Revolution in the Air
Page 44
None of this sounds much like "a friend to the poor," or someone likely "to lend a helping hand." Or indeed a person who was "never known to make a foolish move." And Dylan knows this. He is back in the mythological hinterlands leading off from Highway 61—self-consciously opening the album with a figure who has already passed beyond history, into the mythic soundscape that now bears his name. Hence, one suspects, Dylan’s choice of outlaw. Even the one incident he specifically refers to—"Down in Chaynee County . . . With his lady by his side / He took a stand"—is lifted straight from medieval romance, via nineteenth-century dime-store fiction. No such incident occurred, at least not where Hardin was concerned.
Again Dylan enjoys setting up the listener for the classic broadside ballad, complete with moralizing coda. But all we get is the raw outline for such a ballad. According to Dylan, talking to Jann Wenner in 1969, he simply gave up on the story: "‘John Wesley Harding’ . . . started out to be a long ballad . . . like maybe one of those old cowboy [ballads]. . . .
But in the middle of the second verse I got tired. I had a tune, and I didn’t really want to waste the tune . . . so I just wrote a quick third verse and recorded that. . . . It was the one song on the album which didn’t seem to fit in." Another classic Dylan smokescreen! The idea that he simply "got tired" of the song might be more credible (and it couldn’t be less) if he hadn’t used the same technique—setting up a ballad narrative, before removing all its innards—on two of the four songs he’d already recorded.
Yet he continued to claim the title track "didn’t seem to fit in," informing Cameron Crowe that even after he’d recorded the whole album, "I didn’t know what to make of it. . . . So I figured the best thing to do would be to put it out as quickly as possible, call it John Wesley Harding, because that was the one song that I had no idea what it was about, why it was even on the album. . . . It was never intended to be anything else but just a bunch of songs really." Just to prove he’d lost none of his comic timing, Dylan delivers the perfect punch line: "Maybe it was better than I thought."
Not only couldn’t the album have been more perfectly constructed, but in keeping with long-standing practice, Dylan used the opening song to demonstrate which stylist the listener could expect this time around. Like Frank, he was enticing the listener to venture in "just far enough so’s we can say that we’ve been there"—and what better way than to give them a simple cowboy ballad that was nothing of the sort. By now he knew what sound fit, cutting the song in two takes, both complete, each considered for the album. That sound wasn’t the next big thing—country-rock. He left that to the Byrds. It was as simple as the songs seemed.
{235} AS I WENT OUT ONE MORNING
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Studio A, Nashville, November 6, 1967—5 takes [JWH—tk.5].
First known performance: Toronto, January 10, 1974.
After a cowboy ballad, Dylan decided to try his hand at a lyric of love unrequited. Once again he is determined to have a little fun with folk commonplaces. And there is no greater commonplace than "As I went out one morning," the folk equivalent of the classic blues opening, "Woke up this morning." However, this time the maiden in question is not in peril; the singer is. Nor is he saved from this sirenlike seductress by any conventional traditional device—like a bird flying to tell the king, or a harp singing of her guilt—but by the entry of famed libertarian and author Tom Paine, who comes "running from across the field . . .
commanding her to yield." After succeeding in releasing the narrator, Paine mysteriously apologizes "for what she’s done." As the man said, "Mystery is a traditional fact."
Here, then, is that basement-esque contagion of chaos in popular ballad form. And just like in the Big Pink songs, Dylan prefers to leave its meaning unexplained. "As I Went Out One Morning" begins like the opening chapter of a book, or the opening scene of a modern thriller; but if the popular ballad is a musical play that starts in Act Four, as has been stated a number of times, Dylan Wesley Harding preferred to jump from Act One to Act Five. Having recognized that "with a ballad, you don’t necessarily have to think about it after you hear it, it can all unfold to you," he elected to write songs that obeyed balladic forms but required the listener "to think about it after you hear it."
Dylan, though, did not dally long with the song in question, cutting it in just five takes before forgetting it for good, save for one enticingly captivating rendition delivered with full Band accompaniment (and some lovely Robertson licks) at a show in Toronto in January 1974. Here, again, a word-perfect Dylan sings the song with a real relish for what he has wrought, spitting out the lines like he realizes how close he came to another encounter with Johanna. The following night, though, he was back on autopilot, and the song has not popped up since.
{236} I AM A LONESOME HOBO
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Studio A, Nashville, November 6, 1967—5 takes [JWH—tk.5].
A popular mainstay of the broadside presses throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the last words of criminals on the gallows, in rhyming doggerel, recanting their wanton ways and warning others "not to do what I have done." Dylan himself performed a magical version of one of the more popular, "Newlyn Town" (a.k.a. "A Wild and Wicked Youth"), at a show in Reims in 1992, having apparently learned the song in Minneapolis thirty-two years earlier (see Chronicles, p. 239).
And even though we can’t be sure that the Lonesome Hobo is about to swing, he has decided to make a similar confession of misdeeds—"before I do pass on." In so doing, he does not spare us any of his wrongdoings in his litany of crimes: "Bribery, blackmail and deceit / And I’ve served time for ev’rything / ’Cept beggin’ on the street." No longer only a hobo, the lonesome one is a wicked messenger, a poor immigrant, and a mystery tramp rolled into one.
Dylan again sets things up with the couple of verses allocated to most John Wesley Harding songs, before delivering the moralizing coda that was an obligatory part of every wrongdoer’s potted history-in-rhyme. After the playful proverb in "Frankie Lee and Judas Priest," the moral in "I Am a Lonesome Hobo" takes on quite a different hue, asserting individuality over social morés: "Live by no man’s code / And hold your judgement for yourself / Lest you wind up on this road." Here is the same man who once vouchsafed that "to live outside the law you must be honest."
{237} I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Studio A, Nashville, November 6, 1967—10 takes [JWH—tk.10].
First known performance: Isle of Wight, August 31, 1969.
At what exact point did Dylan outline the architecture for this, his most perfectly realized album? By the end of the second session, he was already two-thirds into the process, with an album opener, a big ballad, and a potential single (which he refrained from releasing, resulting in an argument with new Columbia president Clive Davis, who pointed out the commercial realities of AM airplay). All that really remained was for him to hit the home stretch of that path, "thick beset wi’ briars," which leads from retribution to salvation. Simple.
Before that, though, he required one more parable-in-song, focusing on the fate of tenants, hoboes, tramps, and hawkers. The latter two formed the subject of a traditional ballad Dylan knew well, which he may or may not have learned from Scottish folksinger Jean Redpath. As she told Radio Scotland in 2001, "Bob and I were out-of-towners . . . in the back end of the summer of 1961, [so] we had the same roof over our heads, thanks to the generosity of a woman called Mikki Issacson. . . . [And] I know I had ‘Tramps & Hawkers’ and ‘Davy Farr,’ of course the same tune, and ‘The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie’ in my own active repertoire about that point. But who can tell what damage that did."
The last of these ser
ved as the original for "Pretty Peggy-O," a song Dylan put on his debut platter (and donated in kind to the Dead), while "Tramps and Hawkers" was another simple song that did not quite suffice for Dylan’s polemical purpose, but had a tune that did. The song itself was a jaunty celebration of life on the road, not the tortured tale of a "poor immigrant / who wishes he would’ve stayed home":
Sometimes noo I laugh tae mysel’
when dodgin’ alang the road
Wi’ a bag o’ meal slung upon my back,
my face as broun’s a toad
Wi’ lumps o’cheese and tattie scones
or breid an’ braxie ham
Nae thinking whar’ I’m comin’ frae
nor thinkin’ whar I’m gang.
It had been a while since Dylan allowed himself to put a traditional tune to the words he was spinning (a process he then carried back to Woodstock). As with the equally jaunty "I’ve Been a Moonshiner," which he transformed into the wrist-slashing "Moonshine Blues" for the Times . . . sessions, he again turned a fine traditional tune to a darker purpose—writing the John Wesley Harding equivalent of "Tears of Rage," a song written within a couple of weeks of "I Pity the Poor Immigrant."
"I Pity the Poor Immigrant," though, relies more on the language of Milton’s Paradise Lost or the King James Bible than ballads of a similar vintage. Not just the language but also the specific follies the song details can be found scattered across the Old Testament, whether it be Leviticus ("Your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase"—26:20; "Ye shall eat, and not be satisfied"—26:26) or Deuteronomy ("Thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth"—8:17). Of a piece with "The Wicked Messenger," which follows it on the album (and may have already been written), "Immigrant" took Dylan ten takes to sing and be satisfied.
One of three John Wesley Harding songs to receive its live debut at the Isle of Wight, "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" is blessed with another sympathetic Band treatment, a wash of accordion overseeing its stately procession. However, Dylan’s attempt to blend Nashville Skyline and John Wesley Harding "voices" makes for one of the least effective vocals on that strange evening. Seven years later, the song was redeemed by the glorious honky-tonk arrangement it received on the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, this time delivered by a Dylan who almost snarls the lyrics, while Joan Baez gamely tries to hold her own. This last, sardonic reincarnation, also a highlight of the Hard Rain concert film, seemingly sufficed.
{238} THE WICKED MESSENGER
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Studio A, Nashville, November 29, 1967 [JWH].
First known performance: Giants Stadium, Meadowlands, July 12, 1987.
A wicked messenger falleth into mischief: but a faithful ambassador is health. —Proverbs 13:17
Dylan knew precisely what kind of album he was making, and probably had the sequence in his mind by the time he arrived at the last John Wesley Harding session on November 29. Before recording the last three tracks, Dylan elected not to end the album on a downbeat note. And so, having written the better part of another song dealing with deception, betrayal, and general "mischief," Dylan allowed "the third verse of ‘The Wicked Messenger’ . . . [to] open it up." Not just the song, but the album, too.
An interviewer once asked Dylan if he wrote "Dear Landlord" just to get to the last line ("If you won’t underestimate me . . ."). The journalist probably should have asked the same about "The Wicked Messenger," the way "the time schedule takes a jump" being nowhere near as abrupt as in "All Along the Watchtower." "Oh the leaves began to fallin’ / And the seas began to part," signifying the passing of the seasons, the ballad equivalent of the movie montage, beautifully sets up the denouement to come: "If you cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any."
As with "All Along the Watchtower," it took a rugged rock arrangement to remind some listeners of both the musicality and the dramatic potential of such a song. The Faces’ First Step, their 1969 debut LP, opens with the song, the beginning of a career-long Dylan fixation for frontman Rod Stewart. Yet for Dylan it was another piece in the JWH jigsaw that, once completed, held little allure. Eventually, the Grateful Dead pushed him to perform it to the great unwashed and permanently dazed in 1987, and it actually worked. Dylan even transferred their arrangement to the Heartbreakers later that year, before deciding that that was enough good news for now. It took another ten years—and another storming arrangement of the song by the Patti Smith Group on the joint Dylan/Smith Paradise Lost tour in the fall of 1995—for the seas to part again. East Coast audiences in the spring of 1997 were thus blessed with the (fleeting) return of the redeemed messenger.
{239} DEAR LANDLORD
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Studio A, Nashville, November 29, 1967 [JWH].
First known performance: Providence, RI, October 25, 1992.
Still not quite done with calling the feckless to judgment, Dylan had one more target in his sights. Though on "Dear Landlord" he never explicitly names the culprit, it didn’t take long for others to surmise that the "landlord" was Albert Grossman, someone who had once "put a price on [his] soul." By this point, contact between Dylan and Grossman was kept to a bare minimum, Sara often finding herself obliged to act as go-between. At the January 1968 Woody Guthrie memorial, CBS president Clive Davis recognized a changed dynamic, and even the less astute Bob Shelton noticed a real distance between Dylan and his manager.
Dylan almost admitted that Grossman was "the landlord" in a 1971 conversation with A. J. Weberman—another person who wanted to put a price on Bob’s soul—but smartly stopped short of giving it this one, narrow meaning: "[‘Dear Landlord’] wasn’t all the way [my italics] for Al Grossman. In fact, he wasn’t even in my mind. Only later, when people pointed out to me that the song might’ve been written for Al Grossman, I thought, well, maybe it could’ve been." In fact, he was already planning to even things up by pulling the plug on Grossman’s half share of the publishing—terminating Dwarf Music at the end of 1967.
He had certainly been aiming to make such a statement for a while (see #209). Between songs of resolution, he switched over to piano to pound out this valedictory to a relationship whose lease has expired. "Dear Landlord" duly became another song on John Wesley Harding that sneaked under the wire of most listeners’ sensibilities, though it struck a chord with a number of fine singers, notably Joe Cocker and Sandy Denny, who both recorded the song the following year. Dylan himself seemed faintly embarrassed by the song, insisting to Crowe that it "was really just the first line. . . . Then I just figured, what else can I put to it."
"Dear Landlord," one more Dwarf song put into cryogenic storage, did not come in from the cold until October 1992, when he at last presented a full band arrangement of it at a New England soundcheck, unveiling it the following night to whoops of delight from the Dylan devotees.
Note: The recent Super Audio CD "remaster" of John Wesley Harding is a travesty of the original LP. Typically bright, it centers everything, losing the piano/vocal symmetry of the original recording of "Dear Landlord." An original stereo vinyl copy (not the crappy Sundazed "mono" reissue) should sit in every Dylan fan’s collection.
{240} I’LL BE YOUR BABY TONIGHT
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Studio A, Nashville, November 29, 1967 [JWH].
First known performance: Isle of Wight, August 31, 1969.
{241} DOWN ALONG THE COVE
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Studio A, Nashville, November 29, 1967 [JWH].
First known performance: 1999.
In every sense im
aginable, these two songs belong together. Recorded in reverse order, at the end of the last John Wesley Harding session, they bid farewell to all the recriminations and garment-rending that came before. They also, as Dylan admitted to Matt Damsker, were the "only two songs which came at the same time as the music." Whether or not he knew at the time that he was composing "tasters" for the next album is less clear. He says not, insisting in 1978 that on "John Wesley Harding, . . .
we did two songs which the whole next album was like the last two songs on that album. [But] I didn’t even realize it at the time."
Yet, by laying Pete Drake’s pedal steel across these tracks, Dylan does seem to be suggesting that he—and/or his producer—were looking to go "more country." The voice, too, has started to undergo its metamorphosis into a cross between Rodgers’s twang and "all the Hanks," fully previewed on the basement-tape version of "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean." Yet all this could be hindsight toying with us. As Dylan mockingly observed in 1981, "The older albums don’t really mean something to some people until they’re hearing the new one, and in retrospect they go back and hear something else from the path that’ll seem like it takes the steps that leads up to the new one."
At the end of 1967, no one was predicting that Dylan would venture further down this ol’ dirt road. And had he felt so inclined, he could easily have put these two AM-friendly songs out as a single, thus reinforcing a change in direction. But Dylan only went the whole hog after Johnny Cash reinvented country’s commercial credentials with his Folsom Prison LP. When Dylan performed "I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight" at the Isle of Wight, he sang it in that cud-chewing Skyline voice (some boozy backing vocals at least act as a reminder of those basement days). As if apologizing for this artistic crime, his subsequent live versions (of which there have been many) have generally removed the "tree" from country.