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THREE BITTERSWEET SONGS FROM BOB DYLAN’S OH MERCY: SMILE IN THE FACE OF MANKIND
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THREE BITTERSWEET SONGS FROM BOB DYLAN’S OH MERCY: SMILE IN THE FACE OF MANKIND

    Bob Dylan’s 1989 album On Mercy represented a crucial turning point in his career. The ‘post-gospel’ records he had put out in the 1980s had received poor reviews. Most critics and fans agreed that Shot of Love (1981), Infidels (1983) and Empire Burlesque (1985), despite including some brilliant songs, were patchy affairs. By...

PODCAST: Bob Dylan: A Headful of Ideas Season Three 23) Two Bitter Love Songs from ‘Blood on the Tracks’
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PODCAST: Bob Dylan: A Headful of Ideas Season Three 23) Two Bitter Love Songs from ‘Blood on the Tracks’

Two Bitter Love Songs from Blood on the Tracks EXTRACTS (Full text here) In the only live version on the Rolling Thunder Tour, recorded at Lakeland Florida on April 18th 1976, the lyrics are completely rewritten, now in an AABB rhyming scheme. The woman is now in ‘North Saigon’. Despite the fact that the American...

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...