Bob Dylan All the Songs

by Philippe Margotin

  Tom Wilson succeeded in giving, yet again, a different sound to Dylan’s guitar. Arpeggios played in D in open tuning sound rich and brilliant, and the E chords on his J-50 sound like a bumblebee and invite listening. Bob’s plaintive voice highlights each verse, giving it a melancholy tone.

  Lay Down Your Weary Tune

  Bob Dylan / 4:36

  Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: October 24, 1963 / Producer: Tom Wilson / Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria / Set Box: Biograph (CD 1) / Release Date: November 7, 1985

  FOR DYLANOLOGISTS

  The most famous version of “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” is credited to the Byrds. The most unusual is certainly by the 13th Floor Elevators, a Texan psychedelic band of the 1960s.

  In the liner notes to the Biograph compilation, Bob Dylan claims that he wrote “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” in the fall of 1963 during his stay in Joan Baez’s house near Big Sur, California, just after listening to an old Scottish ballad on a 78 rpm record. This beautiful song in A major begins with a chorus, which has given rise to many interpretations. It is certainly a milestone in Dylan’s career, and breaks with the tradition of topical songs deeply rooted in the work of folksingers to express Dylan’s own conception of mysticism. “Struck by the sounds before the sun / I knew the night had gone.” This is a metaphor—a mystical renaissance. God is in us; nature reflects God in every aspect. Hence, the parallel Dylan draws between the elements and musical instruments creating a magical symphony: “The morning breeze like a bugle blew / Against the drums of dawn.” The influence is evident of the poet and leader of the transcendentalist movement of the mid-nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson, for whom individualism must be inspired by nature and for whom “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

  “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” finds its origin in a Scottish ballad. “I couldn’t get it out of my head. There were no lyrics or anything, it was just a melody, had bagpipes and a lot of stuff in it… I don’t remember what the original record was, but this was pretty similar to that, the melody anyway.”12 Dylan also found inspiration in a traditional seventeenth-century English song, “The Water Is Wide.” With some imagination, bagpipes can almost be heard accompanying his singing. His strumming on his Gibson J-50 is compelling, despite a small tear at 3:45.

  Bob Dylan recorded “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” on October 24, 1963, in a single take during the recording sessions for The Times They Are A-Changin’. Curiously, the song was excluded from the third album, which did not, however, prevent him from performing it at Carnegie Hall on October 26, 1963. It was subsequently covered by the Byrds on their second album Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965).

  Paths Of Victory

  Bob Dylan / 3:17

  Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, piano, harmonica / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: August 12, 1963 / Producer: Tom Wilson / Sound Engineers: Stanley Tonkel and Pete Dauria / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 1) / Release Date: March 26, 1991

  Bob Dylan began writing “Paths of Victory” in autumn 1962. The song celebrates the freedom of the road and the power of friendship in the face of adversity. It also illustrates the enormous debt that the young artist and songwriter owes to his mentor, Woody Guthrie, even if the song is performed on the piano and not on the acoustic guitar. Initially, Dylan wanted to include the song on The Times They Are A-Changin’. Thereafter, the Broadside Singers, Odetta, and the Byrds included it in their repertoire.

  When he composed “Paths of Victory,” Dylan probably had in his mind “Palms of Victory,” also known as “Deliverance Will Come,” a gospel song written in 1836 by Rev. John B. Matthias, and Dylan’s source of inspiration for both the title and the melody. The interpretation is sound; the piano accompaniment and harmonica part are convincing, despite some false notes on the keyboard at about 1:33. Dylan delivers an inspired and dazzling vocal. It was recorded on August 12 at the beginning of the recording session. Just one take was needed.

  Eternal Circle

  Bob Dylan / 2:38

  Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: October 24, 1963 / Producer: Tom Wilson / Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 2) / Release Date: March 26, 1991

  The story: a singer performs a song, thinking that a girl in the audience is fascinated by him while she is actually fascinated by the song. The moral is that what matters is the song, not the singer.

  Bob Dylan wrote “Eternal Circle” during the summer of 1963 and played it for Tony Glover, one of his friends up in Minneapolis. Dylan subsequently recorded the tune on October 24. Four takes were needed on that day, the first of which may have been chosen for The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3.

  It seems that Dylan wanted to include “Eternal Circle” on his third album, The Times They Are A-Changin’. He recorded twelve takes over three recording sessions on August 7 and 12 and on October 24, which makes it the most polished song for the album! Despite these diligent efforts, the result was not up to his expectations: the guitar is very poorly tuned, his strumming marking the triple rhythm lacks rigor, and the whole performance is not convincing.

  Suze (The Cough Song)

  Bob Dylan / 1:59

  Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: October 24, 1963 / Producer: Tom Wilson / Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 2) / Release Date: March 26, 1991

  “Suze (The Cough Song)” is the first instrumental piece Bob Dylan recorded. It was not until 1969 that the piece was officially released on his LP Nashville Skyline under the title “Nashville Skyline Rag.” According to musicologist John Bauldie, who wrote the liner notes for the The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3, it “is reminiscent of a little tune called ‘Mexican Rag,’”1 recorded for Columbia in April 1928 by the country music duo Tom Darby and Jimmie Tarlton. The source of his inspiration is evident with only his harmonica playing and the lack of a vocal part making it different. The title “Suze” refers to Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend in the early sixties.

  The guitar part is played by finger-picking. The version, recorded in one take on October 24, is closer to a working piece than to a final tune. The result, although correct, lacks precision and rigor; an “unusual guitar doodle,” to quote John Bauldie. Moreover, Dylan had a sudden coughing fit at 1:30, which led him to ask Tom Wilson, his producer, to end the song with a fade-out. The atmosphere of the entire session is stress-free, but “Suze (The Cough Song)” did not make the cut.

  Percy’s Song

  Bob Dylan / 7:44

  Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: October 23, 1963 / Producer: Tom Wilson / Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria / Set Box: Biograph (CD 1) / Release Date: November 7, 1985

  This song relates the story of a man responsible for a fatal car accident and subsequently given a ninety-nine-year sentence in Joliet Prison, Illinois. The narrator, a friend of the detainee, considers the sentence too harsh. Having failed to convince the judge of this, he takes his guitar and sings, “Oh the Cruel Rain and the Wind.” Dylan made an implicit reference to a melodic air by his friend, the folksinger Paul Clayton, “The Wind and the Rain.”

  In the liner notes for the Biograph compilation in 1985, Dylan said, “Paul was just an incredible songwriter and singer. He must have known a thousand songs. I learned ‘Pay Day at Coal Creek’ and a bunch of other songs from him. We played on the same circuit and I traveled with him part of the time. When you’re listening to songs night after night, some of them rub off on you. ‘Don’t Think Twice’ was a riff that Paul had. And so was ‘Percy’s Song.’ Something I m
ight have written might have been a take off on ‘Hiram Hubbard,’ a Civil War song he used to sing, but I don’t know. A song like that would come to me because people were talking about the incident.”12 But in introducing the song for its only stage performance in Carnegie Hall on October 26, 1963, he gave a very different source for the inspiration: “Here’s a song I wrote. It’s about a friend of mine. It’s called Percy’s Song. And I took the tune from a song that a folksinger by the name of Paul Clayton sings, called ‘The Wind and the Rain…’”29 Who is right, the Dylan of 1963 or 1985?

  In listening to “Percy’s Song,” Dylan’s guitar finger-picking has never been as rhythmically smooth. His rhythmic interpretation is impressive, especially because the song is more than seven minutes long and was recorded without overdubs in a single take on October 23. He worked on “Percy’s Song” three more times the next day, but Biograph includes the take from the previous recording session. “Percy’s Song” has one of his finest harmonica solos (in G). Despite the drama, this forceful criticism of the judicial system was not selected for his third album.

  Moonshiner

  Traditional / Arrangement Bob Dylan / 5:07

  Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: August 12, 1963 / Producer: Tom Wilson / Sound Engineers: Stanley Tonkel and Pete Dauria / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 1) / Release Date: March 26, 1991

  Moonshine is a term used to describe a strong distilled alcohol produced illegally in the Appalachian mountains during Prohibition. Moonshiner was the name given to the Appalachian distiller. The operation took place by the light of the moon to avoid discovery. The song probably originated in Ireland but is part of the history of the United States during the 1920s. Bob Dylan mastered his subject, providing a subtle guitar part to perfectly support his vocals. He recorded the song for Columbia on August 12, 1963. There are two takes under the name of “Moonshine Blues.” The first take was brought to the attention of the songwriter’s fans with the release of The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3.

  The arpeggios on his Gibson J-50 are reminiscent of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” from the previous album. His performance, full of nuance and remarkably charged with feeling, proves that at this stage of his career he was an accomplished musician. “Moonshiner” could certainly have been included on his third album.

  Another

  Side of

  Bob Dylan

  All I Really Want To Do

  Black Crow Blues

  Spanish Harlem Incident

  Chimes Of Freedom

  I Shall Be Free No. 10

  To Ramona

  Motorpsycho Nightmare

  My Back Pages

  I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)

  Ballad In Plain D

  It Ain’t Me, Babe

  THE OUTTAKES

  Denise

  Mr. Tambourine Man

  Mama, You Been On My Mind

  DATE OF RELEASE

  United States: August 8, 1964

  on Columbia Records

  (REFERENCE 2193/CS 8993)

  Another Side of Bob Dylan

  A Rock Album without Any Electric Guitar

  At the beginning of February 1964, a month after The Times They Are A-Changin’ was released, Bob Dylan took off on a three-week trip across the United States. An unquenchable need to do some traveling, he said… Journalist Peter Karman (who was a friend of Suze Rotolo), folksinger Paul Clayton, and road manager Victor Maymudes went along. Kentucky, North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, and, finally, California: just like Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty before them in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Dylan, Karman, Clayton, and Maymudes left to discover America, all the way to the shores of the West Coast, and fully drank in the feeling of freedom provided by the open road.

  In May, Dylan crossed the Atlantic. After several concerts in England, he visited the Continent: France (where he met singer Hugues Aufray and model Christa Päffgen, who became Nico of the Velvet Underground), West Germany (with Nico), then Greece, where he wrote most of Another Side of Bob Dylan.

  The Album

  Another Side of Bob Dylan—rarely has an album title reflected so faithfully the artistic progress of its creator. This fourth testament on record obviously revealed a new Dylan. Granted, he was still solo on guitar and harmonica (and on piano, for the first time, in “Black Crow Blues”), but you could already feel the rock musician appearing behind the folksinger. Critic Tim Riley was right on the money when he stated about this Dylan work that it was “a rock album without electric guitars.”

  It definitely was an album that indicated a sharp shift. From this moment on, Dylan totally rejected the role as protest spiritual guide that people had laid on him. He had turned the page. He was no longer interested in pointing a finger at the inconsistencies and injustice of a system without providing a solution. “There aren’t any finger-pointing songs in here, either,” he said.20

  From this point on, what drove him was expressing what he felt deep down inside, pouring out his impressions on paper, exorcising his frustrations. “Me, I don’t want to write for people anymore,” he told Nat Hentoff. “You know—be a spokesman. Like I once wrote about Emmett Till in the first person, pretending I was him. From now on, I want to write from inside me, and to do that I’m going to have to get back to writing like I used to when I was ten—having everything come out naturally. The way I like to write is for it to come out the way I walk or talk.”20 This 180-degree turn of style was expressed in nearly all the songs of Another Side of Bob Dylan, reaching poetic peaks in “Chimes of Freedom” and “My Back Pages,” two songs written under the benevolent influence of Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake. Dylan played with the harmony of words and the wealth of images to better commune with the common man, the outcasts of the world at large, in the first song, and to break away from the folk intelligentsia, the self-proclaimed professors, and better follow the path leading to his own liberation in the second one. “Spanish Harlem Incident,” which reflects the stream-of-consciousness writing of Kerouac or Ginsberg, was another illustration of the poetic development of the songwriter.

  Nevertheless, there was continuity in the change. Once again, Dylan went over his breakup with Suze Rotolo (“All I Really Want to Do,” “I Don’t Believe You,” “Ballad in Plain D,” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe”). It took time for the wound to heal…

  Finally, “Motorpsycho Nightmare”: a humorous satire of rural America, with its paranoia and frustration, based on Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, was a new type of protest song, presaging the brilliant songs of Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited.

  The Recording

  June 9, 1964. It was 7:05 p.m. when Bob Dylan entered Studio A of Columbia Records, with the flight case of his guitar in his hand. He was about to record his new album. Tom Wilson, his producer, did not know quite what to expect. He confided this to New Yorker journalist Nat Hentoff, who was beside him at the console, together with half a dozen friends, including folksinger Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. “I have no idea what he’s going to record tonight… It’s all to be stuff he’s written in the last couple of months.”20 Wilson’s job was to adapt the studio’s environment to Dylan and not the other way around. “My main difficulty has been pounding mike technique into him… He used to get excited and move around a lot and then lean in too far, so that the mike popped.”20 His role as the producer was to spare Dylan any technical restrictions. “For instance, if that screen should bother him, I’d take it away, even if we have to lose a little quality in the sound.”20 And on this Tuesday, June 9, Dylan and his friends also contributed to the overall atmosphere by making available two bottles of Beaujolais. “We’re going to make a good one tonight,” Dylan said to Wilson. “I promise.”20 Between 7:00 p.m. and 1:30 a.m., he managed to record eleven songs of the album in thirty-five takes, as well as four other songs that were not includ
ed in twelve extra takes, including an early version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” with Ramblin’ Jack Elliot singing harmony!

  Why such a rush? According to Tom Wilson: “Usually, we’re not in such a rush, but this album has to be ready for Columbia’s fall sales convention.”20 Wilson also came up with the title Another Side of Bob Dylan, although Dylan was not sure about that.

  What could be seen in Another Side of Bob Dylan was a transition, inasmuch as Dylan had left behind his folk and blues roots—which meant he was criticized by the writers and readers of Sing Out! magazine—but had not yet converted to the electric language of rock. He also was aware of the new sound from the United Kingdom, especially the Beatles. Perhaps a sign of this was when the Fab Four sang the chorus “yeah, yeah, yeah” in “She Loves You,” and Dylan sang “no, no, no” in “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” What was really obvious and far more important was the depth of the feelings expressed, the lyrical power that was found through all eleven songs on the album. Some of these songs had considerable influence, starting with “Chimes of Freedom” and “My Back Pages,” which were soon adapted by the Byrds, who wrote one of the first chapters of folk rock when they titled their fourth album Younger than Yesterday (1967) as an allusion to the chorus of “My Back Pages”: “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

  Another Side of Bob Dylan was in stores by August 8, 1964, only seven months after The Times They Are A-Changin’, and reached number 43 on the Billboard charts before becoming a gold record. In England, it rose to eighth place, not far behind the first album of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night.