UNDERRATED ALBUMS # 21

KNOWING THE SONGS WELL  
BEFORE THEY START SINGING:-

THE 2011 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
BOB DYLAN TRIBUTE ALBUM

COMMEMORATING 50 YEARS 
OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

The Cover Version In Context

'And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it.
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin''

('A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' - Bob Dylan, 1963)
 

The appearance this year of Amnesty International's impressive 4-CD compilation of previously unreleased covers of Bob Dylan's back-catalogue, issued to mark the organisation's 50th anniversary, may give us pause to consider, along with the actual album, the place of the cover version in popular music. Incidentally, this is not Amnesty's first fund-raising foray in the field; they issued a 2-CD set of John Lennon songs in 2007 - Instant Karma. The Campaign To Save Darfur).  Nowadays, the covers-album is pretty much recognised as a genre in itself, but it's easy to forget that, once upon a time, just about all albums were effectively covers-albums. The original sales charts of the music industry were, of course, based on songs published as sheet music to be performed not only by radio and stage entertainers but by the general public gathered around stand-up pianos in public houses and domestic parlours. By the 1950s, the charts that represented the sales of records and singles were soon joined by albums which usually threw together a couple of hits with a few makeweight odds and sods, including an established standard here and there (songs became standards by virtue of accumulating a high number of cover versions).

The great engine room that drove the music industry at that time was New York's legendary Tin Pan Alley which churned out songs to be bought in their original form as well as being covered and translated the world over. London's Denmark Street was the other market leader, although a long way behind the Americans. Stateside hits were routinely covered in the UK and it was not uncommon for there to be several very similar versions of the same song charting simultaneously either side of the Atlantic. During the Rock & Roll phase, singer-songwriters such as Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly briefly weakened the traditional stranglehold, but of course, King Elvis would always be reliant on songs being presented to him and regarded covers as a stock in trade.  Even the great names who would later shape the age of 'Rock Music' - an era which demanded that singers and bands produce original material if they were to be deemed artists rather than mere pop acts - padded out their early albums with covers. It's worth remembering that all through the 1960s, the hugely successful Tamla Motown label still held even its most prized performers' albums in low regard, filling them up with an incestuous and repetitive mix of songs from that remarkable song-writing hothouse of Holland/Dozier/Holland.

To a large extent, the industry's priority with singles has always seen songs as product rather than art. By the mid to late '60s, however, record companies were prepared to allow their signings to indulge themselves artistically on album cuts and this coincided with some of the best and most enduring long-players ever made. Even in today's digital age of downloads and iPod shuffles, the album retains a cultural cachet rarely attained by the single. At the same time, songs have been recommodified to serve as backing tracks to celebrities twirling around on Strictly Come Dancing or to provide vehicles for the karaoke generation to compete with on the likes of American Idol and The X Factor. These global TV franchises have done little to encourage distinctive singing, playing or song-writing, but they have been a shot in the arm for the cover-song (consider, for instance, X Factor winner Alexanra Burke's huge hit with Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' - which prompted several other previous covers of the song by Jeff Buckley, John Cale and Rufus Wainwright to be reissued - all of them, by the way, far superior to Burke, who managed to get the lyric wrong). 

 

The songs of The Beatles and Bob Dylan have accumulated a vast and ever-growing number of cover versions a very long way beyond that achieved by any of their contemporaries.  During the late '60s, two particular songs, both of them album tracks - 'With a Little Help From My Friends', one of the slighter cuts from The Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper and 'All Along The Watchtower' from Dylan's back-to acoustic John Wesley Harding, also from '67 - were taken on in ways which raised the bar on what was possible with a cover version. The first was a towering reconstruction by Joe Cocker & The Grease Band, whilst the second was an electrifying tour de force by Jimi Hendrix. Dylan has subsequently attempted to copy it himself in live performances many times since. No other cover versions have ever quite epitomised the onward and upward aesthetic of the Rock culture as much as those two extraordinary records.

In the early 1970s; there appeared a brief flurry of covers albums, most of them regarded at the time by critics as lightweight side-projects: David Bowie's Pin-Ups (1973) his homage to the bands he saw around the London clubs during the 'Swinging Sixties'; Harry Nilsson's A Little Touch Of Schmillson in the Night (1973), the first trawl through 'The Great American Songbook' by a rock performer; several excursions by Bryan Ferry on leave from Roxy Music; and not forgetting Dylan's own Self Portrait (1970), dismissed at the time by that most intellectual of American rock critics, Greil Marcus, as 'shit' ...

When they did appear, covers albums, like the increasingly prevalent live albums, were often delivered by performers as contract-filling assignments. Rod Stewart, however, was to be seen in the twilight of his career releasing several albums of reliable old chestnuts from that Great American Songbook - like Linda Ronstadt before him and Robbie Williams afterwards. It's a deep well that McCartney has also visited of late (like his old partner John, Paul has also released a set of Rock & Roll covers).

Cover versions often appear on the 'free' CDs which music magazines such as Mojo 'give away' these days. These may be commissioned as 'tribute albums' devoted to classic artists or classic albums and often include previously unreleased performances. Covers still popped up on the singles charts and flourished during the doldrums years of the 1990s and the early 21st century when the craze for anodyne boy bands, singing actors and TV talent show 'stars' was at its height. Few, if any of these records though, aspired to, let alone attained the lofty peaks of Mounts Cocker and Hendrix.

The "Chimes Of Freedom" Compilation

('For every unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail')

This is merely the latest of numerous Dylan tribute albums to appear over the years: its real importance derives from its purpose to raise funds for a truly worthy cause as well as marking Amnesty's 50th anniversary and reminding us of how Dylan, like no other songwriter of this period, 'sings of how the world can conspire against individual freedom – and how, insidiously, ordinary people can be complicit in that conspiracy', as Sean Wilentz puts it in his sleeve-note.

The scope of the enterprise is ambitious: 72 tracks featuring artists from far and wide (although predominantly American), ranging from fresh-faced pop stars to grizzled veterans and legends to obscurities, playing in many different styles - the vast majority of whom more than do justice to the songs. I had thought that I'm Not There (the 2001 OST of Todd Haynes' interesting though flawed film about Dylan) would take some beating, but the quality, variety and sheer quantity of Chimes Of Freedom manage to pull it off. I've played the whole thing several times now and can find only two real clunkers. These are, firstly, UK singer-songwriter, Natasha Bedingfield's unwitting ruination of 'Ring Them Bells', which gradually descends into a shrill, faux-gospel mess; and the unmitigated, sniffing, sobbing disaster of 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright' by US singer / rapper Kesha, which forces one to redefine the word 'overwrought'. It could well be inferred that these performances are an indirect product of the 'X Factor' approach where phoney emoting of the Whitney & Maria School Of Over-Singing is mistaken for real soul power.

The modus operandi of the project was that all of the performances, apart from Dylan's original title-track, should be previously unreleased - but I'd have liked just a little more flexibility in order to have included Bruce Springsteen's epic version of 'Chimes' to perhaps have opened the set and provided a bookend to Dylan's original which closes the collection.l Failing that, one has to wonder why there is no version of 'Masters Of War', which would have also been an ideal curtain-raiser. Given the project's aims, the omission of this particular masterpiece is both glaring and puzzling.  My only other criticisms would be minor ones. Firstly, the sequencing occasionally leaves something to be desired - for instance, CDI ends with three ballads very similar in style and tone ('Boots Of Spanish Leather', 'Girl From The North Country' and 'Restless Farewell') whilst CD3 has back-to-back punk rushes of 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' and 'Desolation Row' which might, to some ears, seem rather a clash.

Secondly, the neat, fold-out design of the package is attractive and functional, but, apart from telling us that Bob Clearmountain mixed the whole shebang, has no recording information whatsoever about the artists - many of whom will be unknown to purchasers. An insert would have been useful. Finally, it should be noted that only four songs – all from Time Out Of Mind (1991) - represent the last 22 years of Dylan's recording career. Perhaps not all that surprising, but it might have been interesting to hear the odd new slant on some of his more recent songs (his last few albums have, after all, been very successful, both critically and commercially).
 

The Range Of Styles

Cover versions tend to fall into different types of rendition. There have been a number of themed covers albums of Dylan songs ranging from soul to strings sets. Chimes Of Freedom ticks most, if not all of the boxes in its eclectic approach to Dylan's vast back-catalogue. What follows is an unashamed exercise in pigeon-holing, but readers should bear in mind that the categories are not hard and fast and sometimes overlap.

* ACOUSTIC TO ELECTRIC (& vice versa)

US alt. rockers State Radio's furious take on one of the early anti-war songs, 'John Brown', for instance. The Dave Matthews Band's version of 'All Along The Watchtower' begins in an interestingly slow, downbeat way and later features a surprising horn solo, but along the way degenerates into wildly over-the-top howling and riffage.

* THE TEMPO CHANGE

The thrashing rampages mentioned above of 'Baby Blue' and 'Desolation Row' by US outfits Bad Religion and My Chemical Romance both work quite well. Similarly, 'Hollis Brown' gets a powerful Punk Rock treatment from Rise Against. '4th Time Around' is slowed down by Israeli singer songwriter Oren Lavie in a beautifully languid and dreamy fashion which features breathy vocals accompanied by sitar and cellos.

* MALE TO FEMALE VOCAL (& Vice Versa)

About a third of the tracks feature female leads including the World-conquering Adele with a live take of her huge hit, 'Make You Feel My Love'. Patti Smith, who did Dylan's 'Changing Of The Guard' on her own recent covers album, Twelve (2007), here offers a fine, countryish pass at 'The Drifter's Escape '. Thea Gilmore really makes something of the rather nondescript 'I'll Remember You' and Joan Baez resurrects the dusty 'Seven Curses' (and if that is her eloquent and nimble guitar, then age is certainly not withering her).

* THE GENRE SWITCH

Irish band Flogging Molly turn 'The Times They Are A-Changin' into a raucous Poguesian romp, whilst Elvis Costello's almost Doo-Wop reading of 'License To Kill', complete with falsetto backing vocals, is curiously effective (his wife, jazz artist, Diana Krall, is on top form with her stately, piano-led version of 'Simple Twist Of Fate', by the way). Then there is veteran US soul star Betty Lavette's convincing take of 'Most Of The Time'.

* LOW KEY TO BIG PRODUCTION

There are no orchestrated arrangements on the album although Adele's contribution somehow implies the big treatment despite her being accompanied only by solo piano (when she thanks the audience at the end, we're alsogiven a blast of her chavtastic speaking voice).

* THE DECONSTRUCTION

Perhaps the most radical reworking on the album is Somalian K'Naan's gentle urban rap version of 'With God On Our Side' in which he rewrites the verses whilst retaining the original chorus. Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim offers a slow, highly formal reading of 'All I Really Want To Do' in which she changes parts of the melody as well as delivering the title in her native tongue.

* THE INSTRUMENTAL

Only one on 'Chimes': US art outfit, The Kronos Quartet's Nymanesque rendering of 'Don't Think Twice'.

* THE CARBON-COPY

Apart from its sax and trumpet solos, the Lenny Kravitz version of 'Rainy Day Women' , is probably the arrangement which comes closest to the Dylan original on Chimes, although Steve Earle's duet with US actress and violinist, Lucia Micarelli is a pretty faithful reflection of 'One More Cup Of Coffee'. Meanwhile, Mick Hucknall's take on 'One Of Us Must Know' is a lovely homage to Dylan's classic Blonde On Blonde era singing style.  Hucknall's version is one of my favourites on the set, but I think I detected that even the famous Simply Red larynx can't hold a note quite as long as Bob could back then. It reminds me of Dylan's tongue-in-cheek boast to reporters during the Dont Look Back film about his breath control. It also brings to mind that old CBS marketing slogan that 'Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan', which indirectly seemed to address the commonly held view that Dylan couldn't really sing at all, whilst at the same time cleverly implying that the way he sang was so radically different and distinctive as to defy comparison. 

 

Some of the younger performers acquit themselves particularly well - special mention goes to Ziggy Marley's straightforward but soulful grasp of 'Blowin' In The Wind', the ghost of his father's voice audible in the muscular acoustic arrangement. The highly successful US pop band Maroon 5 also do a solid job on 'I Shall Be Released' and none other than songstress Miley Cyrus, star of TV's Hannah Montana' and daughter of the God of line-dancing, Billy Ray, carries 'You're Conna Make Me Lonesome When You Go' very effectively, without succumbing to the over-singing so much in vogue with her generation (Natasha and Kesha please take note). Fashionable US Rock bands like The Gaslight Anthem, My Morning Jacket and Queens Of The Stone Age are present and correct, whilst the middle-agers are represented by, amongst others Neil Finn, Billy Bragg, Lucinda Williams and the reverend Sinead O'Connor who righteously grabs 'Property Of Jesus' by the scruff of its neck. Seal, supported by Jeff Beck, carries 'Like a Rolling Stone' with confidence, and whilst Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry's singing of 'Man Of Peace' may be negligible, he does transform the song a with triumphant bottle-neck extravaganza.

During Dylan's barren patch in the early 1970s,Bryan Ferry emerged as a real contender with his songs for Roxy Music but, over time, Ferry's gift for lyrics faded and his off-stage persona became more right-of-centre politically. It's interesting therefore to see him involved in this Amnesty project, his contribution being a pleasant version of 'Bob Dylan's Dream' featuring his harmonica playing over a clip-clop rhythm, much of a piece with his own album of Dylan covers, 2007's Dylanesque. Other oldies on form are Mark Knopfler, Carly Simon, Eric Burdon, Marianne Faithfull and Taj Mahal who apply their experience to good effect. Pete Townshend is rather wobbly on 'Corrina, Corrina' though, and Kris Kristofferson does a curiously downbeat version of 'Quinn The Eskimo' (Manfred Mann it ain't...). The version of 'One Too Many Mornings', jointly credited to Johnny Cash & The Avett Brothers, which opens proceedings, is a strong cut and is apparently the result of some studio jiggery-pokery by Rick Rubin who, whilst producing an album for The Avett Brothers, has taken one of Dylan/Cash duets from the Nashville Skyline out-takes and replaced the Dylan vocal with those of the band. None more old than Pete Seeger, of course, and his nonagenarian intoning of 'Forever Young', counterpointed by The Rivertown Kids, a troupe of children from his neck of the woods fittingly provides the final cover on the album. 

 

It should be clear from the above that I think the overall standard of these performances is unusually high for this kind of tribute album. There are big songs and big names here as well as lesser known material and artists.  Consequently there were plenty of chances for tripping up - and yet remarkably few missteps weaken the six dozen covers. This is a testament to the strength of the songs.  I really would have liked to describe every single track but that doesn't seem practicable. Suffice to say that all of the performers who've gone unmentioned did very good work indeed (and there are some intriguing people involved here: two notable sons, Dhani Harrison and Ben Harper figure in the line-up of Fistful Of Mercy, whilst Evan Rachel Wood is the ex-fiancee of Marilyn Manson; Moroccan songwriter, Red One, meanwhile, has produced Lady GaGa).

 

Amnesty International's 50th anniversary aptly coincides with the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan's recording career and, with the truly excellent Chimes Of Freedom, it is a case of honours all round. You owe it to yourself to make a significant donation to a very worthy cause, so treat yourself to a copy, because that's what this collection is - a real treat.

 

N. B.

*I - In actual fact, one of the tracks released on Chimes Of Freedom has previously been issued. In March 20II, Proper Records released a digitally remastered and expanded 2-CD 'Collector's Edition' of Joan Baez 1992 album Play Me Backwards. This expanded version, released on CD only in the UK and Europe, contained ten demos recorded by Baez in 1991, one of which was the version of 'Seven Curses' issued on Amnesty's Chimes Of Freedom.

 

THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN ISSUE 161 OF ISIS,

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ALL THINGS DYLAN.

 

C. IGR 2013

UNDERRATED ALBUMS # 20

'Its lack of cliché and sentimentality make for a memorable, if low-key listening experience and an unusually authentic insight into the lives of its subject
and authors.'
  

Songs For Drella (1990)

By Lou Reed & John Cale

When in late October, 2013, I heard that Lou Reed had died, it reminded me that Songs For Drella was on my ‘to do list’ of underrated albums to retro-review. So now seems an appropriate time to get on with it. A few words first though, about the man himself and the reaction to his passing.

I was somewhat surprised by the outpouring of ‘grief’ in the media – the I newspaper, for instance, featured a centre-spread of fulsome celebrity tweets – whilst substantial obituaries in the qualities may have puzzled readers who didn’t also incline towards the Mojo side of the music press. A seminal figure in the history of Rock music, Reed was to be sure, but as a personality he could be infamously arrogant, irascible and charmless (possibly a side-effect of his brains being jangled by the electric shock treatment inflicted on him at the behest of his parents during his troubled youth). Apart from ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ (UK # 10, US # 16, 1972) and the Various Artists charity single, ‘Perfect Day’ (UK # 1, 1997), his solo records and those of his band, The Velvet Underground, had never seriously troubled the charts*1. Offsetting, but by no means overshadowing the lamentations, was grudging praise from the likes of The Daily Mail, which was however, at pains to characterise Reed as one of a significant number of Rock luminaries from the Sodom & Gomorrah Sixties who were the toxic junky libertines responsible for polluting generations of the young and innocent ever since. Mail readers who might have had ‘Perfect Day’ played at weddings and funerals must have felt betrayed and doubly bereft by the revelations that the song was not about a lovely walk in the park, but was instead a paean to that hardest of drugs, heroin…apparently*2.

I doubt that I need to remind readers here of how important The Velvet Underground  were. Suffice to say that few, if any Rock artists have exerted so much influence with so little commercial success*3. Notably, however, it is difficult to point to people who conspicuously influenced Reed or The Velvets: a sign of their unusual level of originality as artists.



L-R -Nico, Warhol, Tucker, Reed, Morrison, Cale

Although Lou Reed was by far the principal songwriter, Welshman John Cale was a key creative member of the otherwise American Velvets, bringing both classical training, multi-instrumentalism and an avant garde sensibility to the band. As a solo performer, he has built up a varied and often daring body of work, operating in a realm where commercial success has not been a priority. He has also been a notable producer of albums by early Velvets guest vocalist, Nico, as well as The Stooges, Patti Smith, The Modern Lovers, Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Happy Mondays amongst others.

                                                                       * * * * *

Reed & Cale had parted company in 1968 after the second Velvets album, and it came as something of a surprise when they teamed up again on Songs For Drella. The catalyst for the reunion was the death in 1987 of their mentor, the modern artist Andy Warhol, who designed the cover and was also credited with production of their momentous debut album (the actual producer was Tom Wilson*4). Not only had Warhol involved the band in the cutting edge goings on at his New York base of operations, The Factory, and put them into his happening multimedia circus, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable show, he’d also become their personal friend. Their tribute to him, Songs For Drella, provides a deeply felt and fascinating insider view of one the most remarkable artists of the C20th - no matter what you may think of his work (personally, I can take or leave Warhol, but there’s no denying his impact or influence and Reed & Cale’s album is a moving portrait of the man).

In the sleeve note, which includes Reed’s admirably concise summary of the fifteen songs on the record, Cale admits that Reed ‘did most of the work’ whilst allowing him ‘to keep a position of dignity through the process’ (a phrase which hints at the fundamentally uneasy relationship between the two men). Although all of the songs are credited as co-compositions, Reed takes lead vocal on ten of them. The instrumentation is sparse, with Reed on guitars, Cale on keyboards and viola, with no other musicians taking part.

The album’s title, by the way, derives from Warhol’s Factory nickname, a conflation of Dracula and Cinderella, presumably inspired by the artist’s rise from humble origins to multi-media maestro, as well as his deathly pallor and albinoid mop of silver hair (the pallor was the product of pancake foundation whilst the hair was actually a series of wigs that he alternated and had trimmed…)

The songs on the record quote from Warhol’s journals, his conversation and the stock of homilies which he would bestow on friends, fellow artists and employees. The lyrics herein could only have been written by really close insiders such as Reed and Cale.

 

Cale’s vamping solo piano and Reed’s typically laconic vocal, gets proceedings underway with the lively ‘Smalltown’, a ‘gotta get outta this place’ song in which a first-person Warhol resolves to leave his Pittsburgh*5 roots far behind:-

 

                             ‘Bad skin, bad eyes, gay and fatty –

                              People look at you funny…

                              I hate being odd in a small town –

                              If they stare, let them stare in New York City.’  

On ‘Open House’, we find Warhol in 1950s New York drawing shoes at an industrial rate for an advertising agency – ‘550…today…It almost made me faint’ – whilst following his old Czech mother’s advice about cultivating friends by inviting them round for tea and giving them little presents. Warhol was both garrulous and shy – ‘I like lots of people around me / But don’t kiss hello and please don’t touch’. Reed’s gentle intonation with Cale’s dark synthesiser chords and two-note piano motif - perhaps hinting at a doorbell’s chimes, evoke this personal delicacy.

‘Style It Takes’ is another quiet one, Cale reproducing the seductively camp lilt of Warhol’s voice as he cajoles and flatters people into backing or taking part in his projects. Reed’s guitar appears for the first time here, subtly weaving into Cale’s billowing synth melody. We’re in the 1960s now and the song neatly depicts one of Warhol’s famous artworks and also introduces its authors’ antecedents:-

‘I’ve got a Brillo box and I say it’s art,

It’s the same one you can buy at any supermarket                  
‘Cause I’ve got the style it takes
And you’ve got the people it takes.

Here is a rock group called The Velvet Underground,

I show movies on them
Do you like their sound?

‘Cause they have a style that grates

And I have art to make.’

That grating style is evident on the next track, ‘Work’, which revolves around a rattling electric guitar figure and plinking piano, whilst Reed recalls in the third person how Warhol would exhort him to knuckle down, get on with it and stop wasting time. Andy’s credo was ‘It’s just work / All that matters is work’ and this Factory ethic clearly still inspired Reed as he remembers being told to write fifteen songs, not just ten, keep in ‘the dirty words’ the better to ‘make trouble’ and not ‘think too much / ‘Cause that’s just work that you don’t want to do’.

‘Trouble With Classicists’, a muscular guitar and piano workout, sees Warhol rejecting the art establishment in favour of:-

                 ‘…the druggy downtown kids who spray-paint walls and trains,

                 I like their lack of training, their primitive technique,

                 I think sometimes it hurts you when you stay too long in school,

                 I think sometimes it hurts you when you’re afraid to be called a fool.’

 In ‘Starlight’ there is a roll-call of the ‘real people’ who populated Warhol’s avante garde counter-cultural films - ‘Viva, Little Joe, Baby Jane and Edie S.’*6 – his so-called ‘superstars’ of the street who he tried to sell to Hollywood (‘Starlight open wide…open up your door’). The low-key, chorus-free ‘Faces And Names’ closes the first half . Sung by Cale, it’s again in the first person with Warhol wishing everyone could look the same:-

                           ‘I always fall in love with someone

                           Who looks the way I wish that I could be…

                           ‘People who want to meet the name I have

                           Are always disappointed when they meet me.’

‘Images’, which follows on logically, finds Warhol celebrating his famous method of repeating images – sometimes of prosaic household objects, sometimes of iconic celebrities - via the process of silk-screening. Reed sings and the relentless industrial grind of his guitar and Cale’s viola complement the song well.

The next two songs feature more conventional chord-progressions and take us into the period following the attempt on Warhol’s life in 1968 by the radical feminist writer, Valerie Solanas, who had nurtured a brooding hatred of him after he’d lost the script of a play that she’d submitted to him*7.

The tender ‘Slip Away (A Warning)’, anchored by a bass guitar, finds the recuperating Warhol reluctantly withdrawing from The Factory at the advice of friends and associates or his own safety. Fearing the loss of his creative powers, the artist resigns himself to the changes happening around him, but vows to stay true to himself. A lyrical guitar leads into ‘It Wasn’t Me’, in which Warhol confronts the increasing mortality of those around him, paying the price for the dissipated life-styles that tended to be the norm at The Factory. Depending on your point of view, the tone is belligerently defensive and/or irresponsible: ‘You wanted to work – I gave you a chance at that…I never said give up control / I never said stick a needle in your arm and die’. The instrumental break with Reed’s solo soaring above Cale’s swirling, Debussyan piano is pure Prog-Rock and perfectly captures the anger and anguish at the heart of the song.

‘I Believe’ sees Reed in a bracingly Old Testament mood, looking back on Solanas trying to kill Warhol and righteously wishing her dead, swearing that he ‘would’ve pulled the switch himself’. The galloping piano and distorted guitar point not only to the retributive rage, but also the guilt felt by Reed, who apparently failed to visit his stricken friend in hospital. It ends with Warhol’s poignant, accusatory cry, ‘Visit me! Why didn’t you visit me?’

The Country-styled ‘Nobody But You’ cuts two ways with post-shooting Warhol (who, in the 1970s, increasingly devoting himself to cultivating high-profile patrons and making money) despising the people around him as ‘nobodies’ whilst realizing he’ll ‘never be a bride’ and that underneath his celebrity he craves anonymity.
 

The self-pitying tone at the end of ‘I Believe’ is picked up again in ‘A Dream’. The longest track on the record at 6.33, it was apparently lifted verbatim from Warhol’s journal. Cale again catches the flat rhythm of Warhol’s voice, as he sinks further into lonliness, feeling old, unloved, creatively bereft and abandoned by friends. After a visit from Cale, he gets to thinking how he’d ‘never gotten a penny’ from the Velvets and how Reed snubs him (‘I hate Lou, I really do!’) and didn’t even invite him to his wedding. And he ‘did a cover for John, but I did it in black and white and he changed it to colour. It would have been worth more if he’d left it my way, but you can’t tell anybody anything – I’ve learnt that.’

Surrounded by a clanging guitar and spooked keyboards in an echo chamber, Cale’s recitation is oddly compelling and catches the creeping, nightmarish fear of death that Warhol suffered for the last two decades of his life. The next track ‘Forever Changed’ breaks out of the miasma, upping the tempo, with Cale again on vocals, voicing Warhol’s conviction that he was right to leave it all behind and forge ahead in his own peculiar direction. The propulsive playing reinforces this resolve although lines like ‘I lost myself and never came back’ hint at Warhol’s inherent sadness.

Cale’s elegiac viola provides the background on ‘Hello, It’s Me’, the bitter-sweet closer. Nostalgically, Reed tells his dead friend how much he misses him and apologises for the belated nature of  the tribute. Reed, also however, takes one last shot at Valerie Solanas, reflecting that ‘You get less time for stealing a car’ (surely, he meant more time?) and scratching an old personal sore:-

                          ‘They really hated you – now that’s all changed,

                           But I have some resentments that can never be unmade;

                           You hit me where it hurt – I didn’t laugh;

                           Your diaries are not a worthy epitaph.’

 And there we have a vivid illustration of Reed’s fundamentally difficult, prickly nature: even in a valedictory concept such as this one, there is little room for sentiment, but space is saved in which to rake back over old scores. Nevertheless, the fact that both Reed and Cale include references in the songs that portray themselves in a less than flattering light, make Songs For Drella an unflinching and admirable project. Its lack of cliché and sentimentality makes for a memorable, if low-key listening experience and an unusually authentic insight into the lives of its subject and authors. 

Inspired by their time together on the album, Reed and Cale reconvened the original Velvet Undergound with Mo Tucker and Sterling Morrison and, in the summer of 1993, embarked on a European tour which included an appearance at Glastonbury and some dates with U2. The reunion was abandoned however, when Reed and Cale once again decided their working relationship was insupportable. Apart from a brief appearance in 1996 by the two of them with Tucker (Morrison had died the year before, aged fifty-three, Nico in '88, aged 49) when they were inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, they never worked together again.   

It is interesting to consider what Songs For Drella would have sounded like as a Velvet Underground record. Had Morrison and Tucker been on board, a fuller, more rhythmic sound might well have resulted, but perhaps the listener's focus may not have been so concentrated on the exceptional lyrics and the strange but true story related by Reed and Cale. As it stands, the album is an under-appreciated highlight of both men's careers.       

N. B.

*1 – Although Songs For Drella provided Reed with one of his best UK chart positions (# 22), it failed to hit the US Top 100. His previous album, New York (1989), a UK # 14 and US # 40, had been his most successful since the mid-‘70s. Riding this wave, Magic & Loss (1992) gave him his highest UK placing at # 6, but its gloomy concept about the death of friends lost Reed more listeners than he would ever regain.

 

*2 – ‘Apparently’ indeed…the only mention of intoxicants of any kind in ‘Perfect Day’ is the reference to ‘drinking sangria in the park’ and the song can be listened to very closely without any implication of heroin arising. The fact that it appeared on the OST of the drug-drenched UK film, Trainspotting (1996), the year before the BBC blithely arranged for its epic re-recording, may well have substantiated the notion of it being about smack – well, hey, Reed did write ‘Heroin’ back in the ‘60s, right?

Right – and anyone who hears ‘Heroin’ – one of the great art-songs of the C20th – as a glorification of drugs simply isn’t listening, either to its words (‘Heroin, be the death of me’) or its brilliantly unhinged music. And while we’re on the topic, ‘Waiting For The Man’ is definitely about hoping to score dope, but it’s equally about ‘feeling sick and dirty, more dead than alive’. OK – there will always be a certain kind of teenager drawn to Death Metal and black-draped Goth fantasies, but it’s not the responsibility of the artist to hand out hymn books, and Reed was nothing if not an artist.

Having said that, I do seem to recall Reed in 1974, supporting The Who in an epic concert at The Valley, stadium of Charlton Athletic FC, performing ‘Heroin’ whilst simulating shooting up…But then, memory plays tricks: apparently Humble Pie came on before The Who and were stunningly good. So stunning, in fact, that I have no recollection of them whatever, despite Steve Marriott being one of my favourite singers of all time…

*3 – The Velvet Underground proper made only three albums in as many years: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), White Light/White Heat (1968) and The Velvet Underground (1969). Of the two subsequent albums that bear their name, Reed, who wrote all of the songs, left during the recording of Loaded (1970). Remarkably, Reed turned his back on the music industry at this point and returned to his troubled family roots in Long Island, New York, where he worked as a typist in his father's tax accountancy office for some months before beginning his solo recording career in 1971.

Only Sterling Morrison of the original band also appears on Loaded, whilst none of them feature on Squeeze (1973). Nonetheless, Loaded – unlike Squeeze - remains a very good record and is worthy of exploration by Reed fans who may somehow have missed it.

*4 – Tom Wilson – unusually for the time, a black producer of mainly white artists –  worked with Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, The Animals, The Blues Project and The Mothers Of Invention. Notably, he was also at the desk for Nico’s first and best album, Chelsea Girl (1967).

 *5 – Pittsburgh, famous for its steel industry, may have seemed like a small town to Warhol, but it’s currently the 20^th largest city in the US and, in 1901, was actually the 8^th largest. During the 1930s and ‘40s when he was growing up, the population was at record levels – more than twice what it is today. Clearly Pittsburgh was metaphorically a small town to Warhol who, in the song, reflects ‘there’s no Michelangelo… [and] no Dali coming from Pittsburgh.’

*6 – A similar cast of characters inhabit Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ – Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Sugar Plum Fairy and Jackie. They too all appeared in Warhol’s ‘art movies’. ‘Little Joe’, who figures in both lists was the hunky junky bisexual, Joe Dallesandro (who according to ‘WOTWS’ ‘never once gave it away / Everyone had to pay and pay’). Shots of Joe taken by Warhol are used on two famous album covers – the infamous zipper sleeve of The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers (1971) and The Smiths (1984) eponymous debut – not that you’d know it, as his face isn’t visible in either picture.

*7 – Solanas shot Warhol at The Factory, also wounding an art critic and attempting to shoot Warhol’s manager before her gun jammed. Following her release from prison just three years later, she continued her feminist activities until her death, aged 52, in 1988, satisfyingly for her perhaps, seeing out Warhol who had died, aged 58, the year before.

 

(C. IGR 2013)

UNDERRATED ALBUMS # 17

‘With its major chords, rising choruses, close harmonies and sparkling guitars, there’s more than enough sunshine here to banish any rainy day.’

Rainy Day Music (2003)
by The Jayhawks

The Jayhawks are usually described as an Alt-Country, Americana or Folk Rock act. All of those labels fit a band who might feasibly be regarded as heirs to The Eagles - but for the sharp contrast in their career trajectories. Apart from having their avian monickers in common*1, the two bands are worlds apart in terms of units shifted. Of  The Jayhawks eight albums since 1986, only one has reached the Top 40 of either the US or UK charts (their 2011 reunion record, Mockingbird Time crept to # 38 in America). The Eagles did rather better: virtually all of their albums, including live sets and compilations, sold like proverbial hot cakes – Their Greatest Hits (1971-1976) has jockeyed for the title of Best Selling Album Of All Time, not to mention a score of hit singles including half a dozen # 1’s (whereas The Jayhawks have never had a proper hit). However, in that alternative universe that I sometimes allude to in this series of reviews, I like to think that The Jayhawks are a serious commercial proposition.
 

In the real world, the Jayhawks albums that seem to be most highly rated critically, are Hollywood Town Hall (1992) and Tomorrow The Green Grass(1995), both of which featured Mark Olsen sharing co-writer and co-lead vocal duties with Gary Louris. Olsen then left, only returning with another former member, Karen Grotberg for the aforementioned Mockingbird Time*2. In between, the band, now led by Louris as chief songwriter as well as lead singer and guitarist, inclined more towards Rock with Sound Of Lies (1997) and Pop with Smile (2000).

All of these records are good, but the next in the sequence may be The Jayhawks’ best. It was to be their last until the reunion some eight years later.

Louris, Perlman, McCarthy, O'Reagan

Hailed by some as ‘a return to roots’, Rainy Day Music with its austere cover art and ’stripped down’ sound, is certainly a more basic production than its predecessor, Smile. Apart from their very early work though, Jayhawks albums tend to have a trademark character of well crafted County Rock songs which they only occasionally diverge from – and then not by very far.Anyway, more basic the album may be, but it’s not for the lack of musicians or voices. Apart from the band themselves, we find busy sessioneer Richard Causon on assorted keyboards, famous-name juniors, Jakob Dylan and Chris Stills joining alt-rock popster Matthew Sweet on various backing vocals, and lo and behold: is it a Byrd? Is it an Airplane? No, it’s an Eagle! Bernie Leadon, no less, playing banjo on one track. Then there’s multi-instrumentalist producer, Ethan Johns on everything else.

‘Stumbling Through The Dark’ bookends the programme (opening up and being  reprised with a slower, acoustic version at the end). Co-written by Louris with Sweet, it’s a sprightly, bittersweet love song about a ‘little girl’ who is so much in love that ‘it’s a crime’. It is followed by the ironically uplifting  ‘Tailspin’, a vague tale about a defendant on trial who is ‘going down, baby baby’ for all of ‘fifteen years’. The fine ensemble harmonies and string-playing, feature Stephen McCarthy’s twinkling steel guitar, Leadon’s banjo and the power-chording of Louris, belie the dark lyric.

At this point, it might be as well to warn listeners not to expect too much from the words in most Jayhawks songs: they’ve never really been the band’s strong point. Interesting ideas are often expressed cryptically and left hanging undeveloped. On the first track they even manage to audibly confuse preceded with ‘proceeded’ – an error which you’d have thought might have been corrected by the combined intellects of producer, Johns and executive producer, Rick Rubin – but, hey, in a world where accept and except are now epidemically muddled all over the media, what can you expect? (Get on with it! Ed.)

Fortunately, the overall effect of the harmonies and melodies tend to render the lyrical weaknesses incidental and unimportant. The nebulous theme of crime continues in ‘All The Right Reasons’ with its narrator ‘dreamin’ how it’s gonna be the day that I am free’ (although later we’re told that he’s ‘outside lookin’ in’) to join his ‘morning star’. Again though, the hushed, yearning melody carries the song through. ‘Save It For A Rainy Day’ is a better effort lyrically, about ‘Marina’, a woman ‘lookin’ like a train wreck / Wearing too much make-up’ with a ‘Pretty little hair-do [that] don’t do what it used to’. As with so many of their songs, the musical structure is tight and there is usually an appealing solo somewhere along the line; in this case on a harmonica.

The nostalgic ‘Eyes Of Sarahjane’ goes downhill after evocative opening verses:

                                 ‘Warwick hotel

                                 I remember it well

                                 We lived a dream so sweet, so sweet.

                                 I see Philly in the snowy gloom,

                                 We could have laid there ‘til afternoon,
                                 Our cut runs deep, so deep, so deep’

But the rest of it is sustained by its clanging guitar riff, rocky solo and the Hammond organ that trickles through it.

A pump organ underpins ‘One Man’s Problem’, which features another crunching guitar riff and a narrator struggling to reconcile himself to a lost love:

                                 ‘I heard she went out to celebrate;

                                 Three cheers for her brilliant escape

                                 From the prison we were in.’

‘Don’t Let The World Get In Your Way’, the first of two fine songs on the album written and sung by drummer Tim O’Reagan, is one of those time-to-move-on numbers. Cloaked in shadowy string effects, it may bring to mind The Beatles and Neil Young, who are both often cited as influences on The Jayhawks.
 

There’s a feeling with some listeners that the album goes slightly downhill from about here at half-way in, but I don’t subscribe to that point of view. Rather, I consider Rainy Day Music to be an impressively consistent piece of work. Some might say it is a little samey in terms of style and tempo; others may say it all hangs together really well: take your pick. 

Louris & Rickenbacker

‘Come To The River’ rocks in convincingly (despite another obscure lyric) with steel guitarist McCarthy again on good form. He and O’Reagan harmonise closely with Louris on ‘Angelyne’ which, like many tracks here, could have you singing along on first listen. The lap-steel laden ‘Madman’ invokes the spirit of Crosby, Stills & Nash whilst the disillusioned ballad ‘You Look So Young’ highlights Louris on a lead guitar worthy of either Don Felder or Joe Walsh.

The album closes with O’Reagan’s melancholy road song, ‘Tampa To Tulsa’, which is the sort of performance that fellow Minnesotans, Low specialise in; and bassist Marc Perlman’s elegiac ‘Will I See You In Heaven?’*3.

Paradoxically, this collection of sad songs is so tunefully crafted and winningly performed that they raise the listener’s spirits. Full of major chords, rising choruses, close harmonies and sparkling guitars, there’s more than enough sunshine here to banish any rainy day. And don’t pay too much mind to my quibbling over the lyrics  - after all, isn’t it true that a vast amount of high-quality pop songs get by the ears with an absence of poetry and only a passing acquaintance with what they mean. Believe me, you’ll be singing along with these songs long before you bother your head with what they’re actually about.  

 

N. B,

*1 – There is actually no such bird as a jayhawk, although the compound word has several applications in America.

*2 – Olsen and Louris released the album Ready For The Flood in 2009 as a duo.

*3 – The original release of the album came with a six track bonus disc featuring a Gary Louris solo live version of ‘Waiting For The Sun’ from Hollywood Town Hall; alternate mixes of ‘All The Right Reasons’ (led by accordion) and a quieter, slower ‘Tampa To Tulsa’; and three songs that didn’t quite make the cut: ‘Fools On Parade’, another jaded road song, and demo’s of ‘Say Your Prayers’ and ‘Caught With a Smile On My Face’, both of which stand up well.

 

 

 

 

UNDERRATED ALBUMS # 16

'a catalytic release [which]

provided the impetus for
Dylan's second most
prolific period.'

Planet Waves (1974)

by Bob Dylan

‘We have much to talk about

And much to reminisce,

It sure is right

On a night like this.’

 
 (On A Night Like This)

The original title for this album was to be ‘Ceremonies Of  The Horsemen’, a vague but evocative phrase drawn from the 1965 love song for Dylan’s first wife, Sarah (‘Love Minus Zero / No Limit’). Then again, his monochromatic painting on the front cover bears two other legends: ‘Moonglow’ and ‘Cast-Iron Songs & Torch Ballads’. I believe either of these would have been an improvement on the abandoned title or its equally vague replacement.

Nothing much is revealed from gazing at the three heavily daubed figures huddled in the picture – one, or all of them may resemble Dylan and might represent a gathering of selves ready for the journey ahead, back out into the hurly-burly of  the world of performing and touring after more than three years of relative inactivity. The four motifs in the picture: an anchor, a heart on a sleeve, a CND symbol and what looks like a lantern, resonate with themes arising from the songs, the painting itself and the artist’s somewhat breathlessly scribbled liner note on the back cover.

I won’t attempt a literary analysis of this other than to mention that it is pretty much of a piece with Dylan’s other sleeve-notes (apart from the unexpectedly crude references to ‘bar stools that stank from sweating pussy’ and ‘space guys off-duty with big dicks’). A nostalgia for what he calls ‘the gone world’ chimes with some of the songs and the opening proclamation, ‘Back to the Starting Point!’ cuts two ways: the walk down Memory Lane but also the return to The Road.

For Planet Waves marks not only Dylan’s first proper album since 1970 – and the first of his brief sojourn on the Asylum label before returning to Columbia for good a year later – but also his commitment to play live again, which , apart from the odd guest-spot, he hasn’t done since 1966.

So this record was a catalytic release.  It provided the impetus for Dylan’s second most prolific period, starting a run of seven studio albums in less than eight years and did well on the charts reaching #1 in the US and #7 in the UK. It also features, in ‘Forever Young’, one of his best loved songs. Why then did Planet Waves so quickly become an almost forgotten item in Dylan’s back catalogue?

Well, to begin with, it stands in the immediate and very long shadow cast by the album which followed it just a year later, the rightly celebrated Blood On The Tracks.

Then, critics nitpicked about the production sound and have tended to skim over it on their way to discussing the massively successful comeback tour with The Band - as encapsulated in the live album, Before The Flood - all of which took place in 1974, with Blood On The Tracks straining at the leash for release the following January.

Dylan was busy being born, shaking the dust off his feet and not looking back. Apart from ‘Forever Young’, which was the only song from the album he was still playing as the tour reached its end, he has only very rarely included selections from Planet Waves in his numerous concerts down the years. Neither has he remarked upon the record much in interviews beyond a few throw-away comments in the booklet which accompanied the Biograph (1985) compilation (i.e. ‘On A Night Like This’ – ‘not my type of song, I think I just did it to do it’; ‘You Angel You’ - ‘sounds to me like dummy lyrics’; ‘Forever Young’ – ‘I wrote it thinking about one of my boys…not wanting it to be too sentimental…the lines…were done in a minute…the song wrote itself.’).

 

The critics' grumbling about the supposedly slipshod production of the record - it was apparently helmed by Rob Fraboni, assisted by Robbie Robertson and probably Dylan himself - need not concern us here. Suffice to say that, compared to the glitzy bounce of those contemporaneous trends of Glam Rock and Disco, Planet Waves probably does seem a rather low-key affair, but that never spoilt my appreciation of it - and it almost certainly won't affect yours either.  

When we consider the eleven songs on the album, we find all but one of them to be love songs, more or less: romantic, sexual, marital, paternal and unrequited love. The song that failed to make the cut, ‘Nobody ‘Cept You’ (which later appeared on The Bootleg Series 1-3) is another one. It apparently worked well live but was never nailed in the studio. The out-take features Robbie Robertson pottering around on the wah-wah pedal to no great effect. Robertson’s playing on the official tracks however, is beyond reproach.

This, incidentally, is the only Dylan album that The Band play on as a unit apart from the live album that followed it and The Basement Tapes (1975) which came out the next year but were, of course, recorded much earlier. They knit together the fabric of the songs in a way that is both tight and subtle. ‘On A Night Like This’, though, is mainly about Dylan’s harmonica playing which, unusually, operates not merely as the lead instrument but as constant thread dubbed behind the vocals. Zipping smartly in to get the record underway, it’s a simple but highly effective starter which rides the lyrical conceit of lovers making hot whoopee beside a log fire, whilst outside in the snow, ‘the four winds blow / Around this old cabin door’.

This upbeat mood is promptly arrested by the cautionary ‘Going, Going, Gone’, the album’s only non-love song. Here we find the narrator ‘at the top of the end…closin’ the book’ and determined to ‘cut loose / Before it gets too late’. This can be tellingly interpreted as Dylan resolving to come out of semi-retirement, make music again and hit the road. And what music! Richard Manuel’s piano carries the rhythm with Garth Hudson’s organ whispers eerily in the background, but it’s Robertson’s climbing, spindly notes and plunging accent chords that truly compliment Dylan’s terrific vocal. He is grimly set on a course and ‘don’t really care / What happens next’. The rising bridge urges him to ‘follow your heart’ but also warns ‘Don’t you and your one true love ever part’.



Mr. & Mrs. Dylan with Mr. & Mrs. Cash

It’s a great song and one of Dylan’s best of the period. Naturally, it has been seen to implicitly reference his then wife, Sarah, and her fairly well known doubts and fears about his re-entering the rock and roll fray. However much those of us who write about Dylan should heed his oft-repeated scorn at the idea of hanging his songs from the branches of what is known or surmised about his life, there are certain songs which are reasonably unambiguous. I think this is one of those songs (and, of course, ‘Sarah’, from Desire (1976), less contentiously, would be another).       

Is the next song, ‘Tough Mama’, also ‘about’ Sarah? Well, epithets like ‘Sweet Goddess’ and ‘Silver Angel’ match the rather cloying terms like ‘Radiant Jewel’ and ‘Scorpio Sphinx’ which I feel slightly undermine the otherwise eloquent Desire song.

Anyway, whoever ‘Tough Mama’ is, Dylan tells her in the third verse that ‘you know who you are and where you’ve been’. The hyperbole above is also offset by a lyrical flash which brings the sleeve-note back to mind when the weather is described as ‘a-hotter than a crotch’…The lyric, which, but for those epithets, might almost come from Highway 61, seeks to persuade the woman to stick by him and, in the song’s last line, meet him ‘at the border late tonight’ (where, presumably, the tour-bus awaits). Musically it’s a rollicking track with The Band’s fine ensemble backing Dylan’s raucous harmonica. Robert Christgau probably had this track in mind when he grinningly refers to the ‘scrawny, cocky…stray cat music’ to be found in parts of the album.

So who might ‘Hazel’ be then, with her memorably ‘dirty blonde hair’ and ‘stardust in her eye’? An old flame from way back when, maybe? Who cares? It’s a wonderful little love song, elevated by the warm, wistful vocal and another soaring bridge (listen to the way Dylan sings ‘up on a hill’). Perhaps the key point here is that Hazel is ‘goin’ somewhere and so am I’.

Whoever the woman is in ‘Something There Is About You’, she makes Dylan nostalgic for his pre-fame past and ‘brings back a long-forgotten truth’:

            ‘Thought I’d shaken the wonder and the phantoms of my youth

            Rainy days on the Great Lakes, walkin’ the hills of old Duluth’

Naturally, critics have seized upon this almost Wordsworthian couplet because of its frank mention of Dylan’s home town (he ‘who’s so good with words and at keeping things vague’ as Joan Baez put it in her great song about him, ‘Diamonds & Rust’). The woman in this song also seems to have saved him from the vertiginous and excessive stardom of his past:

            ‘I was in a whirlwind, now I’m in some better place’

He’s grateful but not grateful enough to ‘promise to be faithful’. It’s a hard, honest admission and anchors this torch-song with chilling cast-iron. Musically, Dylan again leads The Band with strong vocal and harmonica performances although the pretty melody doesn’t go anywhere much.

And so to ‘Forever Young’ - so good they included it twice. Then there are three other official versions: a solo acoustic rendition from Biograph; a version with The Band on their valedictory live album, The Last Waltz (1978); and another live cut from Bob Dylan At Budokan (1979). All of these have much to recommend them but, of the five, my favourite is probably the Last Waltz one with Robertson pulling out all the stops, his stratocaster stratospherically epic).

It is the big song on Planet Waves and one which his audiences will always crave to hear - along with ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ and ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ et al. In a 2005 poll of musicians and house writers on ‘Mojo’ magazine, ‘Forever Young’ is the only track from Planet Waves to figure in their Top 100 Dylan songs (albeit at only # 44…).

Dylan’s poet pal, Allen Ginsberg loved it, recommending it as a latter-day national anthem for America. I used to lullabye my children with it and there was a large copy of the lyric pinned to my daughter’s bedroom wall alongside the alphabet and number freizes and my wife is currently cross-stitching it as a kind of birth sampler for a new niece of ours It’s that kind of song – and yet, lyrically it’s little more than a collection of clichés and platitudes. The point is how well they fit together and inform the beautifully simple sentiment and melody. The version that closed the first side of the vinyl album is sensitively arranged beneath Robertson’s tender, mandolin-like guitar playing.

‘God’ is only mentioned once, at the outset, and the song has none of the rather tedious, unpleasant religiosity that blighted parts of the so called ‘born again trilogy’ of albums a few years down the line. In fact, ‘Forever Young’, a hymn of hope, has more in common with the lovely little chant, ‘Father Of Night’, the hymn of praise which ends his previous studio album, New Morning (1970).

When you turned the original record over you found a reprise of ‘Forever Young’, this time in a jaunty, hoedown tempo. I liked it well enough although thought it something of a makeweight. Ideally, a more simpatico take of ‘Nobody ‘Cept You’ might have made for a stronger programme, but one has to say that the sequencing on Planet Waves is nicely symmetrical. As on the first side, a cheerful, lively opener is followed by a much slower, darker proposition.

‘Dirge’ was, confusingly, titled ‘Dirge For Martha’ to begin with – quite who she might have been, no-one seems to know. It features just Dylan on piano and Robertson splintering notes out on an acoustic guitar. Dylan's ability on the piano may be only rudimentary, but he can be a highly effective player - as here, and Robertson’s playing is yet again exactly right, echoing the frustration and spite of the words. The song makes most sense to me when I hear Dylan’s powerful vocal addressing not a woman, not Sarah (let alone the mysterious Martha), but some personification of the gaping maw of stardom opening up before him once more as he prepares to put himself back in the market place. It might – more shakily – be compared to ‘Dear Landlord’ from John Wesley Harding (1967), a song probably addressed to his manager, Albert Grossman. Whoever or whatever the song is aimed at, its final couplet, is a telling admission of how bitterly conflicted Dylan must have been feeling when he wrote ‘Dirge’:-

            ‘Lady Luck, who shines on me, will tell you where I ’m at

I hate myself for loving you, but I should get over that.’

 
‘You Angel You’ is another fine ensemble performance and one of the  catchiest tracks. It may have been written with an eye on the chart and was released as the flip side of ‘On A Night Like This’, the lead single from the album which disappeared without trace, despite the perceived commercial appeal of both songs. ‘Dummy lyric’, or not, it might, with a country arrangement, have fitted snugly on Nashville Skyline. Nonetheless, on Planet Waves, it blends well with the overall sound of the record. 
 
‘Never Say Goodbye’, like most of the songs here, gets by without recourse to a conventional verse-chorus structure. A short song – there are no sprawling epics on this album – it is propelled by the rhythm section of Rick Danko on bass and Levon Helm on drums, and is over almost before you know it. It begins with this haunting verse:-

‘Twilight on the frozen lake,

A north wind about to break

On footprints in the snow

And silence down below’

 
The elemental geography of his Minnesota past is evoked again (that ‘twilight’ and ‘silence’ has stayed with me ever since I first heard it all those years ago) but, to be honest, the rest of the song, lovely listening experience that it is, fails to really live up to its opening. By Dylan’s standards, it proceeds as a fairly conventional love song, although the final verse fleetingly raises the ghosts of a couple of his earlier classics (‘Girl Of The North Country’ and It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’) before fading away.
 
As the first half of the record ended with a love song for his children, so the second leaves us with a love song for his wife (well, hey, say I’m naive, but it is called ‘Wedding Song’…). It’s Dylan down to the bone, just him on acoustic guitar and harmonica, playing and singing in that uniquely authoritative way of his.

 

It’s both a declaration of the depth of his continuing love for and abiding gratitude to Sarah as well as a pledge of reassurance to her that his return to recording and touring won’t lead him back to the abyss. They can get through this, he sings, because ‘the past is gone’. In what is perhaps the album’s most quoted lyric, he restates his renouncement of that ‘Spokesman of a Generation’ soubriquet, telling Sarah and anyone else who cares to listen, that:_

‘It’s never been my duty to remake the world at large,

Nor is it my intention to sound the battle charge’

     
Back on Side One however, he has also told her that his ‘hand’s on the sabre’ although he may be willing to let her call the tune because she has ‘picked up the baton’ (‘Something There Is About You’). There seems to be a kind of desperation abroad here, amidst all the affirmation, and he fears that her love ‘burns him to the soul’ and cuts him ‘like a knife’. And yes, he loves her ‘more than blood’, but listen to the way he sings that phrase and you realise just how close we are to the most famous break-up record in the history of popular music. Blood On The Tracks waits in the wings, its wounds perhaps already opening up by the end of its predecessor.

   One of Barry Feinstein's series of shots of Dylan  
 with local kids in the streets of Liverpool, 1966.

                              * * * *  

Here’s how underrated Planet Waves is: Robbie Robertson, who as this article makes clear, is, after Dylan himself, the key musician on that record (and although no producer is named on the album, Robertson is credited with ‘Special Assistance’) was featured in the music press promoting a new album and looking back over his career. As I was at the time, in the middle of writing this piece, I checked out three of the quality magazines, ‘Mojo’, ‘Uncut’ and ‘The Word’. What I found was that Robertson’s stroll down Memory Lane recalled some of his solo and film work along with albums by The Bands as well as Dylan’s ’66 and ’74 tours and The Basement Tapes – but there was not a single mention of Planet Waves along the way.

Perhaps Robertson didn’t want to remind readers of an album that he helped to produce, but which has been criticised for its sound. After all, the critics have told us that you can actually hear Dylan’s jacket button scratching against his guitar on the first and only take of ‘Wedding Song’ - at least, you might be able to if you’re zeroing in through Bang & Olufsen speakers and headphones.  

 

 

N. B.

 

A fuller review of this album - and others - has already appeared in my article, 'Much To Reminisce; Bob Dylan's Most Underrated Albums' which was originally published in ISIS (issue 156 ), the international journal of all things Dylan. It can also be found in the 'Other Prose' section of this Angles & Reflections blog. 

C. IGR 2011