You Changed My Life

I ate with the pigs
Until God gently told me:
Pay now, skip dessert.

If you ever wanted to hear God compared to Errol Flynn, "You Changed My Life" is the song for you. This song from 1981 was part of the sessions for the album "Shot of Love," but was held over for a decade until it appeared on the first volume of the Bootleg Series. It's one of his more ponderous Christian songs, and it probably was a wise decision to leave it off the album, though I would have taken it over "Lenny Bruce" any day. Regardless of its middling nature, it has some good zingers in it.

- He was listening to the voices of death walking proudly and talking of conspiracy and trying to frighten him. 
- He was working for a system that he couldn't trust and didn't understand, suffering ridicule and feeling disgust.
- At that point: "But you changed my life, came along in a time of strife. In hunger and need, you made my heart bleed, you changed my life."
- "Talk about salvation, people suddenly get tired. They got a million things to do, they're all so inspired. You do the work of the devil, you got a million friends. They'll be there when you got something, they'll take it all in the end."
- "Well, the nature of man is to beg and to steal. I do it myself, it's not so unreal. The call of the wild is forever at my door. Wants me to fly like an eagle while being chained to the floor."
- My favorite verse: "I was eating with the pigs off a fancy tray. I was told i was looking good and to have a nice day. It all seemed so proper, it all seemed so elite. Eating that absolute garbage while being so discreet."
- You, meanwhile, were treated as an outcast.
- An enemy possessed my body and made decisions for me. I was held back. I couldn't stand. I felt like a stranger in a strange land. (Robert Heinlein, tip of the hat)
- Attributes of the Lord and Savior: companion, friend, heart fixer, mind regulator, true blue, creator, comforter, cause for joy.

Watered-Down Love

Bob knows what love is.
He also knows that you don't..
Don't dilute your love.

"Watered-Down Love" is a great song from the 1981 album "Shot of Love." It's only flaw, at least to me: it hectors some subject, unnamed. In that absence, it feels like he's hectoring YOU, the listener. But I tend to take things personally.

The right kind of love:
Hopes and believes all things
Doesn't pull strings
Doesn't sneak into your room
Doesn't make false claims
Helps you insted of blaming you
Won't deceive or lead you to sin
Won't demand false confessions
Won't lead you astray
Won't hold you back or screw up your day
Won't pervert or corrupt you
Won't make you envious or suspicious
It's always on time and content, burning quietly forever
It's not proud or yearning

The kind of love you want:
"You don’t want a love that’s pure. You wanna drowned love. You want a watered-down love."

Trouble

No embellishments.
Chorus says it all: Trouble,
Nothing but trouble.

"Trouble" is another one from the "grouchy Bob Dylan" files. The song is from 1981's "Shot of Love," the third of his born-again Christian albums, though this one like some others on the album is less overtly concerned with faith and redemption. 

Here's the kind of trouble he's talking about:
- In the city, on the farm
- It resists the rabbit's foot and your good-luck charm
- It's here and there and everywhere.
- Revolution won't stop it.
- "Drought and starvation, packaging of the soul. Persecution, execution, governments out of control."
- The kind that makes you think that you're never alone even when no one is there. Just listen to the train trackandy ou can hear it coming.
- "Nightclubs of the broken-hearted, stadiums of the damned. Legislature, perverted nature, doors that are rudely slammed."
- It's been here since the beginning of time, and if you take a peek at infinity, you'll see more of it.

Shot of Love

No drugs, no liquor
For Bob. Nothing's going right.
Love him, don't kill him.

"Shot of Love" opens the 1981 album of the same name. It's a good, solid rocker, and also shows the beginning of Bob Dylan's move away from the overtly Christian themes of his previous two albums. Following is a list of symptoms and ailments, as well as prescriptions and proscriptions:

1. What I don't need: heroin, turpentine, codeine and whiskey. What I do need: a shot of love.
2. I'm disgusted with the kingdoms of the world. I need a Medicaid plan to deal with this. My disease won't hurt me, but it will kill me, just like the disciples who ran into trouble when the Romans decided that they had had enough of Jesus.
3. I don't need alibis for spending time with you (Him). I don't need books or movies.
4. Why would I hate you? All you did was murder my father and rape his wife, tattoo my babies with a poison pen, mocked my God and humiliated my friends.
5. I don't want to be with any woman tonight. My enemy is threatening me, so what do you think I'm going to do? Just wait for him to show up?
6. Why is the wind blowing so strongly tonight? I want to stay home. I called my home town and found out everybody moved away. And my conscience is bothering me. I need a shot of love.

Property of Jesus

Tease the Jesus freak.

Go ahead, but keep in mind:

His name is Dylan.

I've said it many times before: I'm not a Christian, and I'm not particularly interested in people urging me to convert. That said, I do love some of Bob Dylan's Christian music. "Property of Jesus" is among the more sour-toned songs that the seemingly eternally persecuted Dylan wrote about his faith, and this one finds him about as defensive as he ever got about the whole thing. That said, the song absolutely rocks, and the lyrics are sharp and smart and, I think, something that many of us could relate to for the less popular paths that we might have chosen. The band is awake and involved, and though the performance shambles around a bit, the spirit is there and that makes it a rousing listen.

Chorus:

"He's the property of Jesus

Resent him to the bone

You've got something better

You've got a heart of stone."

Verses:

- Is that how you get your kicks? Laughing and talking behind the back of the Christian? Reminding him of what he was like before he was reborn?

- You see him coming and stop talking. You hope he'll stumble because he's no longer hooked into your system of values and rewards. He's not to be bribed or bought.

- A whip keeps you in line so you resent it when you see that it doesn't apply to him. He pays no tribute and you say he's out of touch with reality.

- You say he's a loser with no common sense, and because he doesn't take advantage of others to enrich his net worth. You say he has no style because he doesn't entertain you like you expect him to do.

- You think that you'll be OK when you die, but don't be so sure. "What happened to the real you, you've been captured but by whom?"

Lenny Bruce

Lenny was the best.
He was funny and truthful,
And better than you.

Bob Dylan's eulogy to comedian "Lenny Bruce" arrived in 1981 on the "Shot of Love" album, 14 years after Bruce died. It's a ham-fisted ode that serves mostly to chide the listener over his or her ability to be as real and as human as Bruce.

1. Lenny dead. Ghost alive. He never won no Golden Globe award. He was more outlaw than you ever were.
2. He had problems. He was funny. He was truthful. He was knowledgeable. He wanted to die.
3. He committed no crime. I rode with him in a taxi for 1.5 miles, but it felt like months. He's gone, just like the people who killed him.
4. He was lawbreaker, they called him sick. He showed wise men up as fools. They labeled him "like they do with pants and shirts." He fought in a war where victories hurt. He was bad. He was the brother you never had.

Live version:

Studio version:

In the Summertime

They went through bad times
But teamwork proved to be a
Good investment plan.

"In the Summertime" is a great song off the 1981 album "Shot of Love," but it leaves open much room for intepretation:

1. He was in her presence for an hour. Or a day. He doesn't know. Maybe he's talking about something mystical and not romantic. Hard to say. But they're not together now or else he would have not used the past tense.
2. The chorus: "In the summertime, when you were with me," also is a past-tense construction.
3. The sun never set, the trees were low, there was a nice, shining sea.
4. Bob asks if she respects him for what he did do, didn't do, or trying to keep his mind hidden. Then he asks if he lost his mind when he tried to get rid of everything she sees.
5. He has heart, she has blood. They can cut through anything.
6. Then there's the warning before the flood "That set everybody free." Does he mean the flood that drowned the world? Or does he mean some warning that came before the 1974 Dylan and the Band tour that wound up on an album called "Before the Flood"? Maybe the warning means his breakup with his wife. Again: no idea.
7. Fools make mockery of sin, they want Bob's and his gal's loyalty. She's closer than everyone else, including his next of kin.
8. Evil strangers meddled in his affairs. But no matter, things will be better.

Listening to this song is like trying to figure out how you want to cook your potatoes. There are too many options, and the potatoes just sit there.

Heart of Mine

Keep your love hidden
Or else that girl will hurt you.
Help me out here, heart.

"Heart of Mine" comes from the 1981 album "Shot of Love." The singer counsels his heart not to convince him to declare his love for a woman. He seems to be aware that the heart does what it wants, and doesn't usually listen to the rest of him. In fact, the heart is a tricky organ and will chase the girl even if it promises that it won't.

Bob's suggestions:

- Don't let her know you love her
- Don't be a fool or be blind
- Don't let her see that you need her
- Don't let her think you think she's fine
- Don't let her know where you're going
- Don't untie ties that bind
- Don't let yourself fall/stumble
- Don't do the crime if you can't do the time

Trouble with the girl:
- She'll fall for someone else

Trouble with the heart:
- Malicious and full of guile

Really good live version. The bassist and drummer are outstanding:

Studio version:

The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar

Jesus: kept waiting
At the altar while Claudette
Plays runaway bride.

There are times when you can't help but love Bob Dylan's mind and appreciate the mystery of how it works:

"What can I say about Claudette?
Ain't seen her since January,
She could be respectably married or running a whorehouse in Buenos Aires."

That he manages to put that into the galloping hard-rocker that is "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" is a testament to his quicksilver tongue and his quicksilverer thinking (I can invent my own comparatives if I want). The song, a 1981 single that was added to later editions of "Shot of Love," is one of Dylan's best attempts to merge pop music with the evening news. The timing was good too. This song came out as the news began, at least in my mind, to enter the modern era of terrorism, dirty and less organized wars and the sophisticated coldness of the 1980s, when rock and roll singers started wearing suits and discovering that in the gleaming corridors of the 51st floor, the money can be made if you really want some more.

Dylan's tale is half complaint, half wire service report. What makes it click for me is his ability to shove out long sentences in single verses, hitting 20 or 21 syllables if not more at a time, and never making it sound like he was forcing too many words into the space:

1. We find him praying in the ghetto with his face in cement. There's a dying boxer, the massacre of innocents. A woman walking down the halls (away, presumably), as the walls fall apart.
2. Pure at heart = arrest for robbery. Shyness = aloofness. Silence = snobbery. How mad it is to become what you never were ment to become.
3. Claudette? Whatever I say can and will be used against me. I had to leave her as soon as she began to want me. God have mercy, I would have done anything for her if she weren't expecting it already.
4. Do I have a fever, baby? If you want something, take it. You might not be able to keep it.
5. Cities on fire, phones aren't working, fighting on the border, nuns and soldiers (hello Iris Murdoch!) getting killed. Claudette could be up to one thing or the other.

And the chorus, of course:

I see the burning of the stage,
Curtain risin' on a new age,
See the groom still waitin' at the altar.

Most people wonder whether the groom is supposed to be Jesus, who made a number of appearances on Dylan songs at the time, or whether he's Bob or someone else. We're here to have fun, not to figure out what Dylan really meant. I went with Jesus because it was the easy choice. There's also a quote from the Book of Revelations about the lamb getting ready for a wedding and the bride making herself ready. I wouldn't be surprised if the lamb -- an agent of God, a symbol for Jesus, a scapegoat, a sacrifice in the Old Testament and a human sacrifice in the New -- weren't what Dylan was referring to.

Every Grain of Sand

Every so often,
I get a feeling that I'm
Part of a big plan.

"Every Grain of Sand" is impossible to get a grip on. Everything that everyone says about the song, which comes from the 1981 album "Shot of Love" is true. You might think that it's hype, but it's not. Whatever universal mind is out there opened up the gates to Dylan's hand, and out came the words. That's about how he described it, anyway. People have made all kinds of comparisons to William Blake, and have noted how this song isn't a "Dylan vs. the world" song like many of his other Christian songs. Instead, he sees himself (as we would ourselves) in the web of the universe, eternity and so on. He casts this realization of everything/everyone being numbered, therefore known and accounted for and classified, against the chaos of hurt feelings, broken people and various temptations that would lead someone without a sense of place in the universe to a bitter end. There's no way to encapsulate the epic of the song, so it's better to go in the opposite direction, to describe how the grain of sand feels rather than the vision that Bob has.

Ingredients:
- Time of confession, deeprest need, pool of tears flooding every seed, dying voice, danger and the morals of despair.
- No dwelling on mistakes. Break a chain of events. Then the first of the great lyrics in the song: "In the fury of the moment, I can see the Master's hand, In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand." I've asked before, just like many people, How does he DO this?
- Flowers of indulgence, criminals, the sun beats on the steps of time, gives light, eases the pain of idleness, memory of decay
- The doorway of temptations angry flame. Every hair is numbered (like sand).
- Sorrow of the night, rags to riches, summer's dream, winter chill, loneliness fading, the broken mirror of innocence on forgotten faces.
- The last verse speaks for itself, and must be quoted in full. It's the second great lyric of the song, and it should be carved in stone and put where people can see it: "I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea. Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me. I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man. Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand."

Dead Man, Dead Man

Dead man (false prophet?)

Tempts a righteous Christian man

Who's not having it.

"Dead Man, Dead Man" is one of the later hectoring songs from Bob Dylan as Christian missionary. In this track from 1981's "Shot of Love," he spends a few minutes pouring invective on someone whom he feels is plying him with false information and wants to take him to hell. You can see here:

1. Words from a reprobate mind, dying on the vine, can't separate the good from the bad. He can't stand it. Dead man has cobwebs in his mind and dust on his eyes.

2. Satan has the bad man by the heel, the man has a bird's nest in his hair (this reminds me of Hieronymous Bosch paintings), he might not have love or faith. His head hurts, he curses God with every move.

3. Glamour, lights and politics of sin. Bad man builds a ghetto, but ends up living in it himself. He pretends to be smart.

4. He tries to overpower Bob with the doctrine or the gun. He wants to take Bob to hell, all the while wearing a tuxedo with a flower in the lapel.

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!

Angelina

Bob discovers that

Converting Angelina

Isn’t that easy.

This outtake from 1981's "Shot of Love" album ended up on "The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3: Rare and Unreleased (1961-1991)." It's a gnarled gnot of gnosticism, or so it sounds to me, and there are plenty of people online debating what it could mean. I wrote this one a dozen times to make it work, and couldn't figure it out, no matter how hard I worked at it. Sitting at work, thinking of something else, I realized that it's an appeal to a woman, probably a fairly attractive one, whom he would like to see born again to avoid eternal hellfire and various other pagan playtimes. It was a question of synthesizing the symbols rather than explaining them and cramming them into this space. Please judge for yourself.

Dead Man, Dead Man

Your fashion and fear
Only make me mock you, man.
You're a Philistine!

Caribbean Wind

Song about a girl
Sounds like Bob cribbed the plot from
A Graham Greene story.

Angelina

She's one bad lady,
And so good too! Bob wants to
Get her for himself.

Half as Much

If you could love me
Half as much as I love you,
I'd be twice as happy.

Every Grain of Sand

Dylan finds his place
In the cosmos. I'm like this
When I smoke some grass.

Ye Shall Be Changed

You know you will change.
Bob doesn't say why you will.
Pretty sure it's God.

Shot of Love

No drugs, no liquor
For Bob. Nothing's going right.
Love him, don't kill him.