Revolution in the Air
Page 41
And I run in that race, it’s not too fast or slim
But I don’t perceive her, I’m not there I’m gone.
It’s all about diffusion as 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 don’t like the spot
And she’s gone.
These lines could exist on another page of typescript, but I suspect not. I believe Dylan to be simply in the zone, flying the flag of a wild fancy, improvising on the spot. The lines in question slip in and out of clarity; threatening illumination but really straddling the border between non sequitur and nonsense (the words in italics proving particularly difficult to rationalize). Just as the song spirals into wordlessness, Dylan drags it back with a verse that appears in the typescript midsong, sung like the resolution it patently is not. As typed it reads thus:
SHES GONE
SHES GONE ! ! ! ! Like the rainbow shinin yesta-day
an now shes here with me an i want her to stay
shes a lone forsaken beauty an she don’t trust anyone
i wish i was beside her but im not there im gone.
The typescript then ventures down avenues left unexplored on tape. "I could take a trip to mount st[reet] but i don’t know if i SHUD" is particularly tantalizing. Which Mount Street? A number of other verbal cues he also chooses to transmute. "2 hearts mistaken / i don’t far believe / its so bad / for its amusing / an shes hard [too hard] to please / its a low / its a crime / [the way] she drags me around" becomes—with the bracketed additions—the first three lines of the penultimate verse.
But the final line of the typescript, "shes a drag queen / shes a drag-a-muffin / shes a drag," is a strand he left dangling, while the final verse has no precedent on its page-bound prototype, as Dylan works his way toward that final, forsaken line, "I wish I was there to help her, but I’m not there, I’m gone." As he sings it, it is the only possible resolution, as mystical as the "lone forsaken beauty," and equally bereft of hope. Satisfied with the exercise, Dylan can’t imagine any reason to revisit it. Or give it a title. On the tape box it is called "I’m Not There, I’m Gone." On the safety reel it is known as, "But It’s Not Here." For its 1970 copyright registration, it is entitled "I’m Not There (1956)." (The addition of this date served to convince many folk that Dylan was delving into his wild youth. Maybe.) Finally, for its fortieth birthday, it received an official release under the same name as the film it unwittingly inspired, "I’m Not There." Hallelujah.
{219} PLEASE MRS. HENRY
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967 [BT].
Back on the bourbon, Basement Bob seems in need of relief, but he lacks the means ("a dime," as in "buddy, can you spare a . . ."). That Dylan should put the "tip" in tipsy immediately after—in tape terms—the sublimity of "I’m Not There" suggests an ongoing ambivalence as to the purpose of the sessions, not to say the unbounded expectations of serious-minded fans. It is purely physical relief he craves from Mrs. Henry—a relief that is as sexual ("won’t you take me to my room?") as it is scatological ("I’m startin’ to drain / My stool’s gonna squeak").
Though it may strain credulity, there is a rich literary tradition for lyrics this immersed in innuendo. Among Dylan’s favorite poets, the French symbolists Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire were hardly shy of getting down and dirty with their language ("Be ye novices or pros, plain or fancy / In your cracks and crannies I’d live out my days and nights"—not a lost basement lyric, one of Verlaine’s). And according to Allen Ginsberg, Dylan had been reading a lot of French literature during his recuperation from the motorcycle crash. Though it came out austere on his next album, for now that delight in language knew no proprietorial bounds.
{220} CRASH ON THE LEVEE (DOWN IN THE FLOOD)
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967—2 takes [BT—tk.2]; Studio B, NY, September 24, 1971—2 takes [MGH—tk.2].
First known performance: Academy of Music, NY, December 31, 1971 [ROA].
Should the order of reels represent the process remotely accurately, Dylan hit a very rich vein of inspiration shortly before the September copyright registration of ten originals.[3] He was quite literally reeling them off, with song after song approaching the human condition from an offbeat angle (all cut in two takes, tops), as he approached the end of a journey back to where he left off when that back wheel locked. But Dylan still suspected that these songs he was writing—albeit no longer just to pass the time—were not enough of a statement to mark his re-immersion in the mainstream. Seemingly unaware of the quality of what he was now writing, he decided to place the best basement cuts with his publishers as demos. One result was an unbecoming scramble to "cover" "Crash on the Levee," an obvious highlight of that initial ten-track demo.
Quite an artistic distance separates Dylan’s dissolute deconstruction of John Lee Hooker’s "Tupelo" (a.k.a. "The Big Flood"), early on in the sessions, from this first-person account of the biggest flood ever. But there is no such distance between "Crash on the Levee"—a.k.a. "Down in the Flood"—and "All Along the Watchtower." Both use a particular type of English vernacular (one conversational, the other Jacobean) to convey with real immediacy a threat from nature that might be more than just another catastrophe. In "Down in the Flood," like "Watchtower,"
the apocalyptic reality is driven home on the final line of the final verse: "It’s gonna be the meanest flood / That anybody’s seen." And though we get the ubiquitous Big Pink chorus, this one offers no reassurance to its audience—or his "mama":
But oh mama, ain’t you gonna miss your best friend now?
You’re gonna have to find yourself another best friend, somehow.
By the fall of 1971, with his songwriting faucet having been temporarily turned off again, Dylan was no longer so immune to the song’s merits. After re-recording it for a second Greatest Hits set in September, he performed a passionate, slightly punch-drunk rendition with The Band during their residency at the Academy of Music, on New Year’s Eve. The next time it was performed, in Prague in March 1995, it was no less dramatic or unexpected. Opening the delayed first show of the year—and his finest show in a decade—Dylan wailed away at the harmonica as if "that high tide" was visibly starting to rise. It would stay the set opener throughout one of the outstanding Never Ending Tour legs.
{221} LO AND BEHOLD!
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967—2 takes [BT—tk.2].
"Lo and Behold!" comes at the end of another inspired reel of songs that give precedence to wordplay over sense, opined by characters caught in a contagion of chaos to such an extent that down is now up. The dialogue between Molly and Moby Dick exemplifies everything that makes these songs such fun (its residue survives in the "Three Kings" sleeve notes to John Wesley Harding, though not on the album itself):
"What’s the matter, Molly dear, what’s the matter with your mound?"
"What’s it to ya, Moby Dick? This is chicken town."
Once again the chorus fails to provide any shelter from the storm breaking over its verses. The singer is not the only one to be caught "looking for my lo and behold!" A sense of just how much fun they are having with this stuff and nonsense comes during the final verse on take one. Dylan blows the line after "Goin’ back to Pittsburgh." Cracking up, he shouts, "Again!" Cue much merriment and a disorganized end to proceedings. Take two is just fine. By now Dylan had figured out what to do with the herd of moose somehow acquired in the second verse: "Round that horn and ride that herd, / Go
nna thread up!" One imagines that the revelries continued into the evening, maybe even unto the wee hours.
{222} YOU AIN’T GOIN’ NOWHERE
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004 [1971 version: Words Fill My Head].
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967—2 takes [BT—tk.2]; Studio B, NY, September 24, 1971—6 takes [MGH—tk.6].
First known performance: Portland, Maine, April 10, 1997.
Having decided to let the songwriting process stop short of the usual conclusion—a set of studio sessions—Dylan continued to play the wise fool with his new lyrics. Relying on a different kind of public dissemination, he gave these songs hooks and choruses along with a surfeit of innuendo. The sense of freedom permeating his finest work songs meant that, whatever Dylan’s opinion, some proved just as enduring as the very best of his pre-accident canon.
"You Ain’t Going Nowhere" is one of those songs where Dylan never quite settled on a single set of lyrics. The one the Byrds put on Sweetheart of the Rodeo was how he felt one particular day he stopped by Big Pink to play with The Band. This acetate version, which circulated rapidly in the eighteen months preceding its appearance on Great White Wonder, and even more rapidly since, comes across as another example of Dylan delivering pearls of wisdom wrapped in riddles.
But it turns out that this was the second take. The first take was a dummy run in the true sense of the word. At that stage Dylan had a tune, the last line of each verse (i.e., the title), and the chorus. And unlike most other double takes at Big Pink, there is a clear break on the reels between the two performances of "You Ain’t Going Nowhere," Dylan recording the incendiary "This Wheel’s on Fire" in the interim. So he might well have gone away and written a set of verses, having decided "You Ain’t Going Nowhere" justified a more linear treatment. However much the first take resembles an Edward Lear concordance, the recording demonstrates how adept Dylan had become at versifying on the spot. Though I don’t doubt there is a PhD student out there working on the exact meaning of "I seen you out there beatin’ on your hammer / You ain’t no head of lettuce," Bob knows it just sounds good. As does:
I don’t care if your name is Michael, you’re gonna need some boards,
Get your lunch, you foreign bib, you ain’t going nowhere.
Whether Dylan went away and strapped himself to his writing desk in order to pen a new set of verses or, as Robbie Robertson suggests was often the case, just took "a stab at some ideas and things via a typewriter," a second take achieved the requisite amount of profundity ("Strap yourself to a tree with roots" could come straight from the book of Proverbs), mixed with the usual irreconcilable contradictions found at West Saugerties that summer ("Pick up your money and pack up your tent / You ain’t going nowhere").
Either way, Dylan almost certainly spent less time on the lyrics that afternoon than he spent reworking them a third time, four years later, having decided to re-record the song for a second Greatest Hits. And having had it in for Michael back in 1967, he now had it in for Roger McGuinn, whom he commanded to "pull up your tent." Perhaps he didn’t feel the Byrds did the song, or country-rock, justice on Sweetheart of the Rodeo. McGuinn claims Dylan was having a go because he accidentally inverted a couple of images on the Byrds’ version. Save that he doesn’t. Something else also set Dylan off, these reconstructed verses demonstrating the sheer malleability of the basement template, notably:
Buy me some rings and a gun that sings, a flute that toots and a bee that stings
A sky that cries and a bird that flies, a fish that walks and a dog that talks.
Such riddles, wisely expounded, came easily enough. But by the time the song was revived in the spring of 1997, Dylan had pretty much stopped tweaking the templates of yesteryear. Though he could still sing it with gusto, what one wouldn’t have given for another "head of lettuce"!
{223} THIS WHEEL’S ON FIRE
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, Summer 1967 [BT].
First known performance: Madison, Wisconsin, April 13, 1996.
"This Wheel’s on Fire" would appear to be the first time Dylan gave the boys in The Band some homework. Unexpectedly, it was not sidekick-guitarist Robbie Robertson but Rick Danko whom he recruited to write a tune that suited these weird and rather wonderful lyrics (perhaps he felt Robertson had had enough free lessons already), as he started separating out lyrics and the tunes to which he set them.
We are now moving full steam toward the next Immaculate Conception, John Wesley Harding. At the outset Dylan even whispers into the recorder the song’s working title, "If Your Memory Serves You Well"—a direct allusion to the opening line of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell (Une Saison En Enfer), "If my memory serves me well . . ." Re-invoking Rimbaud reinforces the sense of returning darkness, which Dylan had been shutting out with songs of revelry and absurdity. Like the young Arthur, he seems to be documenting a very specific season in hell when he sings, "This wheel’s on fire, rolling down the road / Best notify my next of kin, this wheel shall explode!"
Back in the spring of 1965 he had suggested to one English music journalist that "catastrophe and confusion are the basis of my songs." He was evidently returning to base. A memorable chorus and the usual elusive imagery in the verses are tied to first- and last-line rhymes of "serves you well" and "to tell," while thematically the song is almost an update of "Fourth Time Around." Again there is a secret, a story, and a debt to be repaid, in this case from "the one / that called on me to call on them / to get you your favours done."
In a surprisingly generous mood, Dylan not only donated half the publishing rights to Danko but also let The Band bolster their own debut collection, Music from Big Pink, with the song. In fact, "This Wheel’s on Fire" was destined to become one of the most-covered songs from this lexicon of demos, providing a number-one 45 for Julie Driscoll and the Trinity and a Top-Ten hit, a decade later, for Siouxsie and the Banshees, as well as a fitting theme tune for the dysfunctional characters in Jennifer Saunders’s nineties sitcom, Absolutely Fabulous. By this time Dylan had also begun taking the song through its paces, as he continued rolling down the Never Ending road.
{224} I SHALL BE RELEASED
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004 [1986 version: In His Own Words 3].
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967 [TBS]; Studio B, NY, September 24, 1971—4 takes [MGH—tk.4].
First known performance: Plymouth, MA, October 31, 1975.
Prisons of the body and the mind seem to have preyed on Dylan’s mind throughout his time spent with the boys on retainer. Among the songs recorded at early basement sessions were covers of "Folsom Prison Blues" and "The Banks of the Royal Canal" (the latter is particularly affecting), both songs written—metaphorically—from inside prison walls. Dylan then takes a leaf from Johnny Cash and Brendan Behan (brother of Dominic), authors of those earlier songs, by writing his own prison song, "I Shall Be Released." He is characteristically careful not to confuse simplicity of construction with a commensurate simplicity of meaning. The release that he is singing about—and that Richard Manuel echoes—is not from mere prison bars but rather from the cage of physical existence, the same cage that corrodes on "Visions of Johanna."
Ten years later, with "I Shall Be Released" a regular highlight on a 115-date world tour, he still felt the same way, informing Phillip Fleishman, "The whole world is a prison. Life is a prison, we’re all inside the body. . . . Only knowledge of either yourself or the ultimate power can get you out if it. . . . Most people are working toward being one with God, trying to find him. They want to be one with the supreme power, they want to go Home, you know. From the minute they’re born, they want to know what they’re doing here. I don’t think there’s anybody who doesn’t feel t
hat way." Before the year was out, Dylan would find God reflected in a (silver) cross.
Dylan here returns to deeper concerns. Songs like "I Shall Be Released" suggest their author was again tempted to put his head in a guillotine. Yet he gave the song away, allowing his backing musicians first use of it. It concludes Music from Big Pink, an all Band album that was not so much from Big Pink as a by-product of the summer tutorials there. Even in such a favorable context, it is a pale shadow of the introspective masterpiece recorded in the Big Pink basement. Like a number of Dylan’s greatest songs—including that other reluctant rabble-rouser, "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door"—its solipsistic self would be turned inside out by simpletons (after The Band, that is) as this highly personal song was made a communal anthem by organizations like Amnesty International, for which it was always a song with one meaning alone.
It was perhaps in direct response to Amnesty’s use of it as the nightly finale to a particularly overblown stadium tour in the fall of 1985, featuring Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, and the like, that Dylan decided to rework the song himself. The version he debuted the following January, at a live telecast celebrating Martin Luther King Day, may not display the same full-on poetic sensibility as its precursor, but it left less room for doubt about the relationship between the sinner man and He who saves:
It don’t take much to be a criminal,
Just one more move and they’ll turn you into one.
At first the pain is just subliminal,
You protect yourself, and you’re forever on the run.
He will find you where you’re stayin’,
Even in the arms of somebody else’s wife,
You’re laughing now, you should be praying,
This being the midnight hour of your life.
Fans still preferred the original set of lyrics, which were restored the following year and from which Dylan has not since departed, save on the one occasion when he added the final verse of the 1986 rewrite as a coda (Helsinki, September 23, 1987). Despite being one of his most covered, and emulated, songs (Van Morrison, rather than challenging The Band’s version, rewrote it as "Brand New Day"), that original quintessential rendition—in its unadulterated, living, breathing, stereo self—remains unavailable (a generational mono dub of a dub was deemed adequate for 1991’s The Bootleg Series). Any day now.