Every song Bob Dylan wrote or performed can be distilled in a haiku. NOTE FOR READERS: All posts from 2010 to 2014 should be considered out of date. Please disregard them. There are, or will be, new versions of each haiku.
Leave me. It's your life.
Oh, if you need someone killed,
I know what it costs.
"You Wanna Ramble," from the 1986 album "Knocked Out Loaded," was a great choice for the first track because it promised 40-odd minutes of solid rock n' roll. Too bad the next song was "They Killed Him." If I had to guess, I'd say it's about a man who realizes that his lover is leaving him, and rather than dealing with it, threatens to keep her around by force, and absolves himself of responsibility for whatever might happen next.
Incompatible:
They seem to miss each other,
But remain apart.
I never expected a song written by Bob Dylan with soft ballad lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, but one exists. It's the last song on the album "Knocked Out Loaded" from 1986, and for an album so universally panned, it has its undeniable charm. But it's not a particularly happy song. It's one of the first of the "later-phase" Dylan songs dealing with unrequited love for a woman long gone. - He was knocked out loaded when he noticed you. What a story! - You know what he's like, and you know where to find him. - "I’d like to help you but I’m in a bit of a jam. I’ll call you tomorrow if there’s phones where I am, baby, caught between heaven and hell." - You'll never get rid of him. - It's 4 a.m. and he's looking at your picture and thinking of things that you said. - Wherever you go, you break someone's heart. You're too hot to handle. "I trusted you baby, you can trust me now." - He's not leaving without a kiss goodbye. - "Well the desert is hot, the mountain is cursed. Pray that I don’t die of thirst, baby, two feet from the well."\
Every time someone
Tries to make the world better,
Somebody kills them.
My friend Preeti Bhuyan says that the Kris Kristofferson original version of this song is pretty good. I wouldn't doubt it, but people aren't joking when they say that the Bob Dylan cover, from the 1986 album "Knocked Out Loaded" is awful. I don't mind the trite melody line, played out on a tinny keyboard, nor do I mind the effort of the musicians. It's the high-fructuse corn syrup of the children's choir singing this song of praise to a few of history's martyrs that really does it in. And it's too bad because you don't want to mock children who are trying hard. But it was a poor production decision. And the message of the song: that Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ and the Mahatma were like saints who were murdered by bad people, is something that we know already. 1. Gandhi knew the game was dirty and there was no solution. But he had a job to do and a price to pay. 2. MLK: Another holy man who dared to take a stand on the basis of a dream. 3. Jesus: paid the price for love. "Just the holy son of man, we'll never understand."
It's easy to be cynical about old-timey granddaddy religious songs such as these, but I admit that "Precious Memories" is an affecting tune. I'm just not at all sure that it's affecting when listening to Bob Dylan's version. This one appeared on the 1986 album "Knocked Out Loaded," which along with "Empire Burlesque" and "Down in the Groove" represented the bard's nadir for many fans. They're not THAT bad, but a few songs don't quite survive the test of time. This one might be among them. The song is a hymn, written by the Tennessean J.B.F. Wright in 1925. It's also been covered by, among others, Rosetta Tharpe, Johnny Cash, Jim Reeves and JJ Cale. Cale's version, now that I think of it, didn't really do too much for me either, though it's certainly of a piece with his other work on the 1974 album "Okie."
Manifestations of precious memories:
- He looks to the future, wondering what it will bring. He can't tell, so he dwells on the past instead and encounters positive results.
- He remembers his father and mother, the doing of which provides a balm across lonely years. He remembers his childhood, and encounters similarly positive results.
- At midnight, he also encounters "precious sacred scenes," which I would assume that, because they are flooding his soul, provide a spiritual dimension to his nostalgia trip.
Someday you'll know I
Was the man for you, but I'm
Not holding my breath.
This song is conventional enough in its structure, but its weird structure sounds like a producer mixed Dylan's vocal track, that of the backup singers, the rhythm, the guitar, the horns and the keyboards from six different sessions. It appeared on the misbegotten 1986 album "Knocked Out Loaded," and doesn't really do itself much credit. That's too bad because it's not a bad track. It's another bitter goodbye to a woman who failed to take their relationship seriously. Dylan proposes that maybe someday she'll know why she was wrong and why he was so good. He salts the song with a little bit of religion too, but not enough to offend the casual lisetner. I like "uh-huh-uh" of the backup singers at the end. Maybe someday: - You'll be satisfied - You'll beg me to take you back - You'll find out everybody's somebody's fool - You'll know what it would have taken to keep me cool - You'll know the love I had for you was not my own (?) - You'll have nowhere to turn - You'll contemplate your burned bridges - You'll see you were better off with me than with him - You'll see that something for nothing is what everyone wants - You'll believe me when I say that I really wanted you - You'll hear the voice of God asking for whom you lived and died - You'll find out how easy it was to follow me - You'll know that the best love of all was the love I had for you Miscellaneous words: - Hostile cities and towns - Judas reference, but with no down payment on the silver delivery - Blood on the moon in the cotton belt - How bad we were together - He should have called your bluff - He was off the handle, not sentimental enough - He never broke down a bedroom door to get to you (he's sorry) - Sucker for the right cross - Gambler - He never slept or waited for lightning to strike - You went to San Francisco. Funny about that, he was there once for a party.
You used me all up.
I’m off to Libya, or
Wherever you aren't.
The obscure song "Got My Mind Made Up" from the 1986 album "Knocked Out Loaded" brings great attitude courtesy of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but the song is guaranteed to curdle your milk. Bob complains about a woman whom he helped and who in turn used him and quite probably abandoned him. Now he's done with her and off to Libya to meet a man who's been living in an oil refinery for three years. We're not clear on his plans. 1. Don't try to change me or convince me that I was wrong. 2. Off to Libya. 3. Call your mother in Florida and tell her everything's going to be fine. 4. I gave you money and connections and everything else. 5. Don't worry. Someone (God? A new boyfriend?) is looking after you and wouldn't do anything to you that I wouldn't do too. 6. The best line of the song: Well, if you don't want to see me, Look the other way. You don't have to feed me, I ain't your dog that's gone astray."
She left by surprise.
Bob writes her off as a loss,
But this still grieves him.
"No gentleman likes making love to a servant, especially when he's in his father's house." The Dylanology forensics team down at the station might spend years working on that line, which appears like an inscrutable diamond in the rough that is "Driftin' Too Far From Shore," one of the tracks on side one of the 1986 misfire album "Knocked Out Loaded." I say misfire because that's what people who know it say about it. To be sure, there are some bad songs, but it's unfair to tarnish the whole thing just because of "They Killed Him." "Driftin' Too Far From Shore" is a super-charged rocker of that distinctly '80s provenance -- big drums, small drum machines, self-consciously artificial synthesizers, big backup vocals, a bit of stadium delivery in Dylan's voice as he dismisses another lover who wasn't up to his standards, even though he misses her. 1. Oh, you were breaking up with me? Do you know whom you were talking to? Are we even? Actually, I think I'm one up on you. 2. I still send you money. You take it, but you're too far away to give. 3. No games, baby. 4. "I never could guess your weight, baby. Never needed to call you my whore." Glad we got that sorted out. 5. I had to wait for what I wanted, unlike some people. 6. You won't play with me because you're busy turning into a loser. 7. "We weren't on the wrong side, sweetness, we were the wrong side." 8. I probably won't answer the phone if you call. You see, I don't go outside in war zones.
Everything about this song suggests that the end product should be ridiculous, but it isn't. "Brownsville Girl," co-written with actor/playwright Sam Shepard, is an absurd tale that is nearly impossible to relate. It's over the top, it's a big 1980's-power-pop-style production. It's something like 11 minutes long. The plot jumps all over the place. The verses emphasize talking over singing. The backup girls sound like they just came from a Pink Floyd concert. There are more references to Gregory Peck than any song should have. And yet, it's a masterpiece. That's not just my conclusion, but the conclusion of everyone who found this to be the only enjoyable song on the otherwise miserable album "Knocked Up Loaded" (which of course has its defenders).
Here's the summary:
1. Guy remembers going to see "The Gunfighter," a western with Gregory Peck. A young man shoots the old gunfighter, and the town wants to hang him.
2. The marshal beats the kid, but Peck says let him go because, in words that chill to the bone, "Turn him loose, let him go, let him say he outdrew me fair and square. I want him to feel what it’s like to every moment face his death."
3. Bob reminisces about the movie as he misses his gal.
4. She showed up on the painted desert in platform heels and driving a beaten-up Ford.
5. They drive to San Antonio. They sleep together. She goes to Mexico and never comes back. He doesn't chaser because he fears having his head blown off.
6. Now he's in a car with another woman, but the first woman's soul is with them and she haunts them.
7. They cross the Texas panhandle for Amarillo. They arrive at Henry Porter's wrecking yard where his wife Ruby says Henry's not in, but they can hang around for a while. She's washing clothes.
8. Times are tough and she's thinking of leaving. In the classic ridiculous line of the song, she says, "Even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt." It's the "land of the living dead," she says.
9. Ruby asks where Bob and his gal are going. They say they're going anywhere until the car falls apart. Ruby says some babies never learn.
10. Bob thinks about the Gregory Peck movie again, and discovers that he's IN THE FILM.
11. Either in real life or in the film, Bob is crossing the street when armed men looking for someone in a pompadour take shots at him. In another classically ridiculous line, he says, "I didn't know whether to duck or run so I ran." He hears that they've got the man cornered in a churchyard. Is he the man?
12. The second woman sees Bob's picture in the Corpus Christi paper with the words "man with no alibi" written in the caption. She lies to the judge to get him off, whatever crime it is that he's supposed to have committed.
13. Bob's never been the kind of guy who likes to trespass, but sometimes he can't help it. He needs an original thought. He feels OK, but that's not saying much.
14. He's in line to see a Gregory Peck film. Not "The Gunfighter," but a new one. He doesn't know the name, but he'd watch Peck in anything so he stands in line.
15. Things don't turn out as planned. We learn that Henry Porter's name wasn't Henry Porter. He remembers being with the first woman, or maybe the second one, in the French Quarter in New Orleans.
16. He ruminates on how people who suffer together have more in common than people who are most content, most likely taking a page from Leo Tolstoy's opening lines of "Anna Karenina."
17. He remembers, again, seeing "The Gunfighter" with Gregory Peck, and concludes with the gut punch line, "Seems like a long time ago, long before the stars were torn down."
And throughout, every time the chorus gets ready, the backup girls shout, "Whoaaaaah!" and then the mighty chorus with big drums and a big horn section making big horn chords:
Brownsville girl with your Brownsville curls Teeth like pearls shining like the moon above Brownsville girl, show me all around the world Brownsville girl, you’re my honey love
