Bob Dylan All the Songs
Page 13
When Suze listens to Dylan’s songs in his early albums, she remembers who he was: “It’s like reading a diary. A private smile because no one knows about that, a laugh because that was really funny, or a tear because it was so hard. One thing I know: Bob uses controversy to feed his art.”14 Yet in “Boots of Spanish Leather” he uses no controversies. He simply writes one of his most beautiful love songs. And, as he explained himself to Studs Terkel in May 1963, “This is [the story of a] girl [who] leaves a boy.”20
Production
While listening to “Boots of Spanish Leather,” the similarity with “Girl from the North Country” is striking: same atmosphere, same chords, same subject. Although some detect some borrowing of a melody from “Scarborough Fair,” apart from a parallel with the color of some chords, the inspiration does not go further. However, it is quite surprising that Dylan did not hesitate to borrow from himself. Between “Girl from the North Country” and “Boots of Spanish Leather,” the resemblance is obvious. Besides a difference in tone, the tempo is around 102 bpm, and the harmonic grid is very close. Dylan, inspired and devastated by the departure of Suze, expresses his feelings by choosing a very evocative sound palette, filled with nostalgia and delicacy. One might think that these two songs are one. “Boots of Spanish Leather” could have been included on the album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
Bob stands out once again with his excellent finger-picking. For the skeptical, just listen to his live performance recorded on April 13, 1963, at Town Hall in New York to answer all objections. This time the harmonica is absent: only his voice reverberates and, backed by his Gibson, is sufficient to carry this beautiful song.
With “Boots of Spanish Leather,” Dylan created one of the biggest successes of the album. It was the first song to be recorded on August 6 at the first session for the album. He performed it only once during that day, but it was only the next day, August 7, that he immortalized the song with a single take.
COVERS
“Boots of Spanish Leather” was recorded by twenty artists including Richie Havens (Electric Haven, 1966), Joan Baez (Any Day Now, 1968), Dan McCafferty (Dan McCafferty, 1975), and Patti Smith (Bowery Ballroom, 2010). Nanci Griffith sang a lovely version from her album Other Voices, Other Rooms, released in 1993, in which Bob Dylan himself plays the harmonica. The song can also be heard in Jobs, Joshua Michael Stern’s 2013 film about Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple.
When The Ship Comes In
Bob Dylan / 3:18
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: October 23, 1963
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
Joan Baez states that Bob Dylan wrote “When the Ship Comes In” in August 1963 after a small incident when they were checking in at a hotel front desk. Dylan was snubbed by the hotel clerk, who refused to give him a room due to his disheveled appearance, while Joan Baez received every courtesy from the employee. Joan Baez: “[T]his scruffy-looking guy I had with me, the people behind the desk were having none of it. And they said they didn’t have a room. And of course I was livid, and pulled all my punches and got him a room. And he wrote a song that was devastating, ‘When the Ship Comes In.’ I could see him hanging them all. He’d never sort of fess up to that sort of thing, but that’s what it seemed like to me, working out whatever feelings he might have had about not being given a room in a brilliant song. In one night.”6
With “When the Ship Comes In,” Dylan wrote one of his most powerful lyrics. The text is perhaps about revenge, but it is also a diatribe against injustice, which announced the end of an era and the birth of a new one, the apocalypse in its first meaning. It is also one of the songs in Dylan’s repertoire most inspired by biblical narratives. In the first verse—“Oh the time will come up / When the winds will stop / And the breeze will cease to be breathin’ / Like the stillness in the wind / ’Fore the hurricane begins / The hour when the ship comes in”—Dylan is obviously inspired by chapter 7, verse 1 of the book of Revelation: “And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.” Similarly, are there parallels between this ship—“the ship will hit”—and Noah’s ark, built on God’s command just before His intended punishment for the wickedness of men? As Robert Shelton has noted, both are symbols of “universal salvation.”7 The imagery of the Bible is obvious in the description about the crossing of the Red Sea (“And like Pharoah’s tribe / They’ll be drowned in the tide”) and Goliath defeated by David.
Production
The lyrics of “When the Ship Comes In” are similar to a sermon, though it seems that in Dylan’s mind it was not exactly that either. Just listen to the demo made for Witmark & Sons, where the piano accompaniment with a left pounding hand executes “the pump,” giving the music a fast, swinging feeling, closer to an energetic gospel than to the expected traditional protest song. Similarly, the disc version, played on the guitar at a relatively fast tempo, has a kind of cold rage, a feeling produced by the attitude of the receptionist at the hotel, according to the statement by Joan Baez. And Dylan once again uses his immense talent by transposing a banal event into a biblical diatribe! Strumming the guitar and with solo harmonica (G major), he performed this song with metronomic regularity. Furthermore, in a sound quite close to The Times They Are A-Changin’, Dylan did not hesitate to adapt the melodic line of the chorus to the ends of the second, fourth, sixth, and last verses. He recorded it on Wednesday, October 23. Four takes were necessary after two false starts and one discarded take.
Dylan and Joan Baez performed the song together for the first time in public at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Joan Baez improvises as a vocalist… Dylan performed the song solo at Carnegie Hall on October 26.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Bob Dylan performed this song again during Live Aid on July 13, 1985, accompanied by Keith Richards and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones. Watching the video clip, a little discomfort is noticed at 2:51, at end of the harmonica solo, as a doubt about how to continue the song seems to come over our three guitarists.
The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
Bob Dylan / 5:47
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: October 23, 1963
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
This song is based on a factual account of the killing of Hattie Carroll. At about 1 a.m. on February 9, 1963, William Devereux “Billy” Zantzinger entered the ballroom of the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife and, using a toy cane, drunkenly assaulted three employees. Among them was a black barmaid, Hattie Carroll, whom he had previously insulted because she was black and because she had been slow to bring him a glass of bourbon. Hattie Carroll, fifty-one years old, died eight hours later at Mercy Hospital on February 9. Shortly before the tragedy at the Emerson Hotel, Zantzinger had already drunkenly assaulted several employees of a prestigious Baltimore restaurant. He was arrested and charged with murder. During the autopsy the doctors discovered that the victim suffered from atherosclerosis, and the cause of the death was a brain hemorrhage (presumably caused by insults rather than by the hit of the cane). Zantzinger’s defense succeeded in reducing the charge to manslaughter, causing death without intention to kill. Zantzinger, a white, twenty-four-year-old “gentleman farmer” and son of a wealthy Maryland family, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with a fine of $125 for assault and the death of Hattie Carroll. He served his time in the Washington county jail and
not in the state prison, where he could have been a target for abuse in revenge. The sentence was handed down on August 28, 1963, the same day that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Bob Dylan, one of the celebrities in Washington, was revolted by the three-day trial for the death of a black barmaid. His feelings were shared by Reverend Jesse Jackson, who in one of his sermons states, “There is something wrong with our city when a white man can beat a colored woman to death and nobody raises a hand to stop him.”
After reading the press accounts about the conviction of Zantzinger, Dylan decided to write his feelings and resentment into a protest song about the case. “I wrote ‘Hattie Carroll’ in a small notebook in a restaurant on Seventh Avenue. There was a luncheonette place where we used to go all the time… a bunch of singers used to go in there,” he said in 1985.12 He wanted to speak out on behalf of all those who, like him, did not accept this tragedy. “I just let the story tell itself in that song,” he told Robert Hilburn in 2004. “Who wouldn’t be offended by some guy beating an old woman to death and just getting a slap on the wrist?”20
The song was influenced by Bertolt Brecht’s “Pirate Jenny” number from The Threepenny Opera, just like “Only a Pawn in Their Game.” “The set pattern to the song I think is based on Brecht, the ship, the Black Freighter,” he says in the Biograph notes.12 Curiously, Robert Shelton asserts that Dylan was inspired by the French poet François Villon. The song follows a drama that crescendos. “Take the rag away from your face / Now ain’t the time for your tears,” sings Dylan in the first three choruses, and then in the last, “Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears / Bury the rag deep in your face / For now’s the time for your tears.”
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” is one of the greatest protest songs by Bob Dylan, and also one of his favorites. In just under six minutes, he provides an implacable indictment against early 1960s America, condemning the benevolence of judges toward defendants when they are white.
Production
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” was the first song recorded on October 23. Only four takes were necessary to record the final master. This lament in three tempos, accompanied by a chorus, is strangely close in style to Dylan’s future “Mr. Tambourine Man” and has a surprising emotional strength from the first verse. With a discreet reverb on the voice, strumming guitar, and harmonica solo (E) full of feeling, Dylan plays again the card of sobriety. He treats carefully its effects, which can be seen from the third to the last verse (around 4:25), where he suddenly speeds up the tempo to enhance the judgment scene. Dylan kept a higher tempo for the live versions of the song as well.
THE ANGER OF ZANTZINGER
After his release from jail, William Zantzinger had a semi-peaceful life as a real estate agent in Maryland. He never forgave Bob Dylan for writing a song about the death of Hattie Carroll, telling Dylan biographer Howard Sounes, “I should have sued him and put him in jail.” William Zantzinger died in January 2009.
Restless Farewell
Bob Dylan / 5:31
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: October 31, 1963
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Levine
Genesis and Lyrics
The recording sessions for the album The Times They Are A-Changin’ ended on October 24, 1963, two days before Bob Dylan’s concert at Carnegie Hall. The following day, Andrea Svedberg wrote a scathing article about Dylan in Newsweek magazine, uncovering a number of inconsistencies about his past. The songwriter was unjustly accused of having plagiarized Blowin’ in the Wind from a New Jersey high school student named Lorre Wyatt. He told the media that “I’ve lost contact with them [my parents] for years,” while he had flown them in to see the Carnegie Hall concert.
Bob Dylan did not like the attempt by a Newsweek reporter to discredit his work, and, most importantly, that she had also investigated his past. Thus, he added a ninth stanza to the short text on his life that he had printed in the booklet of the finished recorded album under the name “11 Outlined Epitaphs.”
In the process, he also wrote a new song in reaction to his trouble with the press and decided to include it on the album, probably in place of “Lay Down Your Weary Tune.” Thus, on October 31, Dylan returned to the studio to record “Restless Farewell.”
“Oh a false clock tries to tick out my time / To disgrace, distract, and bother me / And the dirt of gossip blows into my face / And the dust of rumors covers me,” wrote Dylan. But at the same time, as the title “Restless Farewell” indicates, Bob Dylan realized that years have passed and times have changed. “Oh all the money that in my whole life I did spend / Be it mine right or wrongfully / I let it slip gladly past the hands of my friends / To tie up the time most forcefully,” he sings in the first verse. Then, in the second part of the first chorus: “And the corner sign / Says it’s closing time / So I’ll bid farewell and be down the road.” In other words, a page is being turned—the one on which the folksinger emulated Woody Guthrie. Another page opens and remains to be written…
Production
In the last session on Thursday, October 31, the final song of the album, “Restless Farewell,” was recorded in two hours and nine takes, the last one being the master. Dylan took inspiration from the seventeenth-century traditional Scotch-Irish song “The Parting Glass,” both for the musical approach and the literary form. But his creative force always makes the difference, and he created an original work of his own. To reinforce this traditional spirit, Tom Wilson chooses a sound similar to “North Country Blues.” The guitar part is excellent, the tempo totally free. For the first time, his harmonica playing (in A) has a true blues tone and enhances the ambience of its “roots.” His voice, supported by a fairly strong reverb, surprises by the impression of weariness that comes out. Dylan, an artist with a heightened sensitivity, has probably exaggerated the effect of the Newsweek article, which nevertheless led to a kind of introspection. On the version made in 1995 for 80 Years My Way, a television special celebrating American crooner Frank Sinatra’s eightieth birthday, Dylan sings it softly as a lullaby. This song has a real resonance for him, and the melody “Restless Farewell” opens for him the way to a different perception of reality.
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
From the first notes of “Restless Farewell,” we can distinguish in the first guitar chord a voice that seems to say, “Four.” Is it the end of a countdown given by the sound engineers or Tom Wilson himself?
The Times They Are A-Changin’ Outtakes
The songs recorded and subsequently dropped during the recording sessions of The Times They Are A-Changin’ have now been released both on Biograph and The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991, with the exception of “Only a Hobo.” These songs, rejected during the final selection of the tracks for the third album, are nonetheless fully characteristic of the artistic process of the songwriter, mixing poetry, mysticism, and romance. The strong influence of the British ballads is noticable.
Seven Curses
Bob Dylan / 3:49
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: August 6, 1963 / Producer: Tom Wilson / Sound Engineers: Stanley Tonkel and Pete Dauria / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 2) / Release Date: March 26, 1991
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” Bob Dylan used the main theme of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure for this song, though the maiden is not about to be hanged, but rather her father is for stealing a stallion. Reilly’s daughter is at the mercy of a judge and tries to buy her father’s freedom, but the gold she offers does not buy Reilly’s life: “Gold will never free your father / The price, my dear, i
s you instead.” “Seven Curses” is one of Dylan’s greatest songs from his early career. The lyrics were drawn from an old folk song, “The Maid Freed from the Gallows.” This was recorded in 1939 by Leadbelly as “The Gallis Pole,” and later, in 1970, by Led Zeppelin under the title “Gallows Pole” on the album Led Zeppelin III. The source of “Seven Curses” might also have been “Anathea,” performed at the time by Judy Collins, herself inspired by “The Maid Freed from the Gallows.”
Bob Dylan recorded an early version of “Seven Curses” as a demo for Witmark & Sons in May 1963, and subsequently a second version for Columbia on August 6, during the recording sessions of The Times They Are A-Changin’. Three takes, including two false starts, were made. The third was released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 in March 1991. Bob Dylan performed “Seven Curses” for the first time in concert at Town Hall on April 12, 1963, and a second time at his concert at Carnegie Hall on October 26, 1963.