"...the single greatest song of all time. I mean it’s July 1965 and this comes on the radio?! Game over."
The best ever of Dylan? With some 600 songs to his name, no task has loomed greater, but Timothée Chalamet's turn as one of the greatest songwriters of all time in James Mangold's A Complete Unknown opens the door to a new wave of fans, as well as celebrating the complex legacy already adored by so many worldwide.
Rough Trade buyer and Dylan die-hard Jamie Moir explores the artistic brilliance and cultural impact across 20 songs (in chronological order) from one of the most influential artists ever to have lived.
A Complete Unknown is in cinemas 17th January.
"Who the fuck is Bob Dylan?
He begged, borrowed and stole, all the greats did to first get off the ground - and as Bob himself states (his) songs “didn’t get here by themselves” - though from where Bob started to where Bob left off his legacy will be forever unparalleled in the pantheons of recorded music. The first introspective singer songwriter. What does that even mean?
Introspective: adjective; examining and considering your own ideas, thoughts, and feelings, instead of talking to other people about them.
Before Dylan music was generally manufactured via Tin Pan Alley, in short the song writer (note; not songwriter) was king, not the artist. Hence you had a catchy song covered by a multitude of artists. Show songs, folk standards, songs with a broad, general appeal - one easily consumed by a mass market. Songs a 5 year old and 95 year old would find agreeable. Very few songs prior to Dylan were written introspectively with such refinement, vibrance or direct viewpoint.
Let’s also remember by the early 60s “rock n roll” was deemed over, brandished a fad by the media and “those in charge”, Elvis was banished to the army and normal service had been resumed. Back to tapping your foot along to (How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window?, toeing the line, adhering to the status quo, swallowing political rhetoric.
Enter Bob.
Dylan was the first to jump from largely covering to largely writing originals. His debut LP consisted of 13 tracks, 11 covers, 2 originals, it sold poorly - with some at Columbia telling John Hammond (the man who signed Dyan to the label) to drop his folly and move on with life. By the time the first LP was released Dylan had already written his second, consisting again of 13 songs, but this time 2 covers and 11 originals. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan would go on to change the course of pop history. From this album on in, the artist/songwriter (and all those lovely royalty checks) would become king.
These songs, and those to come, were not only originals but originals which chimed monumentally with the changin’ times. Cuba, the civil rights movement, the seeds of the backlash to Vietnam. The air was thick with some serious, serious shit. And here was a 20 year old scrawny, shuffly white kid from Minnesota with tall yarns of a travelling circus life - cutting right through the heart of what pop culture could be. Ruffling some serious feathers with a seemingly nonchalant scribble of pen. A shapeshifter. A punk searching for that thin, wild, mercury sound.
As I read somewhere some time ago - if you consider yourself a singer songwriter (within any genre) then you are directly influenced by Dylan, whether you care to admit it or not. The story of Dylan and his impact on not just music but culture as a whole is nigh on impossible to even begin to summarise. Hopefully these personally selected 20 tracks will give you an idea, but these are merely 20 of many, many, many more.
If you’re just starting out on your Bob trip, I’m kind of jealous - go get yourself Bobbed, and be sure to cherish him, as there will be no other."
Song To Woody
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born
One of only two original compositions on Bob’s 1962 debut album. A simple ode to one of Bob’s then icons, written for Woody as he lay hospitalised from Huntington's disease at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris County, New Jersey. Bob would visit regularly and go on to quote on Woody's output: “The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them.” Something which one can now easily attribute to Bob’s.
Girl From The North Country
Please see if her hair hangs long
It rolls and flows all down her breast
Please see for me if her hair’s hanging long
For that’s the way I remember her best
A quintessential yearn to a certain someone in Bob’s life, penned by a then 21 year old. It may lack any form of the bite yet to come, but its sheer depth and universal appeal is present in spades. Quite a far cry from the “bubblegum music” of She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand. One of the first true examples of Bob living beyond his years, in that you’d think he was a wisened troubadour who’d travelled thousands of miles in his mind as well as body - to then reflect poetically with such poise and elegance, but no - it’s just a 21 year old kid from Duluth, Minnesota.
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
So long honey, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
Goodbye’s too good a word, babe
So I’ll just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right
One of the earliest Bob originals which does carry some bite is this one. Deliberately delivered with a wearied, semi-sigh refrain the protagonist matter-of-factly reassures their ex that it’s cool that they've just completely wasted their time, as a relationship falls apart. Don’t think twice about it, be sure to look after yourself, first and foremost. Again, for a 21 year old to express what thoughts might be best left in one’s head as a relationship turns sour, instead of eloquently executing to song, is quite frankly staggering.
One Too Many Mornings
From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes start to fade
And I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An’ I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind
Just three verses, yet there’s such an aura about this song for me. It conjures up the exact moment between darkness and sunrise and the coming of another day, whether you’re ready for it or whether you're not. Half awake, half asleep, a hazy feeling you can’t quite see, feel or hear.
When people say to me “Bob Dylan?! He can’t sing for toffee!!” I play them this.
Boots of Spanish Leather
Oh, if I had the stars of the darkest night
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean
I’d forsake them all for your sweet kiss
For that’s all I’m wishin’ to be ownin’
A sort of sister song to Don't Think Twice, It's All Right here we have a correspondence between a lover very much in love with their lover and the other (currently overseas) lover having second thoughts. Instead of the former lover reacting in a spiteful manner in how their lover is “wasting their precious time” they simply try to woo the on-the-fence lover to reconsider and take heed of just how in love this lover is. Amazingly this all proves a fruitless pursuit so our hapless romantic merely thinks “fuck it, if you ain’t being wooed and you are a’travellin the mountains of Madrid or coast of Barcelona then make yourself useful and send me back some quality boots of Spanish leather.” Exquisitely observed, devastatingly delivered.
It Ain’t Me Babe
Go ’way from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
I’m not the one you want, babe
I’m not the one you need
You say you’re lookin’ for someone
Who’s never weak but always strong
To protect you an’ defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe
On the face of it a fairly standard 3 verse Bob rebuke, aimed at a friend or lover. But alter the viewpoint and you can find where Bob begins to unravel mentally, as he pursues whatever it was that was gnawing at him. For this is a song firmly directed at the media and the burgeoning intrusion and price of fame. The media circus has descended heavy on this guy, this guy who galvanised and provided the Vietnam protestors with anthems, this guy who inspired Sam Cooke to pen A Change Is Gonna Come, this guy who got The Beatles to delve that little deeper, to shed the bubblegum for something more everlasting. This guy had a lot of questions, but seemed to have answers. But Bob just wasn’t buying any of it.
It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it
Amazingly written around the same time as It Ain’t Me Babe (with its sheer simplicity of sentiment), maybe Bob thought this statement too daring for commercial release in 1964, so it stayed in the notebook a further year before seeing the light of day. More rambling, more psychedelic, more depth of imagery, more Bob - it’s a seven and a half minute onslaught which (I think!) basically says - yes, this world is mad, and I’m out there in the thick of it, but don’t worry Ma, I’m only bleeding, not dying, not on the verge of death, but also not wet behind the ear, not wrapped in cotton wool, far from mollycoddled, far from that safety-net - I’m just bleeding a bit from all the trials and tribulation life throws at you, and I’m all the wiser and tougher for it.
This is Bob letting off the handbrake, increasingly moving towards the stream of consciousness, almost speaking in tongues, transmitting from an astral plane sort of shit. Again, sorry if I sound like a broken record - but who else at the time was delivering this sort of depth, or even contemplating driving their career down this road?! No wonder so many were trying to grab his coat-tails.
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Don’t wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don’t work
’Cause the vandals took the handles
I mean, just listen to this tune. What did he invent?! He invented this! If you can't get him after this you never will. Stop reading this and just do something else. Go and be a bore elsewhere.
Like A Rolling Stone
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
Not sure what else I can say about this song, but here goes…
From that opening snare-shot the trail was being blazed, immaculate. Glowing, bright, LOUD. Like when a welder twists his torch and the flame changes from a huge, seemingly out of control but generally acceptable source of heat - to an intense, direct, raw white heat - that’s what this song is.
Put another way - the single greatest song of all time.
I mean it’s July 1965 and this comes on the radio?!
Game over.
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you
A classic example of a Dylan travelogue, bedecked with a host of locations described whimsically and woozily, delivered wearily. Dylan himself would soon hit the buffers in terms of burnout, but there was still some absolute gold to be mined whilst he wrestled internally with the external Messiah and Godlike tags.
Visions of Johanna
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
To witness the aforementioned burnout visually look no further than the documentaries of both D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 Don’t Look Back and Martin Scorsese’s 2005 No Direction Home. Both of these excellent and essential documentaries serve to illustrate the height Bob has reached by the time Blonde On Blonde lands, only for our hero to be left a quivering wreck with what seems like the weight of the world on their shoulders. The live version used of this track to close out Scorsese’s doc, pulled from Bob’s 1965 tour, is deemed by some the definitive version, just Bob and guitar, up on stage, howling into the wind. In contrast - and if you’re deliberating which of the many Bootleg Series to get into first - do yourself a favour and pick up The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series 12 as Take 5 on there of this tune is worth the admission fee alone.
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Now the bricks lay on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb
They all fall there so perfectly
It all seems so well timed
An’ here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
Echoing the “mama” refrain of It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), here we have Bob rattling through 9 verses of whether to come or go as the protagonist deliberates whether getting into something is really all that worth it - after all, and in the end, won’t you just be stuck inside of mobile… which in itself appears as an oxymoron. Put another way, maybe he’s just overthinking life, thus essentially missing out on it. Biblical in length and tinged lyrically with religious overtones it’s a glimpse into the direction Bob would take post-bike crash on 1968’s John Wesley Harding, and more noticeably by the late 1970s as he becomes born again.
The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
Well, the moral of the story
The moral of this song
Is simply that one should never be
Where one does not belong
So when you see your neighbor carryin’ somethin’
Help him with his load
And don’t go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road
Bob fell off his motorbike in July 1966, some say the injuries were serious, some say they were nothing but a scratch - but ultimately this news allows Bob to disappear for a bit. It allows him time to embrace becoming a father for the first time and maybe settling down to a more normal, domesticated life with wife Sara. Would it last? Obviously not. The 18 months spent between the release of Blonde On Blonde and John Wesley Harding are of Bob playing Pa and interspersed goofing around with The Band up at Big Pink, where the Basement Tapes would surface and the first ever bootleg circulate in the form of Great White Wonder.
This song has a moral, I’ll just let Bob tell it.
Sign On The Window
New Morning
Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me “Pa”
That must be what it’s all about
That must be what it’s all about
If I’m allowed one true deep Bob cut then this would be it - housed on the often disregarded New Morning album (any Big Lebowski fans should seek it out, as I first did back in 1998). The delivery on this slays me, and I don’t think it would feel too out of place on one of Bob’s later masterpieces, Blood On The Tracks. A tale of whether to keep bashing yourself up over fate, to exhaustingly keep up that romantic hope things might just work out down the road - or to realise, let go and learn you can obtain a similar joy of contentment from the simplicity confined within a domesticated life.
Simple Twist of Fate
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn’t see her anywhere
He told himself he didn’t care, pushed the window open wide
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate
"A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean ... people enjoying that type of pain, you know?" - Dylan commenting on the album Blood On The Tracks
The greatest breakup album ever.
No further comment necessary.
Shelter From the Storm
’Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”
"A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean ... people enjoying that type of pain, you know?" - Dylan commenting on the album Blood On The Tracks
The greatest breakup album ever.
Again, no further comment necessary.
Isis
Isis, oh, Isis, you’re a mystical child
What drives me to you is what drives me insane
I still can remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzlin’ rain
Married man goes on the road. Married man is offered riches. Married man thinks. Married man decides. Married man returns.
Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.
Jokerman
It’s a shadowy world, skies are slippery grey
A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet
He’ll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat
Take the motherless children off the street and place them at the feet of a harlot
Oh, Jokerman, you know what he wants
Oh, Jokerman, you don’t show any response
By the late 70s and early 80s Bob’s a bit spent, and fair play - dude has nothing else to apologise for. The fruits he bore will be forever more. There are still examples of the genius peppered throughout, however - not just within this banger (Sly & Robbie form the rhythm section, whist Mark Knopfler twangs) - but bend an ear to When He Returns (Slow Train Coming), Every Grain Of Sand (Shot Of Love), Dark Eyes (Empire Burlesque) and Brownsville Girl (Knocked Out Loaded).
Most Of The Time
Most of the time
She ain’t even in my mind
I wouldn’t know her if I saw her
She’s that far behind
Most of the time
I can’t even be sure
If she was ever with me
Or if I was ever with her
Cut to John Cusack standing in the rain after making yet another arse of himself as Rob Gordon in the depiction of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. A devastating use of audio.
Bob selects just that one word to twist and emphasise… “I don’t even care if I ever see her again… most of the time”. One just can’t make oneself admit to it being all of the time. Genius.
For me this is taken from his truly last great album, Oh Mercy, produced by Daniel Lanois. The results are more organic and lucid than what would come on 1997’s, sometimes overwrought, Time Out Of Mind, again produced by Lanois.
If you dig Oh Mercy (and you bloody well should!) then get into the outtakes from those sessions, most notably found on Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006, The Bootleg Series Vol.8. Here you can relive the pain Lanois experiences after finally getting Bob back on track and sounding vaguely relevant again after the latter’s - up to that point 80s abyss - on such takes as Born In Time and Series of Dreams (if Adam Granduciel is reading this - please belt this out live sometime!) - only for Bob to deem them “not good enough” to go on the album. Jeez, Louise!
Not Dark Yet
Time Out Of Mind
Well, I’ve been to London and I’ve been to gay Paris
I’ve followed the river and I got to the sea
I’ve been down on the bottom of a world full of lies
I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes
Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there
Seems an apt way to finish this run of twenty songs, delivered in an almost reading-of-epitaph fashion by Bob. Maybe he’s coming to terms with the road so far travelled, and maybe he’s trying to seek some tranquillity and solace on the one yet to come, however far it stretches. Or maybe, like most Dylanologists, I’m overthinking it.
Win!
Simply pre-order a copy of A Complete Unknown Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to be entered into the draw to win a private screening of the film for you and 20 friends, as well as a top of the range Cambridge Audio ALVA ST turntable.
