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Extract from ‘DETERMINED TO STAND’: Bob Dylan’s Tempest
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Extract from ‘DETERMINED TO STAND’: Bob Dylan’s Tempest

As chaos takes over we return to our friend Leo, who can now make no sense of what is happening in this bizarre, hallucinatory scenario: …Leo turned to Cleo/ “I think I’m going mad”/ But he’d lost his mind already/ Whatever mind he had… We are never told who ‘Cleo’ is. Meanwhile the description of Leo trying to …block the doorway to save all those from harm/ Blood from an open wound pouring down his arm… seems to be a version of the scenes in the movie where Jack performs heroics in order to save some of the passengers. But this is the last we will hear of Leo and we will never find out whether he shares Jack Dawson’s fate. In the next verse we hear that: …Petals fell from the flowers/ ‘Till all of them were gone/ In the long and dreadful hours/ The wizard’s curse played on… The mention of the ‘wizard’s curse’ suggests that this dream-version of the sinking of the ship is indeed a kind of Hollywood movie in which the passengers have been bewitched by an unseen manipulator. Given that the trouble with the ship appears to have been started by a whirlwind, perhaps this ‘remake’ of the famous movie has somehow incorporated elements of The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy and her friends are however, nowhere to be seen.

PODCAST: Bob Dylan: A Headful of Ideas SeasonThree 21) Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
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PODCAST: Bob Dylan: A Headful of Ideas SeasonThree 21) Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts

  LILY, ROSEMARY AND THE JACK OF HEARTS EXTRACTS     FULL TEXT HERE This is one of Dylan’s most appealing and enigmatic songs, full of witty rhyming, various poetic devices and characteristically colloquial turns of phrase. Like The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest (its most obvious antecedent) it is a comic narrative which can...

PODCAST: BOB DYLAN: A HEADFUL OF IDEAS Season Three 20) It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue: Take What You Have Gathered…
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PODCAST: BOB DYLAN: A HEADFUL OF IDEAS Season Three 20) It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue: Take What You Have Gathered…

  Please click ‘Watch on You Tube’ and Like and subscribe  COMMENTS WELCOME   EXTRACTS   … READ FULL TEXT HERE It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue is one of Bob Dylan’s most well known songs. It has a beautiful melody, a winning chorus and lyrics that can express many different moods. Dylan has performed it...

PODCAST: BOB DYLAN: A HEADFUL OF IDEAS Season Three 19) Brownsville Girl: If There’s an Original Thought Out There…
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PODCAST: BOB DYLAN: A HEADFUL OF IDEAS Season Three 19) Brownsville Girl: If There’s an Original Thought Out There…

EXTRACTS (Full text HERE) Brownsville Girl is an extraordinarily experimental song which is a unique amalgam of lyrical, cinematic and theatrical elements. Its use of fractured internal and external narratives and time frames links it to earlier songs like Tangled Up in Blue and Visions of Johanna. But it uses language in a very different...

PODCAST: Bob Dylan: A Headful of Ideas Season Three 18) Motorpsycho Nitemare: A Clean Cut Kid
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PODCAST: Bob Dylan: A Headful of Ideas Season Three 18) Motorpsycho Nitemare: A Clean Cut Kid

PLEASE CLICK ON ‘WATCH ON YOU TUBE’ PLEASE LIKER AND SUBSCRIBE! COMMENTS WELCOME ON YOU TUBE OR FURTHER DOWN THIS PAGE EXTRACTS  (full version here) Motorpsycho Nitemare is a comic ‘shaggy dog’ story that appears on what is generally regarded as Dylan’s first ‘post protest’ album, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964). Motorpsycho Nitemare represents...