Revolution in the Air

by Clinton Heylin

  At this troubled time, he displayed a genuine interest in its presentation and the accuracy of its contents. Even in Writings and Drawings, though, he allowed a number of anomalies to go unexplained, and even introduced a few. The placement of certain unreleased songs seems at first glance somewhat whimsical ("I’ll Keep It with Mine" comes in the Blonde on Blonde section, while "Long Distance Operator" is with The Basement Tapes, though the songs date from 1964 and 1965, respectively). In fact, a kind of logic was applied, albeit based on the date of studio recording, not actual composition. But one can place a good deal more faith in the song order in this book than in Writings and Drawings.

  A further source of frustration with that original edition of lyrics is that Dylan allowed some of the unreleased songs—specifically ones from the defining years 1965–7—to be taken from audio transcriptions and not his own memory or manuscript/s. To push the Shakespeare analogy again, these transcriptions are almost in the vein of the so-called "bad quartos," cloth-eared and incompetent transcriptions made in haste, replacing a quixotic internal logic with ungarnished gibberish.

  In fact, bookleg versions of the same songs, found in the unauthorized early seventies Dylan songbooks that Writings and Drawings was published to counteract, are often superior, despite sometimes being derived from nth-generation bootleg tapes. The official volume’s mis-transcriptions have not only remained uncorrected in subsequent editions but have been compounded further. Indeed, in 1985 and 2004, when he again allowed collected editions of his Lyrics to go to press—editions of which the printers behind those infamous "bad quartos" would have been ashamed—it was left to the man’s minions to supervise the finished artifact.

  Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of these two latter editions of Lyrics, both published under Dylan’s auspices, has been the way that each revision has led to a less precise version than its predecessor. The 2004 Lyrics actually omitted all of his poems and sleeve notes and even some songs found in the two previous editions, all the while leaving previous errors uncorrected. Yet a number of bookleg collections of Dylan lyrics continued to introduce songs and variant versions to the (underground) printed word. (One of these collections, Words Fill My Head, deserves special commendation.)

  As it is, the latest edition of Lyrics—perhaps the most frustrating "Collected Works" since Robert Graves started to lose his marbles and began reorganizing his collected poems according to a senile disposition—contains only about 60 percent of the originals covered here, as well as continuing to include lyrics that are clearly mis-transcribed or annoyingly incomplete. (Where, pray tell, are all the verses to songs as important as "Call Letter Blues," "She’s Your Lover Now," and "Farewell Angelina"?) As such, although it is not my primary concern, I have duly noted instances where the published lyrics are unreliable or incomplete in some significant way, referring the reader back to the recording or a more reliable published source.

  One can’t help but conclude that Dylan really doesn’t give a damn about his lyrics being transplanted from their preferred medium. As he told Bruce Heiman back in 1979, "You can’t separate the words from the music. I know people try to do that. But . . . it’s like separating the foot from the knee." He, at least, recognizes the futility of fixing lyrics on a page minus the tune, which will always be an inferior experience to hearing the way the man bends words to his will in performance. Because it is in performance that they can change; it is where they live and breathe.

  He has talked at length about how it is performing these songs that gives his life purpose ("the songs are what I do"), making him and them stay young. This makes this song-history as much a work in progress as the songs themselves. It also means that readers are sometimes required to follow the history of a song from, say, its conception in 1964 to its execution (sic) at a 2006 Modern Times show, only to have to re-immerse themselves in that original milieu. (Told ya it wasn’t Revolution in the Head.)

  Generally I have tried to restrain the obscurantist in me and have confined myself to especially "noteworthy" reworkings, albeit applied subjectively. I am, after all, primarily concerned with the starting point for the songs: possible autobiographical inspirations; any sources, musical and/or lyrical; the time lag between composition and recording on tape; and indeed each song’s relationship to other songs in the canon. The song’s survival in performance may not do more than reiterate its original self.

  Some of the time, though, performances become an integral part of an ongoing process. As Dylan told Jim Jerome while preparing to take the Blood on the Tracks and Desire songs on the road for the first time: "A songwriter tries to grasp a certain moment, write it down, sing it for that moment and then keep that experience within himself, so he can be able to sing the song years later." The songs move their meanings as much for Dylan as for his audience. By establishing how and when each song came about, one can hopefully tether that movement to something relatively sturdy. Here’s hoping.

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  Dylan’s working methods have changed over the years, but certain constants remain. He has continued to find inspiration in isolation. As he told Ellen Baker, "Writing is such an isolated thing. You’re in such an isolated frame of mind. You have to get into or be in that place." Suze Rotolo’s evocative description of a young Dylan who "would sit at a table in some cheesy little luncheonette and write . . . in his little spiral notebook while drinking coffee" only holds true to the end of their relationship in March 1964, and maybe not even that late.

  By February 1964 he had to write in hotel rooms, in the back seats of cars, or in snatched moments backstage. Over the next decade he tried fleeing overseas, retiring to Woodstock, and disappearing into the desert of Arizona to write—all the time searching for "the environment to do it in." (This is the sole subject matter of one of his finest post-accident compositions, "When I Paint My Masterpiece.") In one infamous instance, as he worked to make an absurdly tight deadline, he even started writing songs in the studio, with quite impressive results—Blonde on Blonde.

  Other times he took his time, as with the likes of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Like a Rolling Stone." Yet quick or slow, in the city or in the country, overseas or back home, the songs generally flowed until 1968 when, as he later put it, "I was half-stepping and the lights went out." Interestingly, this happened shortly after he departed from a working practice established early on in his career. Having rarely felt compelled to work out the words first, he began to break this golden rule on the songs he wrote at Big Pink in the summer of 1967, carrying over the practice to the unexpectedly austere John Wesley Harding.

  But generally Dylan has used the tune as a prop (or often, when trawling tradition, as the germ of an idea). As he told journalist Ray Connolly, "When I do songs I usually fit the words around the music, and it’s the music which determines the words." He was even more specific to Australian journalist Karen Hughes: "A melody just happens to appear as I’m playing and after that the words come in and out." Not a bad way to make a living.

  He is generally reluctant to deconstruct his own work—as indeed he should be—even on those occasions when he feels obliged to demonstrate that they were conceived consciously and worked on meticulously. The one thing that the combination of a couple dozen song drafts and dozens more studio takes confirms is that Dylan works long and hard on most of his songs, even if he has had to learn the hard way not to consider the initial inspiration sufficient to get the song nailed. As he has said, "The hardest part is when the inspiration dies along the way. Then you spend all your time trying to recapture it."

  This book is necessarily as much about those moments "when the inspiration dies along the way" as it is about the moments when a song is a home run. The former is as much a part of Dylan’s art as the latter. One can learn at least as much about his craftsmanship from a song that he ultimately rejects, like "She’s Your Lover Now," as from one that came along free and easy, li
ke "Tombstone Blues." (I made much the same point in Recording Sessions, apropos his studio work, but I’d like to think it holds true here, too.)

  Every song has a story. Some can be told over a cigarette. Others require the full gypsy feast. But please do not assume that Dylan’s more famous songs necessarily receive the most fulsome entries or have the most interesting histories. All six hundred such histories are required to build up a recognizable self-portrait of this remarkable songwriter. No matter how fascinating the true story of the libeling of William Zant-zinger, the slandering of Carla Rotolo, or the eulogizing of Joey Gallo, they are but the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that is not as yet complete.

  Revolution in the Air starts with a boy who hardly seemed to have an original thought in his head, eases into a period when he could almost do no wrong and had the world of song at his beck and call, and then stretches into that (longer) period when he was forced to extract each and every masterpiece like an impacted wisdom tooth. At the end of this process, he emerges as a conscious artist, ready to unleash his mid-seventies masterpieces at a pace almost as dazzling as during that initial heyday. But for that, I’m afraid, one must wait to find out the price of doing all this twice.

  Since the completion of this volume, Tim Dunn has updated The Bob Dylan Copyright Files 1962–2007. In this rather weighty update are a series of song titles, copyrighted en masse when transferred from Grossman’s estate to Dylan’s publishing company, in 1988. Credited to Dwarf Music, the long list (some ninety songs) appears to include some previously unknown basement-tape compositions. Aside from "Dress It Up, Better Have It All" and "You Own a Racehorse," it seems there were three other related titles reassigned at this juncture: "What’s It Gonna Be When It Comes Up?," "My Woman She’s A-Leavin’," and "Mary Lou, I Love You Too." A separate reassignment has a song called "Baby Lou," which one suspects is simply the previous song under another name. Further information (and maybe even a tape or two) shall hopefully emerge in the fullness of time.

  —Clinton Heylin, December 2008

  { "Do Not Accept Chaos": Some Notes on Method }

  It might be helpful if I outline a few factual guidelines before readers hunker down with the first three hundredweight of songs. So here are some notes pertaining to the criteria for inclusion that I’ve exercised; what manuscripts I have been able to access; how I have used the Sony studio logs and sessionographies that I and others have compiled over the years; what basis I applied when inserting Dylan’s own thoughts and/or those of collaborators and intimates; further notes on the three official collections of lyrics; and, finally, those online resources that might actually steer the reader right, thereby enhancing his or her appreciation of Dylan’s—and this—work.

  Criteria for Inclusion—A cursory scan of the contents page will tell anybody what is extant and what is not. There are some songs I have listed, even discussed, that do not exist either on tape or on the page, but only in the memory banks of a few fortunate folk (e.g., "Won’t You Buy My Postcard?" and "Gates of Hate"). There are also, as one would expect, some songs (e.g., "Wild Wolf," "My Previous Life," and others) that we can be confident were recorded but have not as yet reached these ears. A number of oft-rumored songs (the legendary "Church with No Upstairs," for one) I have simply omitted, along with every instrumental the man has ever recorded.

  Essentially my criteria has been to include only "songs," not tunes, and to include only those that have a documented title and/or a set of words, no matter how unlikely it may be that the song has survived in some concrete form. If it has been copyrighted to Dylan, it’s here; if not, I have used my own judgment. Where there is no title, or the title is itself a matter of dispute, I have treated the song’s existence as uncertain unless there is evidence that it was put down on tape (e.g., the basement tape section, where I include copyrighted songs as yet unheard, but omit any example if a rumored title is all we have).

  Manuscripts—Because they go to the very core of Dylan’s inspirational way of writing, the few manuscripts that have come the serious student’s way represent the most fascinating and potentially revealing of all the material with a direct bearing on his compositional art. So how exactly does he go about writing his songs? Certainly not with a tape recorder in his hand, à la Pete Townshend. A pencil in his hand, yes.

  The extant material makes it clear that Dylan generally likes to write songs out in long-hand, only typing them up when he feels he has arrived at some approximation of the finished form. Even exceptions, like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and certain Blonde on Blonde drafts, where he might start at the typewriter, indicate someone who is likely to rework the results with pen(cil) in hand.

  Based on the unrevealing scraps tossed into The Bob Dylan Scrapbook and the 2004 edition of Lyrics, one might assume that there is a paucity of surviving source material. In fact there are at least five major collections of Dylan’s lyrics and poems from the pre-accident years, listed below.

  (i) Poems Without Titles, circa 1960—a self-conscious collection totaling some two dozen pages of vers libre poems that revel in a new-found freedom from parental control and the joys of a world full of sexy gals.

  (ii) The MacKenzie-Krown Papers, circa 1961—an extremely important collection comprising a couple dozen early Dylan songs—some handwritten, some typed out with chords—that were left with, or given to, Eve and Mac MacKenzie, with whom Dylan often "crashed" in 1961, or Kevin Krown, a friend from the Midwest who traveled to New York at much the same time as Dylan. These were subsequently auctioned by the MacKenzies’ son, Peter. Most of the songs appear to date from April to September 1961, though it is possible that some of the typed songs have a slightly later provenance, say fall 1961.

  (iii) The Margolis and Moss Manuscripts, circa 1963—the most substantial of the early Dylan collections, the bulk of these papers are in fact typescripts of poems written in the fall of that year, after the completion of the The Times . . . LP. Several are concerned with JFK’s assassination. Also included are the originals for all eleven of Dylan’s Outlined Epitaphs, plus draft versions of "Liverpool Gal" (June 1963), "I’ll Keep It with Mine" (June 1964), and "Phantom Engineer" (June 1965), which do not date from the same period as the poems (and play) that constitute the bulk of the collection, which was ultimately acquired by Salford singer Graham Nash.

  (iv) The Another Side Manuscripts, circa May–June 1964—the most important collection of Dylan lyrics and poems to have emerged to date, the Blood on the Tracks notebook excepted. Not only does it provide almost entirely handwritten drafts of most songs recorded on June 9 for that album, but in important instances (like "To Ramona," "Ballad in Plain D," and "It Ain’t Me Babe"), there are two or more draft versions, allowing a microscopic insight into the process of composition.

  Also part of this material is a handwritten draft of "Gates of Eden" (included in The Bob Dylan Scrapbook) and typed versions of all the poems, given the general title "some other kind of songs" when a selection was published on the rear sleeve of Another Side. An unedited set was later included in Writings and Drawings and the 1985 edition of Lyrics (though not the 2004 edition). This invaluable resource I have used freely. As a result, I recommend that readers have a copy of Lyrics on hand when they get to that part of the book.

  (v) The Blonde on Blonde Typescripts / Miscellaneous Manuscripts, circa February/March 1966—the most problematic of the early collections simply because the various typescripts and handwritten lyrics have been sold piecemeal at various auctions, years apart, by the original owner, making it hard to establish the size or worth of the material as a collection. What it does not provide is a single example of a Blonde on Blonde song in the various stages of composition from idea to resolution. But there are around a dozen individual lyric sheets of varying worth, some typed and hand corrected, others providing a shorthand version of an almost complete lyric in Dylan’s hand.

  On the basis of the above material,
it does seem clear that Dylan likes to work fast on his songs, often coming up with couplets and bridges when a song’s structure is not yet defined. He also appears to have a pretty good idea of when a song has exhausted its potential. The few fragments we have of prototype songs that never became more than this demonstrate generally sound instincts as to what works and what doesn’t. These early manuscripts also show how Dylan likes to reuse ideas from songs he has abandoned (see song entries for "I Hear a Train A-Rollin," "Man on the Street," "Hero Blues," and "Liverpool Gal"; and their corollaries, "Train A-Travelin’," "Only a Hobo," "It Ain’t Me Babe," and "I Don’t Believe You").

  There are also a number of song typescripts from the period 1962–3 that are known to exist, though in most cases they constitute the "finished" versions Dylan inserted into his own notebooks (and which he clearly consulted when compiling Writings and Drawings; see "I Shall Be Free"). But even after what might be termed his "New York" period, the occasional typescript or handwritten draft has found its way into the collecting world, notably the frustrating but fascinating "I’m Not There" draft from 1967.

  The manuscripts demonstrate something not necessarily apparent from his recorded and live work—that Dylan is actually an exemplary editor of his own work. Rarely will he substitute an image or a phrase with an inferior one, and when he sees a lyric that needs repair work, his instincts are almost invariably correct. Given the number of times he has exercised "poor" judgment in the studio when picking takes or songs for release, it is perhaps surprising that he should be so sure of himself when working on the page. Yet the evidence, where available, is pretty conclusive. Oh, for a similar booty from Oh Mercy!, though I somehow doubt they’d show those "missing" verses quoted in Chronicles.

  It seems inevitable that more and more such material will start to surface now that contemporaries are dying off or bolstering their pensions. Suze Rotolo recently sold some of her personal collection, including a previously undocumented four-page poem about life in prison, written circa 1962. Hopefully much of it will continue to be surreptitiously copied before disappearing into the cloistered confines of the Morgan Library in New York, where the originals of a great deal of this material—first collected by a wealthy Brooklyn banker named George Hechter—currently reside. Greatly restricted access was one condition of its deposit there.