Bob Dylan All the Songs
Page 17
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
On the studio sheet for the session, “Ballad in Plain D” is listed by mistake as “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie”!
It Ain’t Me, Babe
Bob Dylan / 3:32
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: June 9 and 10, 1964
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: Roy Halee and Fred Catero
Genesis and Lyrics
Dylan wrote “It Ain’t Me, Babe” before he started recording his new album. He explained in 1985 in the Biograph notes, “I wrote that song in Italy… I went there after doing some shows in England. I’d gone there to get away for a while.”12 In fact, after staying in London for about two weeks, he had left on January 5, 1963, to meet the singer Odetta in Rome, with the hope of finding Suze Rotolo in Perugia. Ironically, she had left Italy in mid-December to come back to New York by boat, only to discover that Bob was in Great Britain. Nonetheless, listening to the song, it can be assumed that it was finished much later, after their separation in March 1964. “It Ain’t Me, Babe” reflects Bob’s bitterness after the end of his relationship with Suze Rotolo. This bitterness can be felt when listening to the song, Dylan regretting not being the one “To protect you an’ defend you / Whether you are right or wrong / Someone to open each and every door” and eventually understand (“It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe”). Beyond this passionate love that has died (symbolizing, in a way, the impossible quest for a true and indestructible love), “It Ain’t Me, Babe” sounds like a metaphor for the relationships that Dylan had with both some folksingers, and, more generally, with the general public—meaning his refusal to act as leader.
Production
If “Denise,” even though it was never released, was the first song for the album, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” is the second. Bob is in good form and it shows. Nat Hentoff agrees: “Dylan, smiling, clearly appeared to be confident of his ability to do an entire album in one night.”20 He mastered his part, going up without any problems into treble, and provided an excellent guitar accompaniment and an inspired harmonica part (G). Unlike songs like “My Back Pages” that he had just written and mastered with difficulty, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” is a title that he had already performed in public, including on May 17, 1964, when he played the first concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London, three weeks before the recording sessions. After an incomplete first take, he immortalized the tune in the second attempt. “It Ain’t Me, Babe” is one of the essential songs of his stage repertoire, and he has performed it nearly a thousand times to date.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
When Dylan first met Johnny Cash at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, he seized the opportunity to sing to the king of country music. And it was in Joan Baez’s room at the Viking Hotel and Motor Inn in Newport that Dylan played “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” Johnny Cash eventually recorded it as a duet with June Carter in 1965 on his album Orange Blossom Special, and it became a hit.
COVERS
Among all the covers that have been made, in 1965 the Turtles’ version reached number 8 on the US Billboard chart.
Another Side of Bob Dylan Outtakes
After two years of boundless creativity, Dylan had less time to write and compose because of his concert and recording schedule. This is why there is only one outtake at the end of his fourth album. “Mama, You Been on My Mind” was rejected from the final track listing of Another Side of Bob Dylan, even thought it was one of the best songs of the sessions for this album. Dylan often sang the song in public. The tune was released in 1991 on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991.
Mama, You Been On My Mind
Bob Dylan / 2:57
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: June 9, 1964 / Producer: Tom Wilson Sound Engineers: Roy Halee and Fred Catero / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 2) / Release Date: March 26, 1991
Like the majority of the other songs for his upcoming fourth album, Dylan wrote “Mama, You Been on My Mind” in Greece. The end of Dylan’s relationship with Suze Rotolo in March 1964 probably served as inspiration. The song is a straightforward account of separation, praising mutual understanding and therefore rejecting any form of jealousy. The lyrics are the best that this separation inspired.
“Mama, You Been on My Mind” is one of the songs recorded for Witmark & Sons and later for Columbia. The song was not included in the 1964 LP Another Side of Bob Dylan; nevertheless, the composition was performed more than two hundred times since Dylan’s duet with Joan Baez at the Forest Hills Music Festival in Queens, New York, on August 8, 1964. In 1965, Joan Baez used “Daddy” in place of “Mama” to record “Daddy, You Been on My Mind” for her album Farewell, Angelina. Dylan also performed the song in a duet with George Harrison during a recording session in May 1970. Harrison had already covered the song during the 1969 recording sessions for Let It Be. In 2004 Jeff Buckley released an extraordinary version on the “Legacy Edition” of his only studio album Grace.
This tune shows Dylan’s talent. Although the version is not perfect—Dylan hits the strings of his guitar at 2:23—it carries an emotion and sweetness that makes it irresistible. On the demos for Witmark, Dylan played piano, thereby increasing the depth of feeling in the song.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
At the end of the recording, someone coughs in the back of the studio (2:53). Curiously, in the track listing for The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3, the preceding song is none other than “Suze (The Cough Song).” Strange coincidence.
The Witmark Demos
The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964, released on October 19, 2010, includes forty-seven tracks by Dylan for his first two publishers. The songs selected are not included on any other of Bob Dylan’s official albums nor in any other Bootleg Series released by Sony (except “Only a Hobo” and “Walkin’ Down the Line”).
From Columbia to Witmark & Sons
Between the recording and the release of Bob Dylan’s debut album for Columbia, his producer, John Hammond, arranged for him to meet Lou Levy, head of two music publishers, Leeds Music Publishing (affiliated with ASCAP) and Duchess Music (affiliated with BMI). The goal was not only to publish the young songwriter’s compositions, but also to encourage other artists to perform his repertoire. Dylan signed a contract with the Leeds on January 5, 1962. In the contract Dylan was offered $1,000, but John Hammond mentioned only a $500 advance. He recorded five songs in one demo session: “Poor Boy Blues,” “Ballad for a Friend,” “Rambling, Gambling Willie,” “Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues,” and “Standing on the Highway.” When Albert Grossman became Dylan’s manager in May 1962, he proposed that the young artist sign a new deal with Artie Mogull at M. Witmark & Sons, one of Music Publishers Holding Corporation’s subsidiaries, a Warner Music–owned operation. By the end of June, Dylan had recorded a demo, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” for Witmark. Meanwhile, Grossman approached Lou Levy to buy out Dylan’s contract for $1,000. Levy accepted the deal, and Dylan was free to sign a new contract with Witmark on July 13.
Between July 12, 1962, and January 1964, Bob Dylan visited Witmark about a dozen times. The recording sessions took place in a small dark room on the fifth floor of the Look Building at 488 Madison Avenue. Dylan recorded a total of thirty-nine songs with the assistance of a young engineer named Ivan Augenblink. The material used at Witmark included a mono audiotape recorder running at seven-and-a-half inches per second, half the speed used by professionals. A copyist would then transcribe the lyrics and music from the tape, and song sheets would be printed and sent to recording companies, along with acetate.
Poor Boy Blues
Bob Dylan / 3:02
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica Re
cording Studio: Leeds Music Offices, New York: January 1962 / Sound Engineer: Ivan Augenblink Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (CD 1) / Release Date: October 19, 2010
In 1926, the singer and guitarist Bo Weavil Jackson recorded “Poor Boy Blues.” Since then, the song has been in the repertoire of many blues and blues-rock musicians, including Gus Cannon, Howlin’ Wolf, and Jeff Beck. This lowdown blues song is about a homesick poor boy. Dylan’s song is close to the original lyrics. A boy tells of his pain, successively, to his mother, a bartender, and a police officer.
A few months after the release of his first album in January 1962, Dylan was already writing new songs. Not knowing if his first record would have any success (it was released on March 19, 1962), he nevertheless continued to write urgently and prolifically. He provided new songs, encouraged by John Hammond, who had arranged for him to meet Lou Levy to sign with Duchess Music Corporation. He recorded a demo of several titles for Leeds Music (also owned by Lou Levy), including “Poor Boy Blues” on acoustic guitar. Dylan was imbued with the blues spirit, and his guitar part, played in open tuning of D (capo on the seventh fret, tone in A), had enough “roots” to be credible.
Standing On The Highway
Bob Dylan / 2:32
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica Recording Studio: Leeds Music Offices, New York: January 1962 / Sound Engineer: Ivan Augenblink / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (CD 1) / Release Date: October 19, 2010
To “take to the road” to escape a monotonous daily routine or to start a new life is a recurring theme in American popular music. Dylan expresses this theme and repeats the same hypnotic riff on his guitar in open D tuning (capo on the sixth fret) to take to the road, while wondering if his girlfriend knows where he is.
“Standing on the Highway” demonstrates Dylan’s need to make a tribute to Delta blues. He likes the style and tries to prove that he can write songs in it and to move away from the covers that dominate his first album. On one day in January 1962 he recorded the tune, along with eight others, for Leeds Music.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
“Standing on the Highway” is one of the eleven songs, including “Fixin’ to Die,” “The Death of Emmett Till,” and “Hard Times in New York Town,” played by Bob Dylan during folksinger Cynthia Gooding’s radio show Folksinger’s Choice on March 11, 1962. These eleven songs were released on a pirate disc titled Folksinger’s Choice in 1992. On the same album there is also a recording of Dylan talking about the upcoming release of his first album and his first meeting with Cynthia Gooding in Minneapolis in 1959.
Long Ago, Far Away
Bob Dylan / 2:30
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Witmark Studio, New York: November 1962 / Sound Engineer: Ivan Augenblink / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (CD 1) / Release Date: October 19, 2010
Bob Dylan was just over twenty years old when he recorded this demo. Already he had no illusions about human nature, which hadn’t changed throughout history. That is the message of this song. Dylan gives the example of Jesus Christ, preaching of peace and brotherhood and ending up on a cross. “Oh, what might be the cost! /… And they hung him on the cross.” Dylan sings ironically, “Things like that don’t happen / No more, nowadays.” Nor “the chains of slaves” which lasted up to Lincoln, nor the “one man [who] died of a broken heart / To see the lynchin’ of his son.” The song is Bob’s first explicit reference to Christ some fifteen years before his conversion to Christianity.
The guitar is tuned in drop D, in which the lowest and sixth string is tuned down from the usual E standard tuning by one tone, and the rhythm is in shuffle, bending around the blue note. “Long Ago, Far Away” is once again a way for Dylan to express his despair via the blues. This song would certainly not have been out of place on his sixth album Highway 61 Revisited, where Mike Bloomfield’s guitar playing would have fit right in.
Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Bob Dylan / 3:47
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Witmark Studio, New York: December 1962 Sound Engineer: Ivan Augenblink / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (CD 1) / Release Date: October 19, 2010
Dylan wrote this song during the summer of 1962. He was inspired by an anonymous fifteenth-century English poem called “Western Wind” about Zephyr, the personification of the wind from the west, in Greek mythology. The melody and lyrics reflect all the artist’s romantic disenchantment after the departure of his girlfriend (and muse) Suze Rotolo for Italy in June 1962.
“One day,” said Artie Mogull, “Bob brought me three or four songs, one of which was ‘Tomorrow Is a Long Time.’ And I listened to it and I thought, ‘Gee, this is a wonderful song for Judy Collins.’ So I called her and she came over to the studio and I put on this little demo tape and started playing it. And maybe thirty seconds after I started playing it, I look over at Judy, and tears are rolling down her face and she went in and recorded it right away.”35 After Judy Collins, many other artists went on to cover the song, including Elvis Presley, Rod Stewart, the Kingston Trio, Odetta, Nick Drake, and Sandy Denny.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
The first recording of “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” took place on November 8, 1962 (according to Clinton Heylin, in August 1962). The session was held at Dave Whitaker’s house in Minneapolis. Seven other songs were recorded that day, including “This Land Is Your Land” (later to appear on The Bootleg Series Volume 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack), and “Talking Hypocrite,” “Motherless Children,” “Worried Blues” (on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991).
Although it is not a blues song, Dylan played guitar in open tuning D (second fret). This beautiful ballad is played in a finger-picking style, resulting in a beautiful, evocative sound with subtle harmonic richness. Languor and nostalgia underline the poetry of the text and show us that heartbreak is a source of inspiration for most of the stunning melodies. Regrettably, he did not select the song for the album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, especially because his interpretation surpasses that of all the artists who have subsequently covered it, despite the poor sound quality of the Witmark demos.
The recording for Witmark remained unknown to the public until its release in The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 in 2010. A live version, recorded at New York’s Town Hall in February 1963, was released on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II in November 1971. Bob Dylan performed this song several times during his 1978 world tour, in 1987, and again in 2008.
Bound To Lose, Bound To Win
Bob Dylan / 1:19
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Witmark Studio, New York: Winter 1963 / Sound Engineer: Ivan Augenblink / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (CD 1) / Release Date: October 19, 2010
“Bound to Lose, Bound to Win” was recorded for Witmark during winter 1963. Bob Dylan told sound engineer Ivan Augenblink that he would write other verses for the song because he had forgotten the lyrics. Hence, it is among the shortest songs in Dylan’s catalog. Dylan was definitely inspired by “All You Fascists Bound to Lose,” as recorded in 1944 by Woody Guthrie. The country-and-western atmosphere evokes a road trip. The guitar is played by strumming. It is not a memorable title, but rather an exercise in style.
Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues
Bob Dylan / 3:17
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Witmark Studio, New York: Winter 1963 / Sound Engineer: Ivan Augenblink / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (CD 1) / Release Date: October 19, 2010
Bob Dylan wrote “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” in February 1962. The president of the United States had just announced an embargo on trade with Cuba and the USSR had resumed nuclear testing. The song lyrics and music were the first by Dylan to be published in Broa
dside, a magazine founded by Agnes “Sis” Cunningham and her husband, Gordon Friesen, to defend folk music. Even if the Cold War between the two blocs was nothing to smile about, it inspired Bob Dylan to write an irresistibly satirical text. The narrator in the song joins the conservative John Birch Society. He is convinced that communists are infiltrating the country and starts searching everywhere—under the bed, in the sink, behind the door… in the toilet bowl, and even imagines that Eisenhower is a Russian spy, just like Lincoln, Jefferson, and Roosevelt before him.
“Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” is about the paranoia in the United States in the early 1960s, and this song became a center of controversy. Dylan recorded the song in three takes on April 24, 1962, at Columbia’s Studio A for his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
Dylan selected the tune for his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 12, 1963. At the rehearsal sessions in the afternoon, he played it for Ed Sullivan and producer Bob Precht and both were pleased with it. But the bombshell! When Dylan arrived just before the show, a CBS executive told him that he could not perform “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues” because of possible risks of offending members of the venerable John Birch Society. Worse, Columbia Records, a CBS records division, was ordered to remove the song from the track listing of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, as permitted by the contract. The folksinger David S. Cohen (later David Blue) said that Dylan was “very upset” and “disappeared for three days or so.”2