Up to Me

Why I'm single now:
True to me or true to you?
I made a hard choice.

"Up to Me" is undoubtedly an achievement, but Bob Dylan left it off the 1975 album "Blood on the Tracks," an album that underwent significant revision at Dylan's behest just before its release. Given the themes of abandonment and divorce, and the broken hearts beating at the center, it's not surprising that Dylan's brother (so they say), after hearing some of the stark songs that he recorded in New York City, suggested that he lighten up the tone if he wanted to sell some records. "Up to Me" didn't make it at all. While it's a significant, lovely piece of work, it's full of words. I know that this should be a good thing, and on a song like "Idiot Wind," the words are on fire and they move the song along. On this one, they are more static. There are events unspoken, but you get the impression that this event has set everybody on a solo course. Bad things happen to good people, love fades, the singer is forced to accept responsibility that he seems to feel is more than his share. You can hear the song on the 1985 compilation "Biograph."

It was up to him -- a list of the end of each verse:
I know you’re long gone, I guess it must be up to me
Someone had to reach for the risin’ star, I guess it was up to me
Somebody’s got to find your trail, I guess it must be up to me
Somebody had to unlock your heart, he said it was up to me
When the dawn came over the river bridge, I knew it was up to me
You looked a little burned out, my friend, I thought it might be up to me
But she ain’t a-gonna make me move, I guess it must be up to me
Somebody’s got to tell the tale, I guess it must be up to me
But you ain’t a-gonna cross the line, I guess it must be up to me
Somebody’s got to cry some tears, I guess it must be up to me
One of us has got to hit the road, I guess it must be up to me
No one else could play that tune, you know it was up to me

Other events:
1. Bad to worse. Death on the trail. Someone has to say what they want in this thing of ours. Guess it's gonna be me.
2. I would have died if I'd lived my life the way other people wanted me to live it.
3. I smiled once in 14 months and it was an accident. Train's leaving as the orchids bloom. My one good shirt smells like perfume. I'm looking for you.
4. You betrayed me with your touch. I unlocked your heart.
5. I watched you go hang out with a bunch of men all night long.
6. When I worked in the Post Office, I took your picture down from the wall near my cage to protect your identity. (Sounds like a general judgment on his career and ability to manage family life until that time.)
7. It's amazing how much in love you can fall with someone. You must resist it.
8. The Sermon on the Mount sure is complicated. So is biting off more than you can chew.
9. Side story: Dupree comes to the Thunderbird Cafe, pimping. Crystal wants to talk to him. I can't bear it.
10. I left a note for Estelle. You thought there was something going on there, but there wasn't.
11. Life's a stage and a dream. Boys, that woman I'm with, I'm not really with. Try your luck.
12. We might be through, but remember that song I played for you? Only I could play it.

Percy's Song

Bob implores the judge
Who sentenced his guilty friend.
The judge says, "Tough shit."

"Percy's Song" is about a falsely accused reprobate who's a friend of the singer. The singer is sure that Percy did not commit the manslaughter that he's been accused of, and implores the judge not to sentence poor Percy to 99 years in prison. The judge is having none of it, and leaves the singer to muse about the cruel rain and the wind, and to sing, throughout each verse, "Turn, turn, turn again... Turn, turn to the rain and the wind."

Summary:
- Bad news: one of your friends is in big trouble
- He's been sentenced to life in Joliet prison
- The charge is manslaughter "in the highest degree."
- You wrote and rehearsed it with the intention of visiting the judge of Wednesday to plead Percy's case.
- You arrive
- You ask the judge to tell him the story of what transpired.
- Percy was driving when his car crashed, killing the four people in the car with him.
- But he wouldn't do something like that! you say.
- Get out of my office. We had a witness.
- But 99 years? That's too much! you say
- He's not a criminal, you say. It could have happened to anyone, you say.
- Get out of my office, please, the judge says.
- You walk down the courthouse stairs and hear the judge slam the door.
- You play your guitar and muse on cruel fate.

The song was recorded in 1963, but was not released until it appeared on the "Biograph" compilation in 1985.

Mixed-Up Confusion

Mixed up and confused
Man keeps walking and searching
For mixed-up women.

"Mixed-Up Confusion" is Bob Dylan's first single, issued on the other side of the song "Corrina, Corrina." These two were the only songs from the sessions for the 1963 album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" that were released with electric instruments backing him. The song feels like a conscious attempt at an easy-going hit single, though it didn't perform that way. The song is a compact lament:

1. I have mixed up confusion. It's killing me. It's hard to please so many people.
2. I'm walking around with my hat in my hand looking for a woman who's as mixed up as I am.
3. I have lots of questions and a fever. I don't know whom to ask for answers.
4. I'm still walking. Every time I see my reflection, "I’m hung over, hung down, hung up!"

The first commercially available version of the song after the single appeared was on the "Biograph" compilation in 1985. When the first volume of the "50th Anniversary Collection" came out, a copyright extension collection of songs from 1962, it included seven of the 11 takes of the song that Bob performed. They're all slightly different. I have included three takes here.

Lay Down Your Weary Tune

Though your song be good,
Nature can do it better,
Be quiet; listen

"Lay Down Your Weary Tune" isn't like any other Bob Dylan song, at least the way I hear it. The song was recorded in 1963 for the album "The Times They Are a-Changin'," but was left off the cut. It appears on the 1985 box set compilation "Biograph." I read on Wikipedia that Dylan said he was trying to capture the feeling of a Scottish ballad that he heard on an old 78-rpm record. I can see that. Rather than striving for the surreal, he pursues a sound of natural beauty, to use Neil Young's term from the "Harvest Moon" album, that he tries to convey with guitar and voice. I hear the sound of waterfalls and wind in the trees, waves on the beach and the rhythms of the universe, especially in Dylan's use of alliteration and the pairing of words that don't necessarily go together -- the "strength of strings," for example. Have a look. It makes me think a little of William Wordsworth, or even Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with Hiawatha on the Gitche Gumee:

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself ’neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
(This verse forms a chorus after each of the next verses)

Struck by the sounds before the sun
I knew the night had gone
The morning breeze like a bugle blew
Against the drums of dawn

The ocean wild like an organ played
The seaweed’s wove its strands
The crashin’ waves like cymbals clashed
Against the rocks and sands

I stood unwound beneath the skies
And clouds unbound by laws
The cryin’ rain like a trumpet sang
And asked for no applause

The last of leaves fell from the trees
And clung to a new love’s breast
The branches bare like a banjo played
To the winds that listened best

Jet Pilot

Jet pilot got the
Attention of the boys, but
She's really a man.

Forty-nine seconds of silly from sessions in 1965, later released on the "Biograph" collection.

Well, she's got Jet Pilot eyes from her hips on down.
All the bombardiers are trying to force her out of town.
She's five feet nine and she carries a monkey wrench.
She weighs more by the foot than she does by the inch.
She got all the downtown boys, all at her command
But you've got to watch her closely 'cause she ain't no woman
She's a man.

I Wanna Be Your Lover

Rasputin and friends
Get up to no good. Not Bob,
He wants your loving.

Very little of this 1965 song, which went unreleased until 1985, matters. The key is the chorus:

I wanna be your lover, baby, I wanna be your man
I wanna be your lover, baby
I don’t wanna be hers, I wanna be yours

It's a riff on the Beatles song "I Wanna Be Your Man."

The rest is fake symbolism:

1. Rainman/magic wand.
2. Judge: "Mona can't have no bond." (She cries, rainman leaves as Wolfman)
3. Undertaker/midnight suit addresses masked man: "ain't you cute?"
4. Masked man feels the same way about the undertaker.
5. Jumpin' Judy reaches maximum altitude.
6. Rasputin touches her head and dies.
7. Pheadra has a looking glass. She faints on the grass because she's obvious (and you are not)

I'll Keep It With Mine

You have many fans
Eager to earn your favors.
Ignore them, choose me.

"I'll Keep It With Mine" saw its first release on a Judy Collins single in 1965. I first heard it on Nico's debut solo album in 1967. She recorded the song after her now legendary appearance on the first Velvet Underground record, and songs like this were intended to cast her as a Germanic folk chanteuse. It worked, sort of, though nobody could keep Nico on the rails, and by the time she recorded her next album, "The Marble Index," she was charting a course for waters that were too dark for most other musicians to follow. 

Dylan wrote the song in 1964 as a demo for the Witmark company. You can find that version on the ninth volume of the Bootleg Series. He also tried recording it for the 1965 album "Bringing It Back Home." That version is available on the "Biograph" box set from 1985. A version for the "Blonde on Blonde" album in 1966 appeared on volume 1 of the Bootleg series in 1991. There are other versions too, but apparently don't circulate even among obsessives. I could be wrong about this, as I have found one instrumental version from 1966, pasted below.

As for the song, which is Bob lecturing a woman on what's good for her:
- She searches for what's not lost.
- He notes people will help her and be kind, but he might be able to save her some time by being her main man.
- He might seem odd to you because he loves you for what you're not.
- Again, people MIGHT try to help you, but he's a better bet for the job.
- Separately, there's a train leaving at 10:30, but it will be back tomorrow. The conductor's sick of the reputation.

Caribbean Wind

Tropical leftist

Embarks on doomed romance with

Bob, preaching gospel.

This 1981 song didn't make the final cut of "Shot of Love," and was released four years later on the "Biograph" anthology. "Caribbean Wind" is another one of those Dylan songs that is heavy on the imagery and symbolism, sometimes at the cost of clarity and plot. Where do I get that the woman was a leftist? I don't know. I concluded that it was unlikely that she and her brothers would be getting shot at in the jungle by gunmen on an embassy roof in the late 1970's if they weren't leftists, particularly if the backstory takes place in Brazil, as the lyrics suggest. In brief:

1. She's the rose of Sharon from paradise lost, from a seven-hilled city near a cross (Rio de Janeiro?). He's playing a concert and preaching about Jesus in Miami in a theater of "divine comedy." She tells him her brothers were killed in a jungle by a guy dancing on the roof of an embassy.

2. Did she use him? It's possible.

3. Chorus: Caribbean winds blow from Nassau to Mexico, fanning flames in the furnace of desire. Ships of liberty on iron waves are bold and free, but apparently are bringing everything that's close to Bob close to the fire.

4. She says a mutual friend has their best interest in mind, but it seems that however well connected he is, she has him in a trap because he's in her debt for some reason.

5. They meet in a church on a hot day. She tells him he can't do something about whatever he's thinking.

6. Bob's in Atlantic City. It's cold out. He hears someone calling him "daddy," but there's no one there. The news reports are full of stories about famines and earthquakes.

7. He contemplates whether he should have married her.

Choose your own adventure!

Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?

You're with a loser.

Are you one too? Why don't you

Come date me instead.

If Dylan's worst qualities, lyrically speaking, in the late 1970s and early 1980s were his sour moralizing and his toxic blend of self pity and anger toward women, his worst quality at the height of his fame in 1965 and 1966 was an arrogance born from intelligence and the irritation of others that seemed to shoot in all directions.

"Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window" is the tale of Romeo seducing Juliet from the window, but by mocking her even as he makes clear that he has lustful thoughts on his mind. Toward the woman he's singing to, you hear petulant demands and scorn.

Can you please crawl out your window? Use your arms and legs it won’t ruin you How can you say he will haunt you? You can go back to him any time you want to.

The man she's dating, meanwhile, takes up each of the song's venomous verses. Example:

He looks so truthful, is this how he feels Trying to peel the moon and expose it With his businesslike anger and his bloodhounds that kneel If he needs a third eye he just grows it He just needs you to talk or to hand him his chalk Or pick it up after he throws it

Dylan can't even talk to him. He just harangues her about him. It's great to be young, smart, wanted and admired, but you get the impression that for a year or two, the singer couldn't stand to be around anyone because they're all a bunch of assholes. But there's a saying about the company that you keep...

I don't enjoy speaking this way about people I don't know, but the temptation through a song like this becomes too strong. It seems clear that the eventual motorcycle accident and decision to hop off the grid and into upstate New York was just what the man needed. I'm sure that he's even crustier today, but wisdom, if it comes, has a tendency to blunt arrogance, even if it can't cure misanthropy. Separately, I read on Wikipedia that when Phil Ochs and Dylan were riding in a limousine together, Dylan played the song to him. When Ochs was less than impressed, Dylan reportedly kicked him out of the limousine, shouting, "You're not a folk singer, you're a journalist!" So. There you go.

The song was released as a single in 1965 and is available on the "Biograph" anthology from 1985. I can't get a Dylan version to load up so I'm sharing Roger Daltrey's.

Baby Let Me Follow You Down

I’ll do what you want.

I’ll follow you to your house.

Be my future wife.

This is one of my favorite songs that Bob has performed. It gets right to the point and each version that I've heard, the one on his debut album in 1962 and the other on his performance with The Band in The Last Waltz, is full of energy and passion:

1. Baby let me follow you down. I'll do anything in this God-almighty world if you'll just let me follow you down.
2. Let me come home with you. I'll do anything in this etc etc etc
3. I'll buy you a diamond ring and a wedding gown if you'll....

As Boz Scaggs might reply: "What do you want the girl to do?"

Note, there are various live versions of this song kicking around, including one on the Bootleg Series, Vol. 4, the infamous Manchester 1966 concert in which he changes the lyrics significantly. You can see them here (He would buy her a serpent skirt and a velvet shirt, for instance).

Here's the hardcore version from The Last Waltz.

Baby I'm in the Mood for You

I want you so bad

Sometimes. Other times I want

To do other things.

This is a song from 1962 that was left off "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." It surfaced in the "Biograph" anthology in 1985, and there are two takes on the hard-to-find "The 50th Anniversary Collection" copyright extension album. I don't know whether one of those two takes is the one on "Biograph."

The situation is pretty simple: There are a number of things that Bob finds himself in the mood for, but then again, as he says, sometimes he's in the mood for you.

Here is the unexpurgated list of things for which Bob is in the mood at one time or another:

1. Leave lonesome home
2. Hear milk cow moan
3. Hit highway road
4. You
5. Overflowin’ fill
6. Final will
7. Walkin’ hill
8. You
9. Lay down, die
10. Climb up to sky
11. Laugh until cry
12. You
13. Sleep in pony’s stall
14. Nothin’ at all
15. Fly like cannonball
16. You
17. Back up against wall
18. Run till have to crawl
19. Nothin’ at all
20. You
21. Change house around
22. Change this here town
23. Change world around
24. You

Abandoned Love

We are breaking up.

Not sure who’s responsible.

Let’s have sex again.

This is an improvement over the previous version of this haiku, which covers a song that Dylan recorded in 1975 to run on the 1976 album, "Desire." The song was released in 1985 on the "Biograph" anthology, while the original haiku appeared here a few years ago. It's embarrassing to me now because it has no relation to the song. In fact, I'm not sure that I even knew what song I was listening to.

This song, say the Dylan scholars, relates to his breakup with his wife Sara Lownds. Regardless of whether that's true, let's leave aside the biographical particulars and concentrate on the lyrics. The singer is ready to leave, though it might be possible that she's doing the leaving. One thing is certain: he wants a little more loving before he departs into the chasm of melancholy. Breakup sex, as we can see, is a matter of literary concern.

Dylan fans like the live version that he performed at the Bitter End cafe in Greenwich Village in 1975 (apparently known as the Other End at the time). I posted it here after failing to embed it properly, thanks to unusual and restrictive policies that Google enforces. Here is the studio version that he recorded for "Desire."

Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?

Your husband, that drip,
Traps you in bourgeois cages.
He's SO not worth it.

Caribbean Wind

Holy Roller Bob
Can't match Caribbean girl's
Graham-Greene-life story.