{225} TOO MUCH OF NOTHING
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967—2 takes [BT—tk.1].
"Too Much of Nothing" was probably the last of the ten basement songs copyrighted in September to be recorded. Yet it was the first to be released. In November it became the new Peter, Paul, and Mary single. It would be reasonable to assume that their relationship to Dylan, and a shared management, gave Yarrow and company "dibs" on the new songs. As such, they presumably did not need to wait for a copy of the full demo-tape before purloining this new Dylan original. They probably got an earful around the first week in September (which tallies with its copyright registration on October 6).
The song completes one cycle on the wheel of fire, as Dylan allowed himself to become a serious man again. He even expressed a surprisingly forthright evaluation of previous shortcomings ("When there’s too much of nothing / It just makes a fellow mean"). Perhaps it was too damn honest. The two takes he recorded down those stairs—of which the patently inferior first take was preferred on the 1975 set—were the first and last times he sent his regards to Valerie and Vivian. As such, many fans initially had to make do with Fotheringay’s and/or Spooky Tooth’s journeys into nothingness, both preferable to Peter, Paul, and Mary’s.
{226} TEARS OF RAGE
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967—3 takes [BT—tk.3].
First known performance: Patras, Greece, June 26, 1989.
"Tears of Rage" and the three songs that succeed it on the same inspired reel do not constitute part of the ten songs copyrighted in September. They may have been recorded in just two sessions, all four songs being copyrighted as a group in December 1967,[4] a couple of weeks after the John Wesley Harding songs. Added to the ten-song publishing demo, they then made up the fabled fourteen-song acetate. Given the copyright date, one certainly cannot discount the possibility that they were written and recorded between sessions for John Wesley Harding. The likelier scenario, though, is that they precede the first John Wesley Harding session (October 17) by a matter of days. They were almost certainly recorded before drummer Levon Helm returned to the fold at the end of October, but were presumably not copyrighted immediately because of other distractions (Bob was recording an album, the reconstituted Band were demo-ing one).
All of which suggests that, for all his claims that it was just a way to kill time, Dylan wasn’t quite done with the Big Pink process. There was a new seriousness to the process—no diversions, rambunctious or otherwise, occupy the reel in question, just original compositions. In each instance Dylan and The Band indulge in two or three takes not because they haven’t quite nailed the song, but because they want to experiment with the arrangement. These alternate arrangements divide opinions, with some astute folk preferring the first take of "Tears of Rage" (the one on the acetate) to the third (the one Robertson picked for the official LP), and most folk preferring the first take of "Open the Door, Homer" to the two that followed.
To my mind, the one indisputable masterpiece on this reel is "Tears of Rage," which again demonstrates a Dylan comfortable with writing lyrics to a song before he found a tune, stole a tune, or asked for a tune. In this instance he turned to Richard Manuel, who was a little nonplussed by Dylan’s faith in him: "He came down to the basement with a piece of typewritten paper. . . . It was typed out—in line form—and he just said, ‘Have you got any music for this?’ I had a couple of musical movements that fit . . . so I just elaborated a bit, because I wasn’t sure what the lyrics meant. I couldn’t run upstairs and say, ‘What’s this mean, Bob: "Now the heart is filled with gold as if it was a purse?"’"
Dylan was pushing The Band to go their own way, donating another obtuse lyric to the cause, which is presumably why he never even knocked out a sly single take at the John Wesley Harding sessions. Yet it clearly shares similar preoccupations. By asking, "Why must I always be the thief?" he seems to be answering the joker in the watchtower. And it is the poor immigrant he is addressing when he sings of how "the heart is filled with gold / As if it was a purse." That tell-tale chorus, though, confirms a song assigned to the Big Pink locker. To Dylan’s warped (1984) thinking it was just one of those "songs we had done for the publishing company, as I remember. . . . I wouldn’t have put them out. . . . People have told me they think it’s all very Americana and all that. I don’t know what they’re talking about."
"Tears of Rage" certainly has a lot more of Elizabethan England about it than a creationist construct like "weird ol’ America." But this sense, that the song was not really part of his core "canon," took a long time to leave Dylan. Only in June 1989, with The Band barely a going concern and a need for songs to fill out the ever-changing sets that made the G. E. Smith–era so exciting, was "Tears of Rage" given an overdue resuscitation. At his first-ever Greek show, Dylan summoned up the strength to give it his best shot, forty-eight-year-old vocal chords notwithstanding. Its coauthor had already demonstrated that life is indeed brief, making his friends cry "tears of rage, tears of grief" by hanging himself in March 1986.
{227} QUINN THE ESKIMO (THE MIGHTY QUINN)
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967—2 takes [BIO—tk.1].
First known performance: Isle of Wight, August 31, 1969.
At one end of the basement tapes we find "Tiny Montgomery," a figure who sends his regards to the folks "down in ol’ Frisco," while making it clear he’s staying put. At the other end resides "Quinn the Eskimo." This time everyone expectantly awaits the mighty one’s arrival, when all will be set right and "ev’rybody’s gonna jump for joy." Yet, just like Tiny (and Johanna), Quinn stays absent at song’s end. Unsurprisingly, certain commentators have imbued Quinn with messianic, or false messianic, properties. Not all of them have noticed that the narrator, wholly detached from the hubbub surrounding Quinn’s arrival, has already expounded his own philosophy of life: "Guarding fumes and making haste / It ain’t my cup of meat."
Again Dylan elects not to settle for a single take. However, the first take is noticeably more lethargic, and it is the second take that ends up on the acetate (and Biograph). Though not one of the musical highlights of the sessions, the song was then singled out by Manfred Mann when they were played the publishing tape at the London offices of Dylan’s publisher. Mann’s band decided they could hear some potential, especially if they gave it a gung-ho chorus.
They also renamed it "The Mighty Quinn"—inverting the original’s title and subtitle—restoring both them and Dylan to the UK Top Five at a time when the latter’s singles profile was at an all-time low. And Dylan must have been keeping tabs, because he encored with the song at the Isle of Wight. Thanks to its sing-along chorus, perfect for football fans, it remains one of Dylan’s best-known pop songs. Like the many who loved the Byrds’ "Tambourine Man," though, few of those who bought Mann’s "Mighty Quinn" paid a great deal of attention to the actual lyrics, which warned one and all not to trust wicked messengers.
{228} OPEN THE DOOR, HOMER
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967—3 takes.
Dylan returns to writing riddle songs. He even puts a riddle in the title, calling it "Open the Door, Homer," not "Open the Door, Richard," which is what he actually sings on all three takes (and which he knew had been a hit for Louis Jordan back in 1947)—though not according to Lyrics. "Homer" was apparently a nickname given to the late Richard Fariña, who had died in a motorcycle crash on April 30, 1966, on his way home from a launch party for his debut novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.
And it could
well be that the song is an obtuse homage to an old friend, one who would not have been shy of including a character called Mouse in his novel. But perhaps Dylan was also thinking about a spill of his own, which he was lucky to have survived. Either way, when he proclaims that he "ain’t gonna hear [those words] said no more," he sounds like someone exorcising a certain kind of ghost. As for the song’s two morals, one is phrased just like a Luke the Drifter platitude—"Take care of all your memories . . . for you cannot relive them"—the other like a Biblical proverb—to "heal the sick / one must first forgive them."
He attempted the song three times on tape, each version moving further and further away from the spirit originally invoked (the second take has spoken verses but a sung chorus, a trick he repeated in 1983 on the original version of "Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight"). The country licks on take three might have suited the song if it had been intended for John Wesley Harding, but for the publishing demo, take one sufficed. Something of a lost "acetate" song, it has rarely been covered and even more rarely covered well, though Thunderclap Newman produced a thoroughly respectable version on their fine 1969 LP, Hollywood Dream.
{229} NOTHING WAS DELIVERED
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Big Pink, West Saugerties, summer 1967—3 takes [BT—tk.1].
"Nothing was Delivered" could be the last basement recording made before Dylan got on that nine-carriage train bound for Tennessee. It may also mark the point at which the four-piece Hawks gave way to the five-piece Band. According to Levon Helm, he returned just in time to cut a version of this song with him on the kit (such a version exists, sandwiched between alternate "Odds and Ends"). The two known complete versions, however, were cut without Helm. On these drummer-less takes, the same seat-of-the-pants spirit found on most basement songs inhabits the recordings—one is wholly successful (take one), the other less so (take two).
It would appear that Dylan had again turned up with a typewritten sheet containing a proverb disguised as a chorus: "Nothing is better, nothing is best / Take heed of this and get plenty [of] rest." As to whether the melody arrived spontaneously at the session or came courtesy of a stray country riff Dylan had once heard, I know not. But "Nothing Was Delivered" was another song where Dylan intended to donate the results. As he said to John Cohen in 1968, "It used to be, if I would sing, I’d get a verse and go on and wait for it to come out as the music was there and sure enough, something would come out, but in the end, I would be deluded in those songs. Besides singing them, I’d be in there acting them out. . . . Now I . . . just write [those songs] for somebody else to sing, then do it—like an acetate."
Recutting the song with Helm suggests The Band probably had their eye on this one, too. In this instance, though, it was Roger McGuinn who snagged the song for Sweetheart of the Rodeo. More mysteriously, the Byrds used as their template the "rejected" second take, part spoken, part sung, rather than the so-called acetate version. Perhaps the little neighbor boy knows how this came to be.
[1] The full track-listing for those Fraboni-Robertson reels is: "Odds and Ends," take 1; "Nothing Was Delivered," take 3; "Odds and Ends," take 2; "Get Your Rocks Off"; "Clothesline Saga"; "Apple Suckling Tree," take 1; "Apple Suckling Tree," take 2; "Try Me Little Girl"; "Young But Daily Growin’"; "Tiny Montgomery"; "Don’t Ya Tell Henry"; "Bourbon Street"; "Million Dollar Bash," take 1; "Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread," take 1; "Million Dollar Bash," take 2; "Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread," take 2; "I’m Not There"; "Please Mrs Henry"; "Crash on the Levee," take 1; "Crash on the Levee," take 2; "Lo and Behold," take 1; "Lo and Behold," take 2; "One Single River"; "Baby Ain’t That Fine"; "You Ain’t Going Nowhere," take 1; "This Wheel’s on Fire"; "You Ain’t Going Nowhere," take 2; "I Shall Be Released"; "Too Much of Nothing," take 1; "Too Much of Nothing," take 2; "Tears of Rage," take 3; "Quinn the Eskimo," take 1; "Open the Door Homer," take 3; "Nothing Was Delivered," take 1; "Folsom Prison Blues"; "Sign on the Cross"; "Santa Fe"; "Silent Weekend"; "Silouette"; "Bring it on Home"; "King of France"; "Going to Acapulco"; "Gonna Get You Now"; "Banks of the Royal Canal."
[2] Big Sky only began copyrighting Dylan’s songs in 1969.
[3] The ten songs copyrighted in September 1967 (registration date: October 9, 1967) were: "Down in the Flood," "I Shall Be Released," "Lo and Behold!," "Million Dollar Bash," "Please Mrs Henry," "This Wheel’s on Fire," "Tiny Montgomery," "Too Much of Nothing," "Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread," and "You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere."
[4] The five songs copyrighted in December/January 1968 (registration date: January 16, 1968) were as follows: "Get Your Rocks Off!," "Nothing Was Delivered," "Open the Door, Homer," "Quinn, the Eskimo," and "Tears of Rage."
{ 1967: II—John Wesley Harding; The Basement Tapes }
By the fall of 1967, the silence had been deafening (sic). Oblivious to Dylan’s restored faculties, known only to those invited into the Big Pink basement, the world at large is wondering where in the hell the next Dylan album might be. Indeed, fans want to know just what extraordinary response he has up his sleeve to "top" Sergeant Pepper and other like-minded hippie recruits. Less is more, it would appear, as he wrote, recorded, and cut John Wesley Harding in just six weeks. Such fecundity proved to be just a part of the man’s recording activities, as he continued to work with The Band, and their tape recorder, now that they too had a specific goal in mind—to prepare the groundwork for a debut Band album; which Dylan continued to shape with the songs he was still writing. Everything, it seemed, was now smooth like a rhapsody. Then someone pulled the switch.
{230} BALLAD OF FRANKIE LEE AND JUDAS PRIEST
Published lyrics: Writings and Drawings; Lyrics 1985; Lyrics 2004.
Known studio recordings: Studio A, Nashville, October 17, 1967—1 take [JWH].
First known performance: JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, July 10, 1987.
There’s mystery, magic, truth and The Bible in great folk music. I can’t hope to touch that, but I’m going to try. —Dylan to Michael Iachetta, May 1967
Supposedly, Dylan traveled down to the sessions in Nashville by train, a two-day ride, and used the time to write (or complete) songs he planned to record there. Since it would appear that his producer Bob Johnston had booked two days of sessions, he perhaps expected Dylan to have more songs than he actually had (or at least wanted) to record. Having visited the artist in Woodstock, Johnston was convinced that his once-productive progeny was ready to start recording again, even if he still subconsciously feared another Blonde on Blonde—songs written in the studio while the musicians pulled out their playing cards. This time, though, Dylan knew where he wanted to go, and "Frankie Lee"—the narrative starting point—kicked off proceedings in a single take. This was not gonna be another Sgt. Pepper, an album that took more studio time to record than Dylan had ever spent behind closed studio doors.
Dylan has spoken a number of times about the pressure he was feeling to produce another album that fall, an era when no one took eighteen months off between albums. Most of this pressure he placed on himself. And not just because of his natural desire to prove that the flame still burned. He had finally re-signed to Columbia the previous August, cleverly negotiating a deal with no specific delivery dates, giving Columbia very little say as to what and when he delivered, or what they could do with it. Unfortunately for his emotional well-being, though, this new deal meant he only got paid a whopping new royalty of 10 percent—twice the norm even for "name acts," and more than the Beatles were getting—as and when he produced said album/s. If nothing was delivered, nothing was owed.
Yet Dylan disingenuously spun a yarn to Sing Out! the following June, claiming external pressure was the reason he returned to the studio in mid-October to record an album of "folk songs": "If I didn’t have the recording contract and I didn’t have to fulfill a certain amount of records [sic], I don’t really know if I’d write down another
song as long as I lived. . . . I didn’t want to record this last album. I was going to do a whole album of other people’s songs, but . . . the song has to be of a certain quality for me to sing and put on a record. One aspect it would have to have is that it didn’t repeat itself. I shy away from those songs which repeat phrases, bars and verses, bridges. . . . The folk songs are just about the only ones that don’t . . . —the narrative ones."
Dylan may start with a lie here, but he then proceeds to reveal the genesis of his most integrated album in surprising detail. An interview given in close proximity to the album’s release—but at a distance from the process itself—it confronts a number of issues the album only raised in hindsight. Crucially, it addresses the creative volte-face that left nary a residue from a summer’s worth of form-shattering songs. Those "repeat phrases, bars and verses" that had been propping up most of the material recorded back in Woodstock he eliminated entirely. He is now back to his "homespun ballads," even knowing "psychedelic rock was overtaking the universe."
The notion that he was even considering "a whole album of other people’s songs"—and Self Portrait was just a couple of years away—suggests he’d decided not to use anything already written, even songs like "This Wheel’s on Fire," ‘Tiny Montgomery," and "Yea Heavy and a Bottle of Bread," which would have made a fair few choke on their psychedelic breakfasts. Yet, if we accept what he later said to Matt Damsker at face value, he had previously considered doing them: "We were up there in Woodstock . . . and at that period of time we were laying down all these songs on tape. We were writing ’em and singing ’em onto tape, and I was going to have to go in and make a record, and I figured . . . I’d sing the [same] songs. . . . But then I went back and wrote just real simple songs."
Revolution in the Air Page 42