Category: Bob Dylan

The world has gone black before my eyes… Across the courtroom the judge reaches for his black cap. Now he is poised to settle it on his head. In that moment, for Lost John, time freezes. It is as if he has stepped out of himself, like he’s an actor in some projection of his...

There’s always a reason Why someone’s life has been spared… Beyond The Horizon underlines the irony of Bob Dylan calling his latest album Modern Times. Once Dylan was one of the leaders of a musical movement which seemed to be aiming to sweep away the detritus of the past: now he celebrates the musical values...

.Sleep is like a temporary death… . “You will perceive that in the breast The germs of many virtues rest, Which, ere they feel a lover’s breath, Lie in a temporary death” Henry Timrod, Two Portraits   Workingman’s Blues No. 2 is already the most celebrated, though perhaps the most misunderstood, track on Modern Times....

Between the complex metaphysics of When The Deal Goes Down and the luxurious poetry of Workingman’s Blues No. 2, we get a little light relief as Dylan communes once again with the ‘ghosts’ who loom behind the surfaces of Modern Times. Someday Baby is another ‘my baby done left me’ blues. Like Rollin’ and Tumblin’...

…We all wear the same thorny crown… Perhaps the most striking aspect of Modern Times is its lyrical and emotional clarity. The lyrics of 2001’s Love And Theft, like so many Dylan albums before it, featured often wildly allusive patterns of reference. But here the songs are carefully constructed to convey specific emotions and themes...

  ..I’ve been conjuring up all these long dead souls from their crumblin’ tombs…   And so the thoughts revolve around the poet’s mind. He’s been up all night. Sleep has been impossible. He sits on the edge of the bed, watching the young woman sleeping, her luxuriant dark hair tossed across her face. He...

After the apocalyptic thunder subsides, a soft, jazzy shuffle takes us back to the beginning of all things: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters. God said,...

…Everybody got to wonder What’s the matter with this cruel world today… MODERN TIMES begins, as it ends, in an apocalyptic landscape.  The earth itself is in tumult.  Volcanoes, hurricanes and whirlwinds scour the land. The power is cut. It’s like Hell’s Kitchen. Everything is broken. Hot stuff everywhere. For the singer, the writing is...