Bob Dylan has made up his mind to give himself to somebody…..  But who is it?

The new song called "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You" released on the new Rough and Rowdy Ways album in the midst of the current Pandemic on June 19th, 2020 demonstrates that Bob Dylan still has the Midas Touch and has what it takes to spin out a great new love song at age 79. 

But is this just another silly love song, of the kind that Paul McCartney and his mates were good at bringing forth?  Not that there is anything “wrong with that” as we can agree that we “would like to know.”  But I would suggest there might be something deeper going on within the structure of this love song that may escape our notice unless we carefully drill down on the careful way this song is put together.

The first thing we need to do to really evaluate this song is to give it another good listen to, which can be done on this convenient link:

I remember a day when you had to purchase songs like this if you wanted to hear them whenever you wanted.  But this is a new day.  Now there are many different ways to listen to this song.  One Bob Dylan fan, Family Headley by name wrote in her comments under the “Official Audio” on the YouTube link that upon hearing this song for the first time, she found it to be so beautiful that she immediately had to go and grab her husband --presumably from his home office where he was pretending to be working through the pandemic --and she made him stop “working from home” for a few minutes and get up and dance with her in the kitchen.  Now that is a beautiful story.  Many others in the comments confess to tears arising while playing this song.  Another lady I know, whose husband is going through a very serious health crisis at the moment, wrote me that upon first hearing the song she was brought to a flood of tears as she listened along with her husband.

Another way to listen to the song is to get out all of the tools, you know the linguistic structuralist stuff, the English Hebrew dictionaries, the Grammars, the Lexicons, some commentaries, some Midrashim and Targumim and give this song a real thorough going over.

I think it is always a nice thing when someone goes to the trouble of deciphering the new lyrics like these and then posting them in the comments section of the YouTube video so that you can follow along with the song and be sure that you are hearing things right, prior to them showing up on Bob Dylan.com as they do now.

Because you know, Bob mumbles a bit.  But I am convinced that all this is done on purpose because he wants to make you work a little for it.  He doesn’t want you to hear it all perfectly the first time through.  What is the fun in that?  He wants to make you have to go through it many times, maybe over the course of many days, weeks, months or even years before you finally hear it fully and then go, “Ah! O, I get it now!”

Back in the early days we used to have to do this with the record player.  We would lift up the needle and take it back to the beginning of the song, being careful not to scratch the record and listen to the song which might be smack dab in the middle of the album over and over until you finally got it all.  Then there was the CD where you could conveniently push a button and take it back one song or two and listen to it again.  And then finally came the internet when you could go to Bob Dylan.com or Expecting Rain and obtain the Holy Grail, the official lyrics page with all ambiguities ironed out as you compared what you were hearing along with the official Bob Dylan Songs page.  One issue is that Bob says that he never sings the same song the same way twice so there are always endless new arrangements and often interesting and substantive lyric changes, and some are quite dramatic, as we have discussed elsewhere.     

One thing I have found fun to do on the official songs page is to go there and then click on something like the letter “Y” in the alphabet near the top of the page, and then watch the page scroll and scroll.  I say go to the letter “Y” because there are no songs that Bob has written that begin with the letter “Z” ….. at least not yet, and then it is amazing to watch the pages scroll and scroll through the nearly 500 or so songs that he has written that are all now listed on this official song page site.  This is a ridiculous amount of output for one lifetime, as he says in the new Album on the Song “Mother of Muses”

Mother of Muses wherever you are
I’ve already outlived my life by far

but these are just the songs.  Then there are the paintings, the books written, the poems, the interviews, the speeches given, the movies made and appeared in, the television appearances, the metallurgy, etc. 

It just doesn’t end.  Let me repost the official lyrics below for our convenience.

 

Sitting on my terrace lost in the stars
Listenin’ to the sounds of the sad guitars
Been thinking it over and I thought it all through
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

I saw the first fall of snow
I saw the flowers come and go
I don’t think anyone else ever knew
I made up my mind to give myself to you

I’m giving myself to you, I am
From Salt Lake City to Birmingham
From East L.A. to San Antone
I don’t think I could bear to live my life alone

My eye is like a shooting star
It looks at nothing, neither near or far
No one ever told me, it’s just something I knew
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

If I had the wings of a snow white dove
I’d preach the gospel, the gospel of love
A love so real - a love so true
I made up my mind to give myself to you

Take me out traveling, you’re a traveling man
Show me something that I’ll understand
I’m not what I was, things aren’t what they were
I’m going to go far away from home with her

I traveled the long road of despair
I met no other traveler there
A lot of people gone, a lot of people I knew
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

My heart’s like a river - a river that sings
It just takes me a while to realize things
I’ll see you at sunrise - I’ll see you at dawn
I’ll lay down beside you, when everyone is gone

From the plains and the prairies - from the mountains to the sea
I hope that the gods go easy with me
I knew you’d say yes - I’m saying it too
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

 Copyright © 2020 by Special Rider Music

The first thing we notice here when we lay this song out like this is that we see there are nine verses.  And as we have been reminded of late there are currently nine Supreme Court justices, at least for a little while longer.  When there are nine you can’t have an even number, because you don’t want a final decisions to end up in a tie.  So with nine verses there is some kind of structure here.  Kind of like that “swing vote” on the Supreme Court there is one extra, one special, because what you don’t want is an even number.  So that means that one of the verses might have something extra to say, just in the way that these nine verses are laid out.

As noted by Pascal-Emanuel Gobry “Dylan is a profoundly spiritual poet, and his spirituality is profoundly shaped by the Christian Bible.”  There can be no doubt about this declaration so let’s see if he is using any biblical poetic techniques.

Now it is time to dig into our Hebrew grammars a little bit to follow the next part of the argument.  There is something in Hebrew and Biblical poetry called Chiasmus.  It is beautifully explained on this link: I won’t go into it too much here with a lot of detail except to say that the Biblical writers often deployed this technique to gives some symmetry to the passage they were writing which ends up succinctly making the central point and making it more memorable.

Here is an easy one to understand, an example from Genesis 9:6 ESV:

(A) Whoever sheds
(B) the blood
(C) of man
(C’) by man
(B’) shall his blood
(A’) be shed

The legs of the poetry match up and in the Chiasmus structure and there is often a focus on a single central clause, as in the example the author linked above gives under number 4 above from John chapter 4:

A (23a) But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth:

     B (23b) for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

         C (24a) God is a Spirit:

     B’ (24b) and they that worship him

 A’ (24c) must worship him in spirit and in truth.

The effect of this chiasmic structure is to give prominence to the central statement, which then can be considered as the main point of the passage.  So in the example above from John chapter 4, the main point is at the exact center of the passage:  “God is a Spirit” and therefore if you are going to worship Him rightly, you need to doing it by worshipping Him in Spirit.  In the context of Jesus’ discussion with the Samaritan woman, he is highlighting that it is not so much about where you are located, on your mountain in Samaria or on our  mountain in Jerusalem, you can worship anytime, anyplace if you are worshiping “in Spirit.” So in the coming Kingdom of God physical location is no longer in the New Testament epoch the paramount thing.  It is true that God commanded Moses where he should worship Him in the Old Covenant: 

^{Deuteronomy 12:13-14} Take care that you do not offer your burnt offerings at any place that you see, but at the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I am commanding you.

Ok so how does all of this relate to this beautiful new song from Mr. Dylan?  Well we noticed that there was one verse that was something of the odd man out, and it is placed in the exact center of the song so that it kind of stands out, so maybe it is put in this place in order to be the interpretive key to the whole song and that is verse number 5.  There are four verses that come before it and four verses that come after it.  Could this verse be the pivot or turning point of the song?  Let’s take a closer look at verse 5: 

If I had the wings of a snow white dove
I’d preach the gospel, the gospel of love
A love so real - a love so true
I made up my mind to give myself to you

So if this passage is the chiastic center of the song, the odd man out, then it could indeed be the interpretive key.  Let’s look at it in greater detail.  If Bob had the wings of a snow white dove he would preach the gospel, the gospel of love.  What are the wings of the snow white dove here?  One of the contributors to the YouTube post suggests this might be a connection in the words "If I had wings like a snow-white dove" it could be an allusion to "Dink's Song," which was covered by Bob in 1961 and by Bob and Joan on the Rolling Thunder Tour in Gainesville, FL.  But the song was made immortal by Oscar Isaac and Marcus Mumford courtesy of the music director T Bone Burnett in the movie Inside Llewyn Davis.  Well I think this is getting close especially since the song references “Noah’s Dove.”  But the Dove that greeted Noah, the one that foreshadowed the one that descended on Jesus in the Jordan River when he was baptized were one in the same, the Holy Spirit.  So Bob is telling us that if he had the Holy Spirit in full measure he would be preaching the gospel, the gospel of Love.  The unique thing about this gospel is that it is “So real…. So true” it is unlike anything that originates within the mind of man.  It is a message directly from God.

So then now we are moving forward toward an answer to the question with which we began this post with:  “Who exactly has Bob Dylan made up his mind to give himself to?”

We had noted before in this blog that Dylan often presents a relationship with a lover in a similar way to a relationship with the Lord.  Is this his attempt at some kind of plausible deniability?  In other words if anyone ever came up to him and said, “Hey, You said you loved the Lord” He could say, “No, no I wrote that about a woman.”  No, I don’t think so, that is not going to work.  Dylan may be many things but he is no coward.  He doesn’t mind the “booing,” or “walking out on his own, a thousand miles from home.”  He doesn’t mind the driving rain, because he knows he will sustain…Because He believe in You (i.e the Lord Jesus).  Instead poets are supposed to write in such a way that lyrics can at times be somewhat open.  People can find various perspectives in good poetry.  So this is how a poet might put it.

So this raises a question about our central verse in this great love song.  When Dylan uses the phrase “The Gospel of Love” is his talking about “The Good News about Love” in other words “Ain’t love grand?”  Or is he referring the Good News which is so wonderful, so spectacular that it can be described as the Gospel of Love, the Love that God has even for His enemies such that:

Romans 5:8

But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Clearly it is the later.  We can say this because we have all the Dylan Gospel albums informing us about what he means when he refers to “the Gospel,” the good news.  He has shouted it out, that he was “going down for the last time, but by His mercies he was spared,” he says that he has “been saved, by the blood of the Lamb.”  And we have had to push back continually in this blog concerning the continual effort to limit Dylan’s use of his Christian faith to a few albums way back when -- in the early 1980s as this just doesn’t work for honest interpreters and that such an effort misconstrues all of his work that has come since, all of which builds upon that solid rock foundation.

Now at the beginning of the song he says:

Been thinking it over and I thought it all through
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

We could ask, "Yeah, but hasn’t He already done that?"  If this is addressed to the Lord, as we are suggesting that it might be, then isn’t a little redundant to give yourself to the Lord again?  No, not really because the Christian life is about giving yourself to the service of the Lord anew each and every day.  As sinners, we stray from our beloved often, but when we go out on the terrace at night and we look up contemplatively at the heavens above and we get “lost in the stars” as is referenced in the beginning of this song, we end up saying or thinking something like what David wrote in Psalm 8 about three thousand years ago: 

³ When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
⁴ what is man that you are mindful of him,
    and the son of man that you care for him?

⁵ Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings^[a]
    and crowned him with glory and honor. 

But is this idea carried through the rest of the verses?  Yes, I think it is, consider verse two: 

I saw the first fall of snow
I saw the flowers come and go
I don’t think anyone else ever knew
I made up my mind to give myself to you

The beauty of the created order, the first snow, the annual return of the flowers as they come and go surely all of this works with our thesis.  But what about this next line “I don’t think anyone else ever knew?”  Wasn’t Dylan’s conversion to Christianity one of the biggest bombshell stories of 1979?  Of course people knew!  They read the reviews of people like Joel Selvin from Saturday, Nov 3^rd, 1979 entitled:  “Bob Dylan’s God-Awful Gospel” where he concluded the Dylan had “turned to the most prosaic source of truth on Earth, so aptly dubbed ‘opium of the masses’ by Karl Marx.”

Selvin’s review today looks very short-sighted and very petty while contrarily those gospel-centered albums have stood the test of time and somehow now have been miraculous transformed in the public’s mind into one of the "most enthusiastically praised Bootleg Series releases." If you doubt this assertion, check out the 8 Disk 

Trouble No More: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 13 / 1979-1981 (Deluxe Edition)

where the 102 songs have a running time of 8 hrs. 11 minutes. This is something widely acknowledged to be akin to a master work that chronicles a major transformative period in the artist’s life worthy of a special new retrospective Album in 2017 called Trouble No More.

So in what sense can Dylan say,

I don’t think anyone else ever knew
I made up my mind to give myself to you

Dylan has been critical of “religion” as that concept has sometimes been described.  He contrasts that with “relationship” and in that sense the relationship was an intensely private thing for a typically very private person.  But he allowed his life changing experiences with the Lord to be chronicled in those albums, just like he had done with a human relationship break-up in Blood on the Tracks in 1975 and we were all the better for it.

What about verse three?

I’m giving myself to you, I am
From Salt Lake City to Birmingham
From East L.A. to San Antone
I don’t think I could bear to live my life alone

These verses just describe the universal geographical nature of this relationship.  A relationship with the Lord travels well, as Jesus suggested to the Samaritan woman.  This works well for a man “still on the road, trying to stay out of the joint.”  And it describes the meaning that Dylan has found in this relationship, “I don’t think I could bear to live my life alone.”  Dylan has a new lifelong friend who promises to stay closer than a brother, we have noted in this blog the very significant lyric change from “Going to put my best foot forward” to “Going to put my best friend forward, stop being influenced by fools” in his revised version of "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking” which he and Mavis Staples contributed to the Anthology album called: Gotta Serve Somebody – The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan from 2003.

What about verse 6, let’s move on having already dealt with the chiastic center of the song in verse 5:

Take me out traveling, you’re a traveling man
Show me something that I’ll understand
I’m not what I was, things aren’t what they were
I’m going to go far away from home with her

Yeah this can work, who is a traveling man?  Jesus says in Luke 9:58:

And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

So yeah, Jesus was “a traveling man.”  A companion for a man like Dylan who lives his life out on the road, but also for every believer who is described in the Bible as a pilgrim, seeking to walk continually with the Lord as they head down the long narrow pathway toward their celestial home where Jesus has prepared a place for us.

Ok on to verse 7:

I traveled the long road of despair
I met no other traveler there
A lot of people gone, a lot of people I knew
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you

Yeah, I think this can work too.  Bob wrote in the Song called Slow Train that he had some concern for his companions:

Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions
Are they lost or are they found
Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

And Bob has met some interesting companions in his most amazing lifetime. As he says in this song:

“A lot of people gone, a lot of people I knew.”  

Let’s see if we can come up with a partial list of some well-known people that Bob spent has at least spent a little time with that are now dead and gone:  There was: Buddy Holly, Woody Guthrie, Big Joe Williams, Lenny Bruce, Dave Van Ronk, David Blue, Carl Sandberg, Archibald MacLeish, Martin Luther King, Michael Bloomfield, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Gregory Peck, Victoria Spivey, Allen Ginsberg, Jacques Levy, Frank Sinatra, Albert Grossman, Sam Peckinpah, Johnny Cash, Jerry Garcia, George Harrison, Sam Shepard, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Mickey Jones, Tony Glover, D.A. Pennebaker and Little Richard.  Of course many more could be added here but enough have been listed to show that Bob can definitely say,

“A lot of people gone, a lot of people I knew.”

Well I think I have gone on long enough, there are some more verses, and some more connections that could possibly be made, but I think I have provided enough here for your consideration of who it might be that Bob has made up his mind to give himself to.

Doug

Lenny Bruce Never did make it out of Babylon

Bob Dylan likes to update and change up his lyrics from time to time.  Sometimes there are major changes; sometimes it is not all that significant.  He likes to rearrange the instrumentation as well so that he is never really singing or playing the same song twice in the same way.  A new arrangement of his song Lenny Bruce appeared last week (October 12th, 2019) and it is pretty good for a 78-year-old man.  It was the first performance of the song in 11 years according to the official Bob Dylan site:  https://www.bobdylan.com/setlists/?id_song=26130.  The new performance is posted here:  https://youtu.be/i3-eq8EEK7o  by a poster known as Jack Frost with comments turned off.  Jack Frost of course is the pseudonym of  Bob Dylan when he is working as a producer.   

But we are rewarded with some interesting insights by paying very close attention to some of what at first glance may seem to be minor lyric changes that have emerged in the new arrangement of "Lenny Bruce" (© 1981).  The song was reborn and unveiled last week on October 11th, 2019 in Irvine, California.  But for us to understand the significance of the lyric changes we really need to be familiar with the original lyrics first which we can find on the official Bob Dylan website:

"Lenny Bruce is dead but his ghost lives on and on
Never did get any Golden Globe award, never made it to Synanon (i.e. initially a drug rehabilitation program in Santa Monica before becoming one of the “most dangerous and violent cults in America.”)
He was an outlaw, that’s for sure
More of an outlaw 
than you ever were
Lenny Bruce is gone 
but his spirit’s livin’ on and on
Maybe he had some problems, 
maybe some things that he couldn’t work out,

But he sure was funny and he sure told the truth 
and he knew what he was talkin’ about
Never robbed any churches (This was an important theme in this era, corrupt religious leaders)

nor cut off any babies’ heads  (More on this important lyric in a minute)
He just took the folks in high places 
and he shined a light in their beds
He’s on some other shore, 
he didn’t wanna live anymore."

Now the reference to "cutting off babies heads" is surely an allusion to the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion where even the description of the enormity of the procedure is too gruesome even to be described.  It is probably best to just let the poet summarize it for us as he does here.  So we have updated our post (below) on Bob Dylan as a pro-life advocate to now include this important reference.

But now, today, the new reborn version has:

"Lenny Bruce is dead 

but his ghost lives on and on
Never made it to the promised land, 

never made it out of Babylon"
He was an outlaw, so sad but true,
More of an outlaw than even he ever knew."

So what is the significance of these minor lyric (marked in bold) changes?  Well, first of all, these are not minor lyric changes!  Now they have become a declaration regarding the probable eternal state of Lenny Bruce.  No longer are we just talking about whether he ever picked up any old Golden Globe award, instead, we are discussing Lenny’s eternal reward!  Poor Lenny never "made it to the promised land," he "never made it out of Babylon."  This change also adds poignancy and clarification to the original final lines in the song:

"Lenny Bruce was bad, he was the [spirtual] brother that you never had." 

Wow!  There is a lot to ponder there.  And while Lenny's outlaw status remains unchanged in the new version, now it is "so sad, but true" tragic actually that he was an outlaw and now he is no longer being compared to the lessor outlaw Bob Dylan (Alias) as formerly, now he is more of an outlaw "than even he ever knew."  

In other words, Lenny spoke for more than himself, he spoke for his own and future generation just beginning to wake up to the hypocrisy of a status quo and an older generation that was in need of a major shakeup, maybe even a revival, because of the "Slow Train Coming."  There were 

"folks in high places [think JFK’s sexual depravities in the White House swimming pool] and he [Lenny] shined a light in their beds."

In this way, Lenny was "ripping off the lid before its time" and when he passed away in 1966 it was of a drug overdose at just the tender age of 41.  Now in the new version, Lenny is no longer just a heroic outlaw, now Lenny is a truly tragic hero since the poor guy never made it to the promised land and he never did make it out of Babylon.  The plaintive violin and the piano solo pick up on this idea and now express the sadness of the whole situation. 

It was a memorable ride that they shared together in that taxi once, there was a lot of commonality between the two travelers as each had to fight some wars on a battlefield but only one of them lived to tell the tale.  This brief encounter in the taxi was similar in nature to the one Bob Dylan describes when as a 17-year-old young Bobby Zimmerman went to see Buddy Holly perform as part of the "Winter Dance Party" at the Duluth Armory just a few nights before Buddy went down in a fatal plane crash at age 22.  Bob says something happened in their brief encounter, something was exchanged, and the taxi cab ride with Lenny which seemed to "take a couple of months" sounds like a similar moment.  One that Dylan hopes he is honoring with this sad song of remembrance.

Is Bob Dylan Pro-Life?

“Why would I want to take your life?
You’ve only murdered my father, raped his wife
Tattooed my babies with a poison pen
Mocked my God, humiliated my friends

I need a shot of love, I need a shot of love.”

The question for discussion with stark lyrics like these is, What modern-day barbaric practice could the poet laureate of Rock and Roll be referring to with such lyrics?  He has told us, “That it is all in the Songs.” 

So since this song was first played on July 1^st, 1981 we would want to look for additional evidence from this period to help us understand what it means to “Tattoo babies with a poison pen.”

There is an altered version of the song called Dignity (known as Version #1 from 1991) on the great album Tell Tale Signs that has these interesting altered lyrics:

“The Soul of a nation is under the knife

Death is standing in the doorway of life, (a mother’s womb could be described as ‘the doorway of life’)

In the next room a man fighting with his wife

over Dignity.”

Ok, so we may have some confirmation here….What else can we find?   How about something about from the magnificent song Foot of Pride: which has the copy write of 1983: 

“They got some beautiful people out there, man
They can be a terror to your mind and show you how to hold your tongue
They got mystery written all over their forehead
They kill babies in the crib and say only the good die young
They don’t believe in mercy”

And while we are on the subject of mercy there is the great song Political Word from the Album entitled "Oh Mercy" from 1989:

"We live in a political world
Where mercy walks the plank
Life is in mirrors, death disappears
Up the steps into the nearest bank
We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last"

But a really interesting one emerges in the new arrangement of "Lenny Bruce" (© 1981) which emerged reborn last week on October 11th, 2019 in Irvine, California.  The old lyrics on the official Bob Dylan website have:

"Lenny Bruce is dead
but his ghost lives on and on
Never did get any Golden Globe award, 
never made it to Synanon
He was an outlaw, 
that’s for sure
More of an outlaw 
than you ever were
Lenny Bruce is gone 
but his spirit’s livin’ on and on
Maybe he had some problems, 
maybe some things that he couldn’t work out,

But he sure was funny and he sure told the truth 
and he knew what he was talkin’ about
Never robbed any churches
nor cut off any babies’ heads
He just took the folks in high places 
and he shined a light in their beds
He’s on some other shore, 
he didn’t wanna live anymore."

Now the reference to "cutting off babies heads" is surely an allusion to the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion where the description of the enormity of the procedure is hardly able to be described.  It is probably best to just let the poet describe it as he does here.

But now, today, the new version has:

"Lenny Bruce is dead but his ghost lives on and on
Never made it to the promised land, never made it out of Babylon"
He was an outlaw, so sad but true,
More of an outlaw than even he ever knew."

But what is the significance of these minor changes?  Well, first of all, these changes are not minor changes!  They are a declaration regarding the eternal state of Lenny Bruce.  No longer are we talking about whether he ever picked up any Golden Globe award, now we are discussing his eternal reward!  Poor Lenny never "made it to the promised land," he "never made it out of Babylon." “Wow!  There is a lot to ponder there.  And while his outlaw status remained unchanged, now it is "so sad, but true" very tragic figure actually that he was an outlaw and now he is no longer being compared to the lessor outlaw Bob Dylan as formerly, now he is more of an outlaw "than even he ever knew."  In other words, he spoke for more than himself, he spoke for a generation just beginning to wake up to the hypocrisy of the older generation "ripping off the lid before its time" and he passed away in 1966 at just the tender age of 41.

Alright Doug, you got a few hints and cryptic clues here and there, but you can’t show me anything from say an interview from this period?  Oh Yes, I can! I can give you a clear declaration from this very period but I want to give some context so we are clear on what the poet Laurette is really saying:

THE DAVE HERMAN INTERVIEW, LONDON, JULY 2 1981

Herman: Last night in Earl's Court, here in London, I guess there were about twenty people in there and when I kind of saw them, I guess it was when you did 'It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)' and every last one of them in the place was standing on their chair and it was a pretty special kind of a feeling. I was reminded once again, that you really do have a very .., that you play a very special part in the lives of an extraordinary amount of people all over the world and I gathered that this has always made you a bit uncomfortable, that people hold you in a very special place?

Dylan: I don't feel uneasy with the part of it, that part of it, but the other part of it, you know the part where you're expected to ... go to parties ... and ... be somebody all the time, you know. That's what makes me feel uncomfortable.

Herman: Or the part that makes people presuming you have somehow a lot of answers that they might not have to a lot of questions?

Dylan: Well, if you ... the answers to those questions, they've got to be in those songs I've written. Someplace, if you know where to look, I think you'll find the answers to those questions. It's right there in the songs. Better than I could say it. ...

Herman: OK, well another thing is, ah, in The United States the abortion question is becoming one of the major political controversies at home.
Dylan: Well, that is just a diversion, though. Whenever you think about abortion, pro, con, you know, I think you should be thinking about those things, then they put you away with the bigger things, which you're not thinking about. So you get everybody thinking about abortion and they turn you back from it ... not to say that abortion is not important! But you can make something so ... you know cast a spell on something and make everybody look that way and then you come at them from another direction ...
Herman: But that sounds like it's conspiratorial?
Dylan: Yeah, it does, doesn't it?
Herman: Yeah, it does! I think it is, but I don't think people sit in rooms and say well, let's divert them with the abortion issue, and then we can slip this in while ...
Dylan: You actually don't think so??
Herman: That calculated? You think it is?
Dylan: I don't know ... Now abortion is important, I personally don't believe in it but ..., unless of course, somebody needs to have their life saved.

http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/81-jul2.htm

Here is an inspired performance by Benjamin Montmorency “Benmont” Tench III (born September 7, 1953) an American musician and singer, best known as a founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It is great to hear these inspired lyrics again, this time very clearly enunciated.

And here is a nice alteration on Political World:

And here is the newly updated and revised Lenny Bruce: 

The Lost Gospel Masterpiece: 'Making a Liar Out of Me'

So the most dramatic revelation among the new songs which were released in last weeks’ effort to build interest in “Trouble No More: The Bootleg Series Vol. 13” is the great song "Making A Liar Out Of Me” which is officially available today.  Rolling Stone has already dubbed it “The Lost Gospel Masterpiece.”

Several commentators have noted that the song has something similar to the Rolling Stones’ "You Can't Always Get What You Want" going on. That resonance sounds right, it is a powerful anthem, but the first thing we need to do if we want to begin a proper interpretation of a song like this is to get all of the lyrics out on the table and get ready with all the tools needed for a careful dissection.

That has been done below.  The first thing we notice is that each verse ends with the same refrain: "But you're making a liar out of me" so this indicates that everything that goes before the refrain.... is satire. So this is like reading Jonathan Swift or The Screwtape Letters, where to get the author's true meaning, the first thing we have to do is translate it into its opposite. So when the song says, "Your money's good" it really means, "Your money's no good" when it comes to the eternal matters that are under discussion during this period.  And if I tell people that "I am just going through changes" the truth is that I am not really just going through changes... actually I was “stone-cold dead as I stepped out of the womb”  and now I have been, according to another song from this era, "I’ve been saved by the Blood of the Lamb." You can pretend that your being courageous when you "try to stand on them burning bridges, knowing that your feet are made of clay," in other words, when you really have no safe place to stand, and that bridge your standing upon is burning down and you know there is no escape, in your heart of hearts, and you really have no real protection with your "earthly = clay" feet.  You are gonna get burned unless drastic action is taken.

Similarly, I could say that “you’d not sow discord among brothers,” but that wouldn’t be true. 
“Nor drain a man of his integrity,” but you do that too all the time.
You said “you remember the cries of the orphans and their mothers,” but you’ve forgotten about them.

When I say that, “that ain't flesh and blood you're drinking,” but it really is.  As Jesus said while teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”  John 6:54-56

You can say that “your conscience has not been slain by conformity” but it clearly has.
You can say “that you stand up unafraid to believe in justice” but you are still afraid.
I can say “you never sacrificed my children to the false god of infidelity” but you did.
I can say “that it's not the Tower of Babel that you're building” but it really is.  And like that tower, the one you are building will never be completed either.

Are these rebukes to the culture at large?  Or is the artist rebuking himself for his own duplicity and hypocrisy?   Yes.   Like many of Dylan’s best songs, these lyrics work on both levels.

So now that we have the interpretive key, ...satire, we can translate the meaning of the song… being careful not to let our consciences, even our souls, be killed and destroyed, "slain by conformity."

One final thought for those who continue to discuss Bob Dylan’s “Christian Period” as if he no longer believes the content of the songs from this period.   One could cite the Christmas Album from 2009 where during the promotional interview he was asked, “You sing these Song like a true believer” and he responds, “I am a True Believer.”  Or when he puts his stamp of approval on the collection of Covers from this period “Slow Train Coming: The “Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan” (2003) where he added his own outstanding offering to the Collection by submitting one with his Gospel Singing friend Mavis Staples who is currently touring with him.

But the latest release carries with it its own further confirmation.  If you were embarrassed about how caught up you were when you were preaching the Gospel to audiences and claiming to be Saved, Would you really want to put all this further incriminating evidence out there on display for close examination again?  The Songs in this collection include some like “Dead Man, Dead Man” or “I Don’t want to go to Hell for Anybody” which contained the strongest medicine, and yet they are confidently included in here in the new release.  Call it a passing fad, or a period, for him if you want and if it makes you feel better, but the evidence is clearly otherwise.

“Come you writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin...

"When you Gonna Wake Up and Strengthen the Things that Remain?

I tell people, you just going through changes
And that you're acquainted both with night and day
That your money's good and you just being courageous
On them burning bridges knowing your feet are made of clay
Well I say you won't be destroyed by your inventions
That you brought it all under captivity
And that you really do have all the best intentions
But you're making a liar out of me

Well I say that you're just young and self-tormented
But that deep down you understand
The hopes and fears and dreams of the discontented
That threaten now to overtake your promised land
Well I say you'd not sow discord among brothers
Nor drain a man of his integrity
That you remember the cries of the orphans and their mothers
But you're making a liar out of me

But you're making a liar out of me

Well I say that, that ain't flesh and blood you're drinking
In the wounded empire of your fool's paradise
With a light above your head forever blinking
Turning virgins into merchandise
That you must have been beautiful when you were living
You remind me of some old-time used-to-be
I say you can be trusted with the power you been given
But you're making a liar out of me

So many things so hard to say as you stumble
To take refuge in your offices of shame
As the earth beneath my feet begins to rumble
And your young men die for nothin', not even fame
I say that someday you'll begin to trust us
And that your conscience has not been slain by conformity
That you stand up unafraid to believe in justice
But you're making a liar out of me
You're making a liar out of me

Well I can hear the sound of distant thunder
From an open window at the end of every hall
Now that you're gone I got to wonder
If you ever were here at all
I say you never sacrificed my children
To some false god of infidelity
And that it's not the Tower of Babel that you're building
But you're making a liar out of me
You're making a liar out of me
Well you're making a liar out of me

What Good am I? And What is the Chief End of Man?

What good am I if I’m like all the rest

If I just turn away, when I see how you’re dressed
If I shut myself off so I can’t hear you cry
What good am I?

What good am I if I know and don’t do
If I see and don’t say, if I look right through you
If I turn a deaf ear to the thunderin’ sky
What good am I?

What good am I while you softly weep
And I hear in my head what you say in your sleep
And I freeze in the moment like the rest who don’t try
What good am I?

What good am I then to others and me
If I’ve had every chance and yet still fail to see
If my hands are tied must I not wonder within
Who tied them and why and where must I have been?

What good am I if I say foolish things

And I laugh in the face of what sorrow brings
And I just turn my back while you silently die
What good am I?

Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider Music

Oh, What can we say?  It’s a masterpiece.  You can’t analyze a masterpiece.  It is open to lots of interpretations.  You can’t break down the meaning of the Mona Lisa.   But can we at least provide some historical context?  Can we at least analyze the surrounding words?  Can we at least see how the song might fit with the rest of 1989 Oh Mercy Album?  Can we at least look at the way the artist uses these amazing five short verses to build to such powerful and masterful conclusion?   Yeah we can do all that.  So let’s get started.

Let’s start at the end.  Since this last verse seems to be the culmination and appears to contain the whole meaning of the song.

What good am I if I say foolish things
And I laugh in the face of what sorrow brings
And I just turn my back while you silently die
What good am I?

Why would I want to say foolish things?     Popular culture, says foolish things all day long: 

The news of the day is on all the time
All the latest gossip all the latest rhyme

Reality TV and the Kardashians speak foolish things.  So much of life in our times is almost all about foolish things.  Ninety percent of what is on television is foolish things.   We don’t need any more foolish things!  Interviewers are constantly asking Bob Dylan foolish things.  He wants to get beyond foolish things.  How about getting into something significant and important?  How about something meaningful so that we can get an answer to that burning question that we all have continually bouncing around inside ourselves; it is really the question for all the ages, What Good Am I?  Or put another way,  Why am I here?   What is my Purpose?  Or turning it around, “What am I Good For?”  How can I find the Good?  And in my movement toward the Good, How can I stop this incessant problem that we all have of:

if I know and don’t do

If I see and don’t say

If I’ve had every chance and yet still fail to see

In these profound questions aren’t we really just asking for the singular and overriding end for which human beings were created, and for what purpose?  Isn’t this the same thing Plato and Aristotle sought after, the Summum bonum “the highest good”?  Or as it was so poignantly put in Seventeenth Century, “What is the Chief end of Man?”  We have got to get beyond the foolish things!   They won’t provide us with the answer to our deepest longing.  And If we never get to the answer of the critical question, What Good am I?, because we “freeze in the moment,” the moment for decisive action, like “the rest that don’t try” What Good are we?

What about laughing in the face of what sorrow brings?  In other words, pretending that we do not live in a sin laden, cursed and sorrow filled world with all the miseries of this life and always trying to put a happy face on it.  The problem with such an effort is that it is bound to fail because at bottom:

power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is

But now we come now to the hardest line in the entire song.   The last line:

And I just turn my back while you silently die
What good am I?

Who is silently dying in this story?  We began in the second line by recognizing that we can’t just

just turn away, when I see how you’re dressed

to do that would be like

turning a deaf ear to the thundering sky

This is not an old woman on her death bed.  No! The way that she is dressed should turn our heads, not away but towards!   We need to respond in an appropriate way to this positive stimulus.

I think we can get some much needed help here from the other songs on this amazing Oh Mercy Album.  Another similar song that gets into the big questions, the questions about God and Man and Law is the very powerful Man In The Long Black Coat.   That one too has death as it focus, remember there  

was dust on the man
In the long black coat

The dust of death, and there’s also a soft cotton dress on the line hangin’ dry.  The woman in that story

She never said nothing, there was nothing she wrote
She gone with the man
In the long black coat

And it was not only because she was seduced, we should remember that she is the one who

she stopped him to ask
If he wanted to dance,

You’re telling me that she ran off with death personified?   Yeah, that is what he is telling us.   And similarly in our song we can’t let this happen, we can’t …

 just turn my back while you silently die

If we did, ….What good am I?

To do so would be to:

know and don’t do

to see and don’t say

These are called “Sins of Omission” and Freezing in the moment is just not going to cut it.  Nor will being like all the others, all the rest who don’t try.

So what do we need to do to stop turning our back on others while they silently die?   Or to get ourselves to stop Freezing in the moment? Or following all the rest who don’t try?

There is another important couplet in this oh-so-sparse, yet oh-so-dense song which is so filled with meaning:

If my hands are tied must I not wonder within
Who tied them and why and where must I have been?

This verse is critical to the meaning of the song.  With this verse, the song takes a critical turn and the musical key changes here too.   There is recognition that there is a problem with being “fast bound in sin and nature’s night” as the hymn writer put it.  The image used here is reminiscent of another great English writer, C.S. Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia and specifically the volume called The Silver Chair.   In the story, Prince Rilian is strapped into a Silver Chair each night because during a certain hour of the night he raves and raves crazy talk.   Eustace, Jill and Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle are instructed that under no circumstances are they to pay any attention to what he is raving about in the middle of the night.

But when they witness the beginning of the knight's transformation, the knight cries out, "I adjure you to set me free.  By all fears and all loves, by the bright skies of Overland, by the Great Lion, by Aslan himself, I charge you!"  Once the name of Aslan, the Christ figure, is evoked they know what they must do.

The three cut him loose, and the knight is turned back to his normal princely self, and the new released prince then grabs his sword, and slashes the silver chair to pieces.

If my hands are tied must I not wonder within
Who tied them and why and where must I have been?

Isn’t this the same bondage describe in Dylan’s 1979 Precious Angel:

My so-called friends have fallen under a spell
They look me squarely in the eye and they say, “All is well”

The songwriter encourages us to ask some hard questions.   Why are we also so “fast bound in sin and natures night” Why?   Why are we so prone to:

know and don’t do   (hypocrisy)

to see and don’t say  (failure to act on truth)

to look right through you  (centered on self)

But the good news of the gospel that Bob so fully embraced in 1979 is that while it is true that we are unable to save ourselves, we can’t escape the bondage by ourselves, but our hands can be untied, and an end can be made of our bondage to sin and nature’s night.  And when it is understood that God sent his only son to die in the place of His people, they see that they are of great value to him, and as Bob sang often during this period:

  

Jesus is coming

Coming back to gather his jewels

This too is the explanation why Christians are always so compelled to share their faith by reaching out in love to other sinners, telling them about the wonderful, absolutely free salvation that they have found and offering them that same grace that is to be found in Christ alone.   They simply can’t:

just turn their backs while you silently die

If they did, they would then have to ask themselves the hardest question?

What good am I?

And it is the gospel that makes this fundamental transformation in a person, so that they can finally at last know the answer to life's most pressing question, “What Good … Am I?”

And that which you’ve given me today
Is worth more than I could pay
And no matter what they say
I believe in you

I Believe In You, Copyright © 1979 by Special Rider Music

By His truth I can be upright

By His strength I do endure
By His power I’ve been lifted
In His love I am secure
He bought me with a price
Freed me from the pit
Full of emptiness and wrath
And the fire that burns in it

Saved, Copyright © 1980 by Special Rider Music

Entertaining Some Working Men in a Cabin in the North Country Fair 52 Years Ago

CBC TV Studios
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
1 February 1964
Produced by Daryl Duke.

Bob Dylan - Toronto by vicky7xthomas

 Dylan recorded a half-hour program as part of the CBC-TV series “Quest.” The half a dozen songs he sings: “Talkin’ World War III Blues,” “Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “Girl from the North Country,” “The Times They Are a-Chang in’,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” and “Restless Farewell”  are all performed within the most incongruous of settings, a log cabin filled with working men pretending to pay attention.

Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)

I have to disagree with English author Clinton Heylin in his Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995 that this is “the most incongruous of settings, a log cabin filled with working men pretending to pay attention.”

Heylin, not being from the country that they called the Midwest, doesn’t have a reference for the cabin depicted in this great 1960’s video.

The Country that I come from is also called the Midwest, as I was raised in Wisconsin and we took many vacations in the early 60’s in Northern Wisconsin, in Upper Michigan, and in Northern Minnesota. Up in that forested wild country it was common to have a cabin such as this one for men who were working say in logging or trapping or hunting or just on a manly get-a-way from civilization with some other men, where they could make strong coffee, smoke their pipes, or roll their own tobacco cigarettes while they were maybe on a week long canoe trip through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness that divides Minnesota from Canada.

We used to also stay in a similarly appointed cabin and go skiing in that area in the winter. These cabins usually didn’t have any insulation but people could keep warm in them if they knew how to operate a wood-stove and these special places would be opportunities for great fellowship around the wood stove, feeding it with the abundant wood found around such a cabin, telling stories, singing songs, playing poker and sewing socks that had come apart during the day’s activities.

If there was a musician in the group, he would be encouraged to bring his instrument if it was portable enough, say an acoustic guitar and especially a lightweight harmonica was perfect for entertaining the group, as there was no television or other entertainment in those cabins without electricity.  Lit only by kerosene lanterns, the men would usually have a wonderful time passing those long winter nights, “a Laughin’ and a singin’ till the early hours of the morn.”

It was in a nostalgic moment remembering a cabin like this, that Bob wrote the 1963 Bob’s Dylan’s Dream remembering the good times with his friends in a cabin like this one in the North Country fair. Read these lyrics and listen for references to the scenes depicted in this great video:

While riding on a train goin’ west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had

With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin’ and singin’ till the early hours of the morn

By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung
Our words were told, our songs were sung
Where we longed for nothin’ and were quite satisfied
Talkin’ and a-jokin’ about the world outside

With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
We never thought we could ever get old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
But our chances really was a million to one

As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split

How many a year has passed and gone
And many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a friend
And each one I’ve never seen again

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that