Mel Tormé said he wrote this Christmas song on a hot summer day in 1944. Nevertheless, the images of “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” and “folks dressed up like Eskimos” guided him in writing the song. The Nat King Cole Trio recorded no less than four versions between 1946 and 1961, while Tormé only recorded the song in 1954. “The Christmas Song” became a holiday standard. The song has been covered by many performers, including Frank Sinatra in 1957, the Jackson Five in 1968, Luther Vandross in 1992, Christina Aguilera in 1999, Sheryl Crow in 2008, and Paul McCartney in 2012, among others. Dylan and his band offer an excellent jazzy version, tinged with nostalgia. Dylan sings the introduction; most artists usually omit it. When he was asked why he brought it back, he told Bill Flanagan in 2009, “I figured the guy who wrote it put it in there deliberately.”167 The high quality of the musicians contributes to this song’s success, as does Dylan’s own excellent interpretation.
O’ Little Town Of Bethlehem
Phillips Brooks & Lewis Redner / Arrangement Bob Dylan / 2:18
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar (?)
Phil Upchurch: guitar
David Hidalgo: guitar
Donnie Herron: steel guitar
Patrick Warren: piano, organ, celesta
Tony Garnier: bass
George G. Receli: cymbals
Amanda Barrett, Bill Cantos, Randy Crenshaw, Abby DeWald, Nicole Eva Emery, Walt Harrah, and Robert Joyce: backup vocals
Recording Studio
Groove Masters, Santa Monica, California: May 2009
Technical Team
Producer: Jack Frost (Bob Dylan)
Sound Engineer: David Bianco
Genesis and Lyrics
“O’ Little Town of Bethlehem” was written by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest, rector of Trinity Church in Boston, and an ardent abolitionist during the Civil War. This poem was inspired by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and a visit to Bethlehem in 1865. Brooks wrote the poem three years later, and his organist, Lewis Redner, added the music on Christmas Eve. The following day the song was performed by the children’s chorus of Trinity Church. Brooks wrote, “I remember standing in the old church in Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices I knew well, telling each other of the Wonderful Night of the Savior’s birth.”165
Initially the poem was simply called “St. Louis” and was only later renamed “O’ Little Town of Bethlehem.” This carol has been recorded many times. Among the adaptations known worldwide are those by Frank Sinatra (1957), Elvis Presley (1957), the Staple Singers (1962), Willie Nelson (1979), and Dolly Parton (1990). Dylan’s version, which concludes Christmas in the Heart, is exceptionally solemn. The song demonstrates a perfect understanding, if not perfect communion, between the greatest American songwriter and the celebration of Christmas, on which the Christian tradition has been based for over two thousand years.
Production
What better way for Dylan to end his thirty-fourth album than by singing “O’ Little Town of Bethlehem”? In his interpretation, Dylan once again surprises with an interpretation that leaves little doubt about his personal convictions. In October 2009, when Bill Flanagan asked, “You sure deliver that song like a true believer,” Dylan replied, “Well, I am a true believer.”167 His version probably equals those of Sinatra, Elvis, or Nat King Cole with its obvious sincerity. Accompanied by brilliant musicians and backup vocalists, he concludes his album with a moving “amen.”
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Sometimes in the United States, particularly in the Episcopal Church, and in Great Britain, “O’ Little Town of Bethlehem” is known as “Forest Green.”
Tempest
Duquesne Whistle
Soon After Midnight
Narrow Way
Long And Wasted Years
Pay In Blood
Scarlet Town
Early Roman Kings
Tin Angel
Tempest
Roll On John
DATE OF RELEASE
September 11, 2012
on Columbia Records
(REFERENCE COLUMBIA 88725457602 [CD] / 88725457602 [LP])
Tempest:
An Album at the Top of the Wave
The Album
When Bob Dylan’s thirty-fifth studio album was available in stores’ bins on September 11, 2012, the songwriter was seventy-one years old. Is Tempest his musical culmination? Those who drew a parallel with Shakespeare and his last play, The Tempest, feared the rumor that the album would be Dylan’s last, though that was not the case. Moreover, three weeks before the release of the album, Dylan’s pithy comment was, “Shakespeare’s last play was called The Tempest. It wasn’t called just plain Tempest. The name of my record is just plain Tempest. It’s two different titles.”169
Tempest includes ten songs, all written by Dylan with the exception of “Duquesne Whistle,” which was Co-written with Robert Hunter. When Dylan entered the Groove Masters studio in Santa Monica, California, he intended to record another religious album, perhaps a sequel to the trilogy Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love. In 2012, he confessed to Mikal Gilmore, “I wanted to make something more religious. I just didn’t have enough [religious songs]. Intentionally, specifically religious songs is what I wanted to do.” The project soon changed direction, and Tempest became a kind of retrospective of a fifty-year career.
The tone of the album is overwhelmingly dark and violent. Nevertheless, humor and emotion are never far away. With its swing rhythm, “Duquesne Whistle” is a new evocation of Dylan’s childhood in the Midwest. “Soon After Midnight” is more enigmatic, as if the ghosts of Shakespeare, Howlin’ Wolf, and Elvis Presley hover around it. “Narrow Way” paints an unflattering portrait of imperialist America, so far from the ideals of the founding fathers. “Long and Wasted Years” is one of the cruelest songs ever written about a couple, as well as a metaphor for the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. “Pay in Blood” calls to mind the 1960s counterculture and antiwar sentiment, which suffused “Masters of War” and “Ballad of a Thin Man.” Likewise, “Scarlet Town” is a kind of “Desolation Row” rerun, whereas “Early Roman Kings” is a modern reinterpretation of Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon’s blues. “Tin Angel” follows, a murder ballad with a folk and Western background. The album’s title song, “Tempest,” runs fourteen minutes and consists of forty-five verses with no chorus based on the Carter Family’s accounts of the tragedy of the Titanic. Finally, “Roll on John” is a poignant tribute to John Lennon and a flashback to the dreams of the sixties generation.
Upon its release on September 11, 2012, the album was praised by critics and the public. In Rolling Stone magazine, Will Hermes gave it five stars out of five, saying, “Lyrically, Dylan is at the top of his game, joking around, dropping wordplay and allegories that evade pat readings and quoting other folks’ words like a freestyle rapper on fire.” In France, the album was highly acclaimed. Bernard Loupias of Le Nouvel Observateur wrote, “Tempest, his thirty-fifth studio album, continues his odyssey in memory of a forgetful America that does not know she is haunted by the ghosts of her secret history. Dylan sees them. He listens to their tenuous voice blowing in the wind that sweeps through the Great Plains and roars through the Rocky Mountains.”171
Thus, Dylan’s thirty-fifth studio album reached number 3 on the US Billboard Hot 200 chart and the UK albums chart. In Europe, the album peaked at number 1 in Austria, Croatia, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. A formidable achievement for an artist some thought had lost relevance.
The Album Cover
The cover photograph, in dark red duotone, is a close-up of a statue of the Pallas Athene fountain, erected in 1902 in front of the main entrance to the Austrian parliament building on the Ringstrasse in Vienna. Alexander Längauer took the photograph. The package, like Dylan’s two previous albums, wa
s designed by Coco Shinomiya. On the back of the CD, there is a photograph, taken by William Claxton (Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra), of Dylan at the wheel of a sports car. The other photographs in the booklet are by John Shearer, who also worked on the album Shadows in the Night (2015).
The Recording
The sessions for Tempest were produced by Bob Dylan (under his pseudonym Jack Frost) and took place from January to March 2012 at Groove Masters in Santa Monica, California. Two members of his former touring band, guitarists Stu Kimball and Charlie Sexton, accompanied him. Musicians from the most recent albums also participated: David Hidalgo (accordion, guitar, violin), Donnie Herron (steel guitar, banjo, violin, mandolin), Tony Garnier (bass), and George G. Receli (drums). The newest member of the technical team was sound engineer Scott Litt, best known for producing R.E.M., Nirvana, and the Replacements, among others. At first Litt was not exactly a Dylan enthusiast, but he became one after the 2001 album Love and Theft: “To me, it was ‘Huckleberry Finn.’” Nick Paumgarden wrote in the New Yorker that when Litt built his studio in Venice, California, in the mid-1980s, “he did it with Bob Dylan in mind. He pictured Dylan sitting there at the Hammond organ, accompanied by nothing but drums and a standup bass. Or maybe in an arrangement featuring a banjo and a trumpet. ‘I always imagined him having a Louis Armstrong “Hello, Dolly” sound,’ Litt said.”172 In the end Dylan chose Jackson Browne’s Groove Masters studio, where he had previously recorded Christmas in the Heart.
Paumgarden’s story continues: “Litt’s biggest contribution to Tempest may have been a prized pair of old Neumann microphones that he owns, worth twenty-five thousand dollars or so each. They are ‘omnidirectional’: you can set one up in the middle of the room and record many musicians at once, in the round. It was an unorthodox, old-fashioned approach, but Dylan apparently liked what the mikes picked up. ‘It created a soundscape and he kind of fit over it,’ Litt said.” Paumgarden adds, “Dylan’s voice stood out. Litt didn’t mess with it. Listeners will not dispute that few tricks were deployed to enhance it.”172
The sound is rough, as were the recordings at Chess Records in Chicago and at Sun Records in Memphis—a lowdown, authentic sound, exactly what Dylan had always wanted. According to Paumgarden, “Dylan typically listened to the rough cuts in his pickup truck, or else on a boom box”8 to be sure they sounded good enough on mid-range devices.
Duquesne Whistle
Bob Dylan / Robert Hunter / 5:44
Musicians: Bob Dylan: vocals, keyboards; Charlie Sexton: guitar; Stu Kimball: guitar; David Hidalgo: guitar (?); Donnie Herron: steel guitar; Tony Garnier: upright bass; George G. Receli: drums / Recording Studio: Groove Masters, Santa Monica, California: January–March 2012 / Producer: Jack Frost (Bob Dylan) / Sound Engineer: Scott Litt
Genesis and Production
This is Dylan’s only co-authored title on Tempest, written with lyricist Robert Hunter. “Duquesne Whistle” may be from the recording sessions for Together Through Life, in which most of the songs were Co-written with Hunter. “Duquesne Whistle” may have been based on the catastrophic EF5 tornado that struck Duquesne and Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011, but it is more likely that the song evokes Du Quoin (pronounced Duquesne), Illinois. “I wanna stop at Carbondale and keep on going / That Duquesne train gon’ rock me night and day” brings to mind the train route through the heartland’s musical heritage, with Chicago to the north and New Orleans to the south. The song, in any case, is an opportunity for Dylan to ride the train of nostalgia and make an introspective journey to the heart of his feelings, wounds, and fears, and to evoke in the last verse his youth in the Midwest: “The lights of my native land are glowing /… That old oak tree, the one we used to climb.”
In the introduction, Dylan recalls a sepia-toned period. The rhythm is played on steel guitar, doubled on electric and piano, and backed by an acoustic guitar. The result is irresistible and transports listeners to an earlier time. The rest is a train song swinging with delight, saturated guitars alternating with a “gypsy pump” rhythm. Too bad the solo at the end was not played in imitation of Django Reinhardt. Dylan is excellent, and his raspy voice probably never sounded so good. A beautiful opening track, “Duquesne Whistle” was released as a single, with the B-side containing an alternative version of “Meet Me in the Morning,” recorded during the Blood on the Tracks sessions. Dylan released a music video for this new single, directed by Nash Edgerton.
Soon After Midnight
Bob Dylan / 3:28
Musicians: Bob Dylan: vocals, piano; Charlie Sexton: guitar; Stu Kimball: guitar; David Hidalgo: guitar (?); Donnie Herron: steel guitar; Tony Garnier: upright bass; George G. Receli: drums / Recording Studio: Groove Masters, Santa Monica, California: January–March 2012 / Producer: Jack Frost (Bob Dylan) / Sound Engineer: Scott Litt
Genesis and Production
At first glance, Bob Dylan has more fun playing with words than delivering a message. There are indeed some subtle references in this song. “I’ve been down on the killing floors,” evokes death and slaughter, and also echoes a blues song titled “Killing Floor,” recorded by Howlin’ Wolf in 1964 and later covered by Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. The first line of the last verse, “It’s now or never,” refers to Elvis Presley. The title of the song refers to Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, whose main characters are two young lovers.
There is also a reference to the musical past. The sound of the first verse simulates an old transistor radio playing music of the fifties and sixties. “Soon After Midnight” is very close in style to “A New Shade of Blue” by the Bobby Fuller Four (1966). Dylan’s voice takes on a new patina that makes it less aggressive than some of his recent hits, at least for this song. The vocal is sweet and gentle. The group is excellent, especially Donnie Herron’s steel guitar solo, doubled by a six-string guitar.
COVERS
The blues song “Killing Floor” by Electric Flag, featured Dylan bandmate Mike Bloomfield on guitar.
Narrow Way
Bob Dylan / 7:28
Musicians: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, piano; Charlie Sexton: guitar; Stu Kimball: guitar; David Hidalgo: guitar (?); Donnie Herron: steel guitar; Tony Garnier: upright bass; George G. Receli: drums / Recording Studio: Groove Masters, Santa Monica, California: January–March 2012 / Producer: Jack Frost (Bob Dylan) / Sound Engineer: Scott Litt
Genesis and Production
After scattering a few references throughout “Soon After Midnight,” Bob Dylan refers explicitly to the Bible in “Narrow Way.” The chorus’s line, “It’s a long road, it’s a long and narrow way,” is taken from the Gospel according to Matthew (7:14), “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life.” Throughout the eleven verses of the song, Dylan revisits some chapters of American history, denouncing imperialism and a society that has become violent and unequal. But is he talking about his country or his girlfriend when he sings, ”Your father left you, your mother, too”? Is America no longer the country of the founding fathers?
“Narrow Way” is another blues song in the long career of the songwriter. It could have been written at the time of Highway 61 Revisited, but in 2012 Dylan still shows the same enthusiasm for this music that he discovered with Robert Johnson earlier in his career. “Narrow Way” is built around a recurring riff played on guitar with a very saturated sound, with added echoes of another six-string guitar played bottleneck (unless the sound is provided by Herron on steel guitar). With a classical structure, “Narrow Way” has an excellent groove provided by Receli, who probably plays with brushes, and Garnier on upright bass. Dylan, now a seventy-one-year-old artist, is still full of energy, delivering his vocal in a hoarse voice. The song might have been enhanced with a guitar or harmonica solo.
Long And Wasted Years
Bob Dylan / 3:47
Musicians: Bob Dylan: vocals, organ; Charlie Sexton: guitar; Stu Kimball: guitar; David Hidalgo: guitar; Donnie Herron: steel guitar; Tony Garnier: upright bass; George G. Receli:
drums / Recording Studio: Groove Masters, Santa Monica, California: January–March 2012 / Producer: Jack Frost (Bob Dylan) / Sound Engineer: Scott Litt
Genesis and Production
“Long and Wasted Years” describes the twilight of a couple’s contentious relationship. The man and the woman do not even try to understand each other. They are “two trains running side by side.” Today, “we cried on that cold and frosty morn.” This song may be an allusion to the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, as described in John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost.
“Long and Wasted Years” is a pop ballad, mostly acoustic. The arrangements in the introduction are based on “Soon After Midnight,” featuring a mono sound simulating a radio. In the orchestration there is an electric guitar and at least three acoustic guitars, including certainly two 12-strings. Dylan plays organ, and his singing is strong, half-sarcastic, half-ferocious.
Pay In Blood
Bob Dylan / 5:09
Musicians: Bob Dylan: vocals, piano (?), guitar (?); Charlie Sexton: guitar; Stu Kimball: guitar; David Hidalgo: guitar (?); Donnie Herron: steel guitar; Tony Garnier: bass; George G. Receli: drums / Recording Studio: Groove Masters, Santa Monica, California: January–March 2012 / Producer: Jack Frost (Bob Dylan) / Sound Engineer: Scott Litt
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 91