Talkin' World War III Blues

Bob tells his doctor,
"I dreamed about a world war."
"So did I," doc says.

"Talkin' World War III Blues" is a fascinating, funny and dark song about a dream life in New York City after a war. It appeared on the 1963 album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." Lyrics republished here without further comment.

Some time ago a crazy dream came to me
I dreamt I was walkin’ into World War Three
I went to the doctor the very next day
To see what kinda words he could say
He said it was a bad dream
I wouldn’t worry ’bout it none, though
They were my own dreams and they’re only in my head

I said, “Hold it, Doc, a World War passed through my brain”
He said, “Nurse, get your pad, this boy’s insane”
He grabbed my arm, I said, “Ouch!”
As I landed on the psychiatric couch
He said, “Tell me about it”

Well, the whole thing started at 3 o’clock fast
It was all over by quarter past
I was down in the sewer with some little lover
When I peeked out from a manhole cover
Wondering who turned the lights on

Well, I got up and walked around
And up and down the lonesome town
I stood a-wondering which way to go
I lit a cigarette on a parking meter and walked on down the road
It was a normal day

Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head and I gave a yell
“Give me a string bean, I’m a hungry man”
A shotgun fired and away I ran
I don’t blame them too much though, I know I look funny

Down at the corner by a hot-dog stand
I seen a man
I said, “Howdy friend, I guess there’s just us two”
He screamed a bit and away he flew
Thought I was a Communist

Well, I spied a girl and before she could leave
“Let’s go and play Adam and Eve”
I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin’
When she said, “Hey man, you crazy or sumpin’
You see what happened last time they started”

Well, I seen a Cadillac window uptown
And there was nobody aroun’
I got into the driver’s seat
And I drove down 42nd Street
In my Cadillac. Good car to drive after a war

Well, I remember seein’ some ad
So I turned on my Conelrad
But I didn’t pay my Con Ed bill
So the radio didn’t work so well
Turned on my record player—
It was Rock-a-day Johnny singin’, “Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa
Our Love’s A-gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah”

I was feelin’ kinda lonesome and blue
I needed somebody to talk to
So I called up the operator of time
Just to hear a voice of some kind
“When you hear the beep it will be three o’clock”
She said that for over an hour
And I hung up

Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then
Sayin’, “Hey I’ve been havin’ the same old dreams
But mine was a little different you see
I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me
I didn’t see you around”

Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody’s having them dreams
Everybody sees themselves
Walkin’ around with no one else
Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
I said that

Rocks and Gravel (Solid Road)

How to build a road.
This lesson followed by: how
To find my girlfriend.

Bob Dylan recorded "Rocks and Gravel" during the 1962 sessions for "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," but the song remained unreleased other than a live performance from that year (This is not entirely true. See below for why). The studio take appeared on the rare "50th Anniversary Collection" for copyright extensions in 2012. It also appeared on the TV show "True Detective" in the first season. It's a short song, and it contains the following pieces:

1. To build a solid road: you need rocks and gravel. 
2. To satisfy my soul: you need a good woman.
3. By the way: have you ever been down on the Mobile and K.C. line? If so, have you seen my girlfriend?
4. And here is a refrain that he took and altered for the song "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" -- "Don't the clouds look lonesome shining across the sea? Don't my gal look good when she's coming after me?"

The version of this song that I've presented here is incredibly rare. Here's why.

Oxford Town

They lynch black people
In Oxford, and they tear gas
Protesting white folks.

Here's a Bob Dylan postcard from hell, which in this case is Mississippi. "Oxford Town," from the 1963 album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," is a clear-headed, unhappy examination of what awaits freedom riders and other civil rights advocates who tried to change the South's view on black people.

In Oxford Town:
- Everybody's head's down
- No sunshine
- Hell no I'm not going
- Guns and clubs, used against black people
- They don't let black people in in Oxford Town
- Try to change things in Oxford Town, you get tear gassed
- Two people were assassinated here for campaigning on behalf of civil rights and equal rights. 

Masters of War

The masters of war,
They are killers and scoundrels.
Bob will see them dead.

Bob Dylan included this hate note to the haters on his second album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," released in 1963. It's a straight-up protest song, capped with a message of war and death just in case you weren't familiar with the singer's feelings about the subject of his song:

Chapter 1: Invitation
- Come masters of war who build guns, planes and bombs
- I see you through your walls, desks and masks.

Chapter 2: Description
- Destructive
- Callous
- Get other people to fight for you

Chapter 3: Transparency
- You're like Judas
- You think we can win a world war
- I can see what you're thinking

Chapter 4: Assistance
- You help other people fight, but wouldn't go near the front yourself

Chapter 5: Threats
- You make people afraid, including my baby, whom you threaten.

Chapter 6: Forgiveness
- Even Jesus wouldn't forgive what you do.

Chapter 7: Death
- You got rich off war, but you can't pay enough to buy back your soul.

Chapter 8: Revenge

"And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead."

I Shall Be Free

Bob dates tough women
And helps JFK solve the
Nation's big problems.

It's hard to know what to do with songs like this. I'm happy to take better ideas. "I Shall Be Free" is the last song on the 1963 album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan."

Well, I took me a woman late last night
I’s three-fourths drunk, she looked uptight
She took off her wheel, took off her bell
Took off her wig, said, “How do I smell?"
I hot-footed it . . . bare-naked . . .
Out the window!

Well, sometimes I might get drunk
Walk like a duck and stomp like a skunk
Don’t hurt me none, don’t hurt my pride
’Cause I got my little lady right by my side
(Right there
Proud as can be)

I’s out there paintin’ on the old woodshed
When a can a black paint it fell on my head
I went down to scrub and rub
But I had to sit in back of the tub
(Cost a quarter
And I had to get out quick . . .
Someone wanted to come in and take a sauna)

Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up
He said, “My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?”
I said, “My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren”
(Put ’em all in the same room with Ernest Borgnine!)

Well, I got a woman sleeps on a cot
She yells and hollers and squeals a lot
Licks my face and tickles my ear
Bends me over and buys me beer
(She’s a honeymooner
A June crooner
A spoon feeder
And a natural leader)

Oh, there ain’t no use in me workin’ so heavy
I got a woman who works on the levee
Pumping that water up to her neck
Every week she sends me a monthly check
(She’s a humdinger
Folk singer
Dead ringer
For a thing-a-muh jigger)

Late one day in the middle of the week
Eyes were closed I was half asleep
I chased me a woman up the hill
Right in the middle of an air-raid drill
It was Little Bo Peep!
(I jumped a fallout shelter
I jumped a bean stalk
I jumped a Ferris wheel)

Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote
He’s a-runnin’ for office on the ballot note
He’s out there preachin’ in front of the steeple
Tellin’ me he loves all kinds-a people
(He’s eatin’ bagels
He’s eatin’ pizza
He’s eatin’ chitlins
He’s eatin’ bullshit!)

Oh, set me down on a television floor
I’ll flip the channel to number four
Out of the shower comes a grown-up man
With a bottle of hair oil in his hand
(It’s that greasy kid stuff
What I want to know, Mr. Football Man, is
What do you do about Willy Mays and Yul Brynner
Charles de Gaulle
And Robert Louis Stevenson?)

Well, the funniest woman I ever seen
Was the great-granddaughter of Mr. Clean
She takes about fifteen baths a day
Wants me to grow a cigar on my face
(She’s a little bit heavy!)

Well, ask me why I’m drunk alla time
It levels my head and eases my mind
I just walk along and stroll and sing
I see better days and I do better things
(I catch dinosaurs
I make love to Elizabeth Taylor . . .
Catch hell from Richard Burton!)

Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance

You know what I like?
Women who like worried men
And second chances.

"Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance" is the second-to-last song on the 1963 album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." It and the song that follow, "I Shall Be Free," offer some respite from the grim humor, the just plain grim, and the tragedy and wistfulness that mark many of the songs that come before them. The origin of the song might be desperate; the title is a decent indicator, but the treatment is much lighter.

1. Allow me one more chance to:
- Get along with you
- Ride your aeroplane
- Ride your passenger train

2. What I'm doing:
- Walking down the road with my head in my hands
- Looking for a gal like you
- Looking for a needle in the sand

3. All about you:
- You need a worried man
- You ain't got no man.

Girl From the North Country

If you go up north,
Check on my former girlfriend.
She might get chilly.

"Girl From the North Country" appeared on two Bob Dylan albums. The first version, sad and bleak, appeared on "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" in 1963. The second was a duet with Johnny Cash, warm and friendly, which opened the 1969 album "Nashville Skyline" and carries a suitably memorable scene in the film "Silver Linings Playbook." The song is simple enough: the singer pines for his former lover, far up north, presumably in Minnesota's north country where Bob came from. Who the woman in the song is really supposed to be is up to the Dylanologists and the Picayunese to research.

Summary:
If you go north, you'll discover hard winds by the border. If you see my ex, please say hello. I used to really love her. By the way, check to see if she's wearing her coat. The river will freeze and there will be snow. Is her hair still long? I remember that look well. I wonder if she remembers me. I still think about her, day and night.

Here are both versions, each beautiful in their ways.

Down the Highway

You cross the country,
You miss a girl, you hitch rides
You gamble, you die.

I've always been partial to this lesser-known song from "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" album 1963. It's a standard blues song with the usual ingredients -- walking and loneliness, and wouldn't you know it, there's a woman to blame.

1. Walking with suitcase. Missing baby. She's in a foreign land.
2. Streets = empty. Highways = filled. Loving baby enough to be killed.
3. Gambling a lot, not much money left. Just don't take his shoes.
4. Lucky or die. Meet me in the middle of the ocean. No roads there.
5. Baby took heart to Italy, stole it from me.
6. Walking down the highway. Starting in San Francisco, ending up on the border of New York City.

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

No no, please do go.
I loved you, you hurt my pride.
That's fine; I hate you.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" is one of Bob Dylan's most enduring, timeless favorites. It's too bad for me that I don't like it very much. It's undoubtedly brilliant and scabrous, and I can see how lots of people would like a kiss-off song like this because they probably can apply it to more than one romantic finale in their lives. After nearly 30 years of repeated exposure to less-than-perfect endings to relationships, I feel like I'm all out of angry. Maybe it's a great song and I just think it's too mean because I've gone soft. I don't know. The line that bugs me is, "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." That's like complaining that your lie-flat bed in the first-class section of the airplane didn't spray a delicate mist of attar of roses on you while you slept. Moreover, it implies that the trouble in the relationship came from one side only. And though I try to avoid the biographical inspirations of Dylan's songs and just focus on the text, I know that the likely inspiration for this song was ex-girlfriend Suze Rotolo. Whatever their private lives were like, it looks like a case of dirty laundry.

Anyway, as Leonard Cohen said, "read me the list of the crimes that are mine, I will ask for the mercy that you love to decline:"

- You're the reason I'm traveling on, even as your rooster crows at the break of dawn.
- Your light won't reach me because I'm on the dark side of the road.
- Couldn't you possibly do or say something to make me change my mind? Didn't think so.
- We never talked much to begin with.
- I thought I loved a woman, but I guess she was a child.
- I offered heart. She wanted soul. Editors!

Following are two versions of the song. One is the original from 1963's "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." The other is a strange reggae adaptation from the 1979 live album "Bob Dylan at Budokan."

Corrina, Corrina

Bob misses a girl.

He has a bird that can sing.

That don't mean a thing.

People talk about the time when Bob Dylan "went electric," but he already was performing in the studio with plugged-in musicians in 1962, but, with the exception of the song "Mixed-Up Confusion," in a less raucous way. "Corrina, Corrina" was the only song on the 1963 album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" to feature an electric backing band. As for Corrina herself, she appears to have been bailing out on men since Thomas Edison turned electricity into a viable commodity. In the Wikipedia entry for the song, there is a reference to a 1918 version published as sheet music and recorded in the same year by Vernon Dalhart, called "Has Anybody Seen My Corrine?" Various versions of the song appeared since then, referring to Corrine, Corrina and Maggie. Country-and-western versions as well as the folk music craze brought the song into Dylan's orbit.

1. Where has Corrina been? Please come home, baby.

2. I have a bird that whistles and sings, but life is meaningless without Corrina.

3. I'm thinking about Corrina. When I do, I cry.

And that's a wrap.

Here's a solo acoustic outtake version from The 50th Anniversary Collection.

Bob Dylan's Dream

I miss all my friends.

We were each other's whole world.

Then we sought paychecks.

Recorded in 1963 for the album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," this dose of nostalgia could easily veer into mawkish territory, but I find it affecting and sincere. Bob's friends used to sit around and talk about life, the universe and everything, as he recalls while riding a train heading west. Back then, they knew what was right and wrong, they laughed and sang all night long by a wooden stove, and goddamnit, wouldn't it be nice if life could stay as it was when we were young. Or as he sings in the last two verses:

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

I've always thought that the song "The Last Time I Saw Richard" by Joni Mitchell was a natural sequel to this one, several affairs, jobs, and a few thousand cocktails later, only this time in some suburban desert:

Richard got married to a figure skater And he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on And all the house lights left up bright I'm gonna blow this damn candle out I don't want nobody comin' over to my table I got nothing to talk to anybody about All good dreamers pass this way some day Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes dark cafes Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away Only a phase these dark café days

Bob Dylan's Blues

Bob has some troubles.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto

Won't help him fix them.

Another of Bob's melancholy-go-lucky walking songs, "Bob Dylan's Blues" was recorded in 1962 for the 1963 album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." I focused on the first verse since problems tend to be what plague Dylan through many of the verses of many of his songs, and that seemed to capture the essence of this little rambler-gambler tune.

For what it's worth, the other verses tackle different subjects, while his spoken introduction notes that this song was written in the United States, not Tin Pan Alley in New York City:

1. Someone must have told the Lone Ranger and Tonto that Bob was doing all right because they're fixing everyone's troubles but his.

2. Bob has a real gal, not a "five and 10-cent woman," and he advises those in the latter coterie to go away from his door and window.

3. He doesn't go to the racetrack because he doesn't have or need a sports car. He can walk around the block on his feet if he wishes.

4. The wind blows him in various directions. Don't step on him.

5. If you want to be like Bob, go commit armed robbery. Tell the judge later when you're on trial that Bob said it was OK.

Here's another version of the song, released on "The 50th Anniversary Collection."

Blowin' in the Wind

Bob knows so little.

He asks where the answers are.

He has a strong hunch.

This is the first Bob Dylan haiku that I ever wrote, and like the original song, it has stood the test of time.

Dylan recorded this song for his second album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" in 1963. There are multiple studio and live recordings of the song on various Dylan live and archival albums. Take your pick.

Here is a thoroughly different version, recorded down the street from my apartment last month at the Beacon Theater. I wasn't willing to shell out the crazy money that scalpers were asking so I didn't go.

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

A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

What did you see when

You went for a walk? Stuff that

Would make you stay home.

The closer to side one of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" LP from 1963 is one of those songs full of images that make you wonder why the gods picked one guy through which to channel. There's so much going on, and none of it's pretty. I based this haiku on a simple concept repeated over verses:

Question:

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

Answer:

I saw a ton of unpalatable shit out there on the road. Sad people, racists, riches ignored, signs of the apocalypse, death and loneliness and self pity, and the path that the human race is taking that will lead to oblivion, and the voice of one poet who will do his best to tell the story until he drowns in the murk. 

Basically, a party song for a certain kind of party goer.

I've always found this to be one of Dylan's best songs, and I'm not someone who cares much for folksinger protest music. I think that many people have done it poorly and have been overly earnest about it, and the lack of a sense of humor is, in the end, what I think turns people's ears off to protest music. I think that Dylan has done plenty of mediocre protest songs, but when he does it right, holy cow does he do it right.

If you're ever looking for a bizarre take on it, listen to the version on Bryan Ferry's first album, released in 1973. Ferry clearly loves Dylan's songs and has covered many of them. This glam-style version might be meant ironically, however. Check out the backup singer reaction to the poet who died in the gutter.

And here is Dylan doing it during in Irvine, California, in 2013. His voice is shot here, but the music is good.

Corrina, Corrina

Bob misses a girl.
His bird also misses one.
Two Corrinas gone!

Bob Dylan's Dream

I miss all my friends.
They gave me the world I craved.
Then we sought paychecks.

Bob Dylan's Blues

Bob has some troubles.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Won't help him fix them.

Blowin' in the Wind

Bob knows so little.
He asks where the answers are.
He has a strong hunch.

Masters of War

Tin-pot dictators
Might destroy the planet, but
They should fear folkies.