of much that has gone before – the two sides of a love affair, the love, the despair, the ups and downs and ultimately as it is all over, the determination to pick oneself up again and move on.   This time, unlike the time he thought about missing the new woman when she left, he’s taking charge.  It is HIM, the singer, who is taking the woman when HE leaves.  He’s back on track.  It’s a summing up.  Time to move on.

“Life is sad, life is a bust, all you can do is do what you must,” isn’t much to say but it is something after all the turmoil.  After all, not everyone makes it through such a dark night.

There is that plaintive last line though, “can’t you tell” as if after all this he still can’t read people aright.  But that too is how it goes.  Nothing shakes your faith in people like a divorce.

Musically, the song is another one which is recorded with open tuning – which means the guitar is retuned away from the normal tuning of the strings.  It gives a different flavour to the sound, and a chance once more to play with those odd chords that we have noted on the way through the album.

As I say, Dylan was left with just one song to write for the album, “Meet me in the morning” and it is interesting to see that he wrote the complex and long songs first, ending with the two simple pieces – a song based on “Bottle of Wine” – a simple piece of folk if ever there was one – and the other a standard 12 bar blues.

By the end of his writing surge in 1974, all the large complex work had gone.  He was tidying up the bits and pieces in his head, and wrote music to fit.

So with this song, musically the year was almost over, and with one more composition the whole album could be considered done and dusted.  All that was left was to select the order of tracks on the LP.

The intersection mentioned in the song, 56th and Wabasha, apparently does not exist.  Which may, or may not, sum it all up.

And there we had it.  The album quite a few people feel was / is the best ever Dylan album. But Bob what did he think?

Untold Dylan

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Tombstone Blues (1965) part XII

by Jochen Markhorst

XII        The malicious nightingale

 “In general, the inhabitants of Göttingen are divided into students, professors, philistines and cattle, which classes are nothing less than strictly separated. The cattle class is the most important. The city itself is lovely and most pleasing to look upon with your back turned to it.” (The Harz Journey, 1826)

One of the greatest Jewish poets of the nineteenth century, the German Heinrich Heine, is in more ways than one Dylan’s artistic soulmate. Both, of course, have an admirable talent for making great emotions small and are equally moving with their ability to express private suffering poetically (lovesickness, feeling displaced) – but so do dozens of other word artists. More exclusive with both poets is the sardonic side; the casual sarcasm, as in the above quote, for example. And the dead-pan cynicism with which sung values such as “friendship” or “beauty” are shattered is another Common Denominator. One of Heine’s nicknames fits the Dylan of the mid-sixties perfectly: the malicious nightingale. As does a stylistic tool that characterises Heine: the ironic point.

The ironic point is usually a closing verse line or a concluding quatrain that destroys expectations by ending the preceding lofty, sentimental or melancholy lines with an inappropriate platitude, with a dry comic footnote or with a vulgarity;

When you become my married wife,
You’ll be my envied treasure;
You’ll have the very merriest life,
With nothing but joy and pleasure. 

And if the very devil you raise,
I’ll bear it in silent sorrow;
But if you fail my verse to praise,
I’ll be divorced o’ the morrow.

(Book of Songs, poem 72, transl. Charles G. Leland)

Dylan uses it with some regularity. Don’t follow leaders / Watch the parking meters from “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, albeit only a oneliner, is one of the most famous; the Basement gem “Nothing Was Delivered” has the very Heine-like chorus

Nothing is better, nothing is best
Take care of your health and get plenty of rest;

… and the punch line of “She Belongs To Me” (And for Christmas, buy her a drum) banalises in one fell swoop the previous elegant, exalted eulogies and stately honours (“bow to her on Sunday”).

“Tombstone Blues” concludes with a similar kicker as Heine’s poem 72, “When you become my married wife”:

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

Three verses suggest that the narrator wants to express feelings of tenderness and concern for the well-being of a dear lady, only to torpedo that expectation in the closing line with a vile put-down. Heine can be proud of his twentieth-century torchbearer.

Yet that vile ironic point is not the most remarkable thing about this final quatrain; the suddenly tilted narrative perspective is. In the last verse of Dylan’s magnum opus (or rather: one of Dylan’s magna opera) “Desolation Row”, on this same record, we see the same plot twist: suddenly, out of nowhere, a “you” appears, tilting the narrative perspective of the whole text. For eleven quatrains we have followed the monologue intérieur of an associative mind, which now suddenly turns out to be not a stream of consciousness at all, not the flow of thought of the narrator, but a dramatic monologue, a monologue of a – not too gallant – sensitive person addressed to an otherwise invisible lady.

It is a second argument to see “Tombstone Blues” as a preliminary study for “Desolation Row”. The trick to unite unrelated protagonists for one verse is a first trigger. Ma Rainey and Beethoven, Galileo and Delilah, Jezebel the nun and Jack the Ripper… Just like the poet for “Desolation Row” creates unlikely duos like Cinderella and Romeo, Einstein and a jealous monk, and the Phantom of the Opera and Casanova.

In both songs the resulting alienation is similarly deepened. By putting contextless quotes in the mouths of the surprising protagonists, for example. Everybody’s shouting “Which Side Are You On?” is such a contextless quote from “Desolation Row”, with the same alienating quality as here the Commander-in-Chief’s “Death to all those who would wimper and cry”. Just as unusual attributes are used in both songs with an identical distorting effect. Einstein is sniffing drainpipes, the Commander-in-Chief drops a barbell. The superhumans are working with heart-attack machines, Gypsy Davey handles a blowtorch.

Size (657 words and 570 words) is also similar, as is the structure; “Tombstone Blues” consists of sections of twelve lines (two verses plus chorus), “Desolation Row” also consists of sections of twelve lines, but the chorus there has been replaced by a slightly varying chorus line (on or from or into Desolation Row, among others).

However, the last trigger in favour of seeing “Tombstone Blues” as a preliminary study for “Desolation Row” remains the most decisive: that unexpected change of perspective, the completely surprising introduction of a “you”. It seems that the poet himself has been surprised too – in this preliminary study it does tilt the text, but it is tilted nowhere. “Tombstone Blues” does not suddenly offer a narrative, the previous, unrelated verses do not suddenly take on, in retrospective, a red thread. But when Dylan writes “Desolation Row” shortly after this, he does remember the power of this unexpected change of perspective, and has found a function for it as a by-catch. Now the narrator says, introducing the “you” in passing:

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame

… which opens the gate to understand the previous 585 words as the content of that letter. The narrator has encrypted the contents (I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name), but now those seemingly unrelated verses have been given a red thread – being the content of one letter, that is.

This will not work with “Tombstone Blues”. Here the narrator regrets that he was unable to write a melody that would have helped the “you”. Even if we understand “melody” figuratively (as an “expression of admiration”, perhaps, or as an “articulation of consolation”), the change of perspective does not bring a connecting, uniform line in the previous verses; they remain incoherent tableaux.

Missed opportunity, the novice Beat Poet Dylan might think, looking back. Kerouac’s ferocious poems still have a thread (describing a journey, or a delirium, or impressions from a park bench) and even Burroughs’ experimental cut-up novels still have an overarching narrative. Dylan, therefore, creates his own re-enactment and builds another, now perfect, masterpiece with “Desolation Row”. Perhaps he has indeed read Heine in the meantime:

Thy letter was a flash of lightning,
Illuming night with sudden glow;
It served with dazzling force to show
How deep my misery is, how fright'ning.

To be continued. Next up: Tombstone Blues part XIII: I walk 47 miles of barbed wire (finale)

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (German)

Untold Dylan

We are approaching 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

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As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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By Tony Attwood

• Let the Light shine on me
• Make me a pallet on the floor
• Deportees

“Let the Light shine on me” is one of those traditional gospel / blues songs that has meandered through the traditions, and on its way picked up variations so great that on occasion you can be forgiven for thinking that you are no longer listening to the same song.

We know by it was recorded by The Wiseman Quartet in 1923, by Ernest Phipps in 1928 and by Blind Willie Johnson in 1929.

Here’s “Let your light shine on me” by Blind Willie Johnson.  The website this comes from from gives the composers as George Nelson Allen, Blind Willie Johnson, Thomas Shepherd.  If you start playing this and think, ok, but these very slow blues are not your thing, I’d urge you to stay with this.  It does things you just don’t expect from a late 1920s song.

Over the years the name varied: “Let Your Light Shine on Me” became “Shine On Me”, “Let It Shine on Me”, “Light from the Lighthouse” and “Light from Your Lighthouse”.

The chorus…

Let it shine on me, let it shine on me,
Let the light from your lighthouse shine on me.
Let it shine on me, let it shine on me,
Let the light from your lighthouse shine on.

relates to Matthew 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”  I am told that “Lighthouse” was a popular metaphor for heavenly light.

In more recent eras Lead Belly recorded it, and then in England the skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan sang it.

Bob Dylan’s official site doesn’t have the song listed as far as I can see, but it has so many titles I might have missed it – but here it is…

https://youtu.be/LYvgTtOBPFI

Make me a pallet on the floor

This is another song with different titles – but all of them have “Pallet on the Floor” as part of it.  A pallet in this regard is a bed.

Generally it is thought to have emerged from New Orelans in the late 19th century, and was certainly in print as sheet music in the first decade of the 20th century.  WC Handy later modified the song at it became “Atlanta Blues” about a decade later.  It was still a popular song to perform and record into the 1930s.

And so it evolved over time…

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7uelkc

Until we get to Bob Dylan.  I’m not sure what the picture below relates to.

by Jochen Markhorst

The story so far

XI         Mozart’s weather chart

Where Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped their bedroll
Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole
And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul
To the old folks home and the college

The release of Bruce Springsteen’s Letter To You (2020) is introduced by a kind of documentary of the same name, a making of spiced up with archival material and decorated abundantly with many atmospheric images of a musing Bruce, a philosophising Bruce, a smiling Bruce and many more Bruce, all in moody black and white. It’s perhaps a bit too smug and overly promotional, but what the heck – the fans are happy. And the album is good; strong songs, recorded live in a home-studio by a great band.

All the songs are discussed, and the Dylan fan opens his ears at the excursions into “Song For Orphans”, the most Dylanesque song on the album, and perhaps Springsteen’s most Dylanesque song at all.  It is one of the album’s three old, dusted songs, still from 1972, from the pre-E Street period, with lyrics that are indeed stylistically unmistakable written in the vicinity of songs like “Blinded By The Light” and “Spirit In The Night”;

Well the missions are filled with hermits, they're looking for a friend
The terraces are filled with cat-men just looking for a way in
Those orphans jumped on silver mountains lost in celestial alleyways
They wait for that old tramp Dog Man Moses, he takes in all the strays

… to quote just one random verse (out of seven). It is one of the songs, says The Boss, that “hold a very warm place in my heart”. And a song that moves him to look back with the same amazement as the amazement with which an older Dylan looks back on songs like “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”. “The songs from 1972… were and remain a mystery to me,” Springsteen says. “They were just the way I wrote back then. A lot of words.” An identical amazement and a similar choice of words as Dylan’s retrospect in the interview for Rolling Stone, November 2004.: “All those early songs were almost magically written. Ah… Darkness at the break of noon, shadows even the silver spoon, a handmade blade, the child’s balloon… Try to sit down and write something like that.”

But even more noteworthy is the anecdote Springsteen tells around this particular song. With a sense of self-mockery he remembers a phone call from Clive Davis:

“Matter of fact, Clive Davis, the man who signed me to Columbia Records with John Hammond, called me briefly after our record Greetings from Asbury Park was released and said someone had called him and told him if I wasn’t careful, I was going to use up the entire English language.

And he said that that was Bob Dylan.

Now, Bob was always my mentor and the brother that I never had, so I took these words quite seriously.”

… Dylan warns Springsteen being too wordy, that he too fast uses up the entire language. At first glance, that seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Demonstrated by the study of the Italian music data company Musixmatch, publishing the findings regarding the wordiest artists. Dylan stands there, towering high above the average songwriter, in fourth place with a vocabulary of 4,883 words, well behind “winner” Eminem with a vocabulary of 8,818 words – the entire Top 3 consists, not surprisingly, of rap artists. But still almost double the average vocabulary of an oeuvre, which is 2,677 words.

It is a bit flawed though, the research method and the resulting fourth place therefrom. The researchers, research engineer Varun Jewalikar and intern Nishant Verma, limited themselves to the “100 densest songs” of the investigated artists, in order to keep it more relevant statistically (until 2020 Dylan has written more than 600 songs, Eminem has released 367 songs). And for copyright reasons, Springsteen’s songs are not in Musixmatch’s database, so The Boss’s oeuvre did not participate. The counter for officially released songs of The Boss is at the end of 2020, including Letter To You, at 340, and he surely would make it to the Top 10. His catalogue has, after all, even more words than he can contain himself; Springsteen has been using a teleprompter on stage since the beginning of the twenty-first century, which he visibly needs for word explosions like “Jungleland”, but bizarrely also for “Born To Run”.

Still, on reflection, Dylan’s message to Springsteen may indeed very well be a well-intentioned tip from a songwriter who has grown wiser through trial and error. This anecdote dates back to somewhere in early 1973 (Greetings From Ashbury Park was released on 5 January 1973), so still in Dylan’s long period of creative emptiness, the years he sits on the waterfront, watching the river flow, waiting for the inspiration to paint his masterpiece. And apparently the world’s best songwriter blames this creative emptiness partly on his lavish, uninhibited use of the English language, during the mercury years.

“Tombstone Blues” is a textbook example of that excessive exuberance. The lyrics have 440 words and consist of 259 different words; that’s a ratio that even Eminem in his most eloquent raps does not reach. Words such as endorse, knits, swagger, barbell and blowtorch are not only new in Dylan’s oeuvre, but also completely unusual in popular music at all.

So far, anyway. Just like Dylan opened the door for Lennon to use “clown” (“Dylan had used it, so I thought it was all right”), and just as geek and freaks only penetrate the rock vocabulary after “Ballad Of A Thin Man”, or like after “Highway 61 Revisited” bloody noses are acceptable, “Tombstone Blues” enriches the rhyme dictionary of the song poets with – for example – blowtorch. Wilco, Glenn Frey, “The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch” by the extraordinary word and music artist Eno (1973), Elvis Costello’s “Other Side Of Summer” (1991), and Bruce Springsteen of course, although he uses it as a verb, in the beautiful, moody “Silver Palomino” on Devils & Dust (2005):

Summer drought come hard that year
Our herd grazed the land so bare
Me and my dad had to blowtorch the thorns off the prickly pear
And mother, your hand slipped from my hair

In the same text words like sallow, pradera, serrata, scrub pine and riata stand out too – in the 21st century Springsteen no longer deals all too conscientiously with the heartfelt advice of his “mentor and brother that I never had”, not to use up all the words in the dictionary.

But true: “bedroll”, “flagpole”, “Ma Rainey”, “tuba” and “Beethoven” have not yet been used by The Boss. “Mozart” has, though;

Some silicone sister with her manager's mister told me I got what it takes
She said, I'll turn you on, sonny, 
   to something strong if you play that song with the funky break
And Go-Cart Mozart was checkin' out the weather chart to see 
   if it was safe to go outside
And little Early-Pearly came by in her curly-wurly and asked me 
   if I needed a ride
("Blinded By The Light", 1973)

…and quite a lot of other words.

To be continued. Next up: Tombstone Blues part XII: The malicious nightingale

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (German)

Untold Dylan

We are approaching 2000 articles on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

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As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

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By Tony Attwood

The first article in this series is at Dylan obscuranti: the new album  So, rather obviously, this is the second track from my invented album which Aaron is kindly creating on our YouTube channel

It is an album of recordings by Bob that you might possibly have missed along the way but which are deemed (by me, doing my imperious, “I know everything” bit) to be beyond genius.

Today’s piece is Tomorrow is a long time.

And because the series is only just starting I’ve got a chance to modify the approach a little, by including in this article some of the comments very kindly made by readers on this site about the song.

My original review of the song is here, and the first recording below is from 12 April 1963, in front of a perfectly quiet audience.  None of your shouting out names of songs, just attentiveness for a great young artist.  It is so wonderful to hear the way Bob was received.

It was written in the magical compositional year of 1962.  You can see a list of all the songs written by Dylan in that year here in chronological order.  “Lost love” was a favourite theme of Bob’s from start and during 1962 he wrote

• Corrina Corrina (Lost love)
• Honey just allow me one more chance (Lost love)
• Rocks and Gravel (lost love, moving on)
• Down the Highway (Lost love, Song of Leaving)
• Tomorrow is a long time (Lost love)

in quick succession – they are numbers 10 to 17 on the list of songs in the order of writing showing that it was a theme that concerned him for a while.  He then left the notion of “lost love” as a song concept and added just one more (Kingsport Town) towards the end of the year’s writing.

I really do love the chronological list which we’ve developed on this site, first because I don’t think before we came along anyone else had done anything quite so comprehensive, and second because it gives me a context – even when there is no artistic or creative context to hold onto.  Just looking at the songs Dylan wrote immediately before this masterpiece, the only thing I can see as a fulsome antecedent is Blowing in the Wind.  Everything else is exploring different avenues.

Thus this just pops up, as a new song coming out of the four preceding explorations of the theme.

It is also one of those songs that, at the time it was written was largely ignored, not appearing until “Greatest Hits Volume II” in 1971 and then on the triple album “Masterpieces”.   But we do have this recording…

This recording is so perfect it can’t go any further.  Everything else is a reworking going nowhere.  Or at least that was what I thought when I first heard it, but of course, readers kindly write in and Jimmy, responding to the original review on this site, noted that “Ian & Sylvia did a gorgeous version on their second album, Four Strong Winds.”

https://youtu.be/Y89rmBlNAx4

By Arron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

It being the time of year for being jolly and silly (at least in the parts of the world where we are), Aaron has come up with a new series for Untold Dylan based around songs that have the same name as a Dylan song.

So, since we are currently looking at “Blood on the tracks” in the “All Directions at Once” series we’ll start with “You’re A Big Girl Now” which was recently considered here.

Now the idea of this new series is that having revisited Bob’s song we then present one or two songs by others with the same name, with a short paragraph about the track/band.  And if anything interesting turns up, we just follow that lead and see where it takes us.

Also, just to ensure that no one takes this too seriously, after each track we each give the track a score out of 5 with the scale something like this

• 5 – Amazing : As good as Dylan’s song
• 4 – Great piece of music
• 3 – Decent enough
• 2 – OK I suppose if you like that sort of thing
• 1 – Oh for goodness sake turn it off

OK, here we go…

The Stylistics – You’re a Big Girl Now

Released in 1971, (so it could be argued that Bob stole the title from this track) this was the Stylistics’ first single, although it was not a big hit. The band would achieve considerable success later in the 70s with singles such as “Betcha By Golly Wow” and “You Make Me Feel Brand New.”

Aaron’s view:  As for this song, I’d never heard it before and I really enjoyed it. The chorus has a nice melody and lead singer Russell  Thompkins jr has an amazing voice when he sings the verses solo. It’s brought down slightly by the “talky” bit towards the end, I wasn’t a fan of that bit.

Tony’s thought: “Arghhh…   I find the phrase ‘You’re a big girl now’ pejorative enough, but when followed by “no more Daddy’s little girl” I really had to work hard to avoid turning it off.  Agree totally about the talking part at the end.   Why do people put talking parts into songs?  Do some people really like this?

But I had a vague remembrance of the Stylistics so I went looking and found this… not really my style but better than  “You’re a big girl now”

• Aaron’s score – 3.5 out of 5 (docked half a point for the end bit).
• Tony’s score – Minus 10 out of five.

The Bell Notes: You’re a big girl now

The Bell Notes were an early American Rock n Roll band from New York. The single was released in 1959.

Aaron: Again, I’d never heard this one before. Nice little rocking number with a fairly wild (for the time) guitar solo. It’s a bit light weight but still most enjoyable!

Tony: This is very much of the type for 1959 with the deep bass voice coming in with the occasional line.  Reminds me a little bit of the Coasters, and is the sort of thing that Chubby Checker was doing the twist to a year later.

Hearing this track set me off on the sort of musical journey that I adore… finding out who the band were, and what they got up to.  And as ever there is a little nugget to be found because the band played in a bar that Steven Tyler (of Aerosmith) played in, in his youth.  Tyler also covered the Bell Notes song “I’ve had it”.

https://youtu.be/F-ut2rAx14I

Allegedly the recording session for that track cost $50. It got to number six on the Billboard charts.    They had other minor hits, before breaking up in 1962.

https://youtu.be/MNPnt19Yq-s

This is a reworking of a African American song from the 19th century, maybe even earlier.   Shortening bread is a bread made of corn meal and/or flour and lard.

This is the thing I love doing – tracing songs back, especially when as a result I learn more about bits of history from beyond my own country.   One article I read in putting this little piece together told me “During the Jim Crow period a typical American kitchen had many products with images that portrayed blacks in negative ways; these included packaging for cereal, syrup, pancake mix, and detergent; salt and pepper shakers; string holders; cookbooks; hand towels; placemats; grocery list reminders; and, wall hangings. Any object found in a kitchen could be-and often was-transformed into anti-black propaganda.”

And (and here I hope American readers will excuse my ignorance – I am British and although I know some American history, my knowledge is very limited, as American history was not much taught in schools in rural England when I grew up, and I include this for anyone like me who is unfamiliar with the term) I also read that a  Jim Crow law was a law that enforced racial segregation in the South from the 1870s through to the civil rights movement.

Jim Crow was taken from the name of a minstrel routine (Jump Jim Crow) and became a derogatory phrase for Afro Americans.  So I learned something.

Did the Bell Notes know they were being racist in singing that song?  I doubt it.  The song was certainly around in England in the 1950s, and I doubt many people knew of its origins or meanings then.

• Aaron’s score – 3 out of 5.
• Tony’s score – 4 out of 5.