In the case of Bob Dylan’s track, the song is A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. Listening to the clip posted on the website, it seems that it’s Bob’s original acoustic recording from 1963, with overdubs of keyboards and brass and stuff, presumably courtesy of the musicians known as Rhythms del Mundo. Strange, but there you go.

Helping the victims of the natural disasters is naturally a very good cause. As for the broader goals of “Artists Project Earth,” which are described as “helping to create a more just and sustainable world,” well, good luck with that. (The continued use of the word “sustainable,” in my view, has become unsustainable.)

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Dylan-fan magazine Isis is reporting on Sony’s plans for new releases:

The next Bootleg Series release, Volume 9, will indeed be “a set of non-live recordings, well-known to collectors”, as stated. Although based on “The Witmark Demos”, sources say it will include some Leeds demo recordings as well. There are said to be 47 tracks. There is no information as to the packaging for this release.

Well, count this fan as one who will be a little bummed if the next Bootleg Series release is those old demos he did for the publishing companies in the early 1960s. I mean, I have nothing against it being released, but I’m pretty sure that there are many things in the vaults that would excite me a great deal more.

The other thing that Sony is apparently planning is a set of 8 CDs covering Dylan’s official albums from Bob Dylan through John Wesley Harding, remastered in mono to come as close to the sound of the original LPs as possible. That’s a laudable goal. One kind of wonders, though, what was the point of rolling out fancy remasters of a lot of those self-same albums just a few years ago, if getting back to the original sound is what we should be about? I suppose it’s foolish to wonder such things.

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On YouTube now, but perhaps not for long, is the clip below of Bob and the boys doing This World Can’t Stand Long, from November of 2001.

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Just read your blog this morning re Bob and St Augustine. I always appreciate when you write anything faith based related to Bob. You see, six years ago (aprox) around the time of No Dir Home, I became interested in Bob Dylan. The more I read, the more fascinated I became with this unique human being. At the time I was a lapsed Catholic who was at best an agnostic. When I came upon Bob’s “Christian Period” I was truly touched, and found my way back to God and Jesus. I know this sounds crazy, but I always have the feeling that he knows something the rest of us don’t, that he has some kind of spiritual knowledge. I’ve always admired his courage, to be considered the “coolest,hippest” guy in the world and get up in front of everybody and put his whole image and career on the line for his beliefs.

I know people say that he is no longer a believer. They have always pointed to his lifestyle and said he is not a true Christian. I find it inspiring that he seems to keep plugging away. There’s just something about him. I think his charisma comes from God and I hope he has helped many people like he has inspired me. Two years after getting into bob, I had a serious stroke. Well my husband was able to tell my very religious mother that before I had my stroke, I had returned to Church. It meant the world to her. Well ,thank God, I recovered. My mother died about 2 years later and it meant everything to her that I had returned to my faith. When I told her it was because of Bob Dylan, she said “who’s Bob Dylan?”

Anyway keep up the good work, I love when you pick up on these things as I often do and wonder if I’m just seeing what I want to see.

And thanks to David O. for his spot-on observations, following the previously mentioned notion of Bob’s alleged pact with Satan:

The idea of Dylan referring to an actual “deal with the devil” in the Bradley interview is pretty ridiculous (they chuckle over it in the piece itself!). But Dylan’s obliqueness when it comes to his faith over the past twenty years is a funny thing. Somehow he’s managed to continue to write songs about his creator, sing the old gospel songs that ostracized him from the pop “community”, release a Christmas album with devotional material on it – and still keep his spiritual leanings somewhat mysterious and a hot topic of debate. He’s developed real chops when it comes avoiding the direct language many journalists would sell their own souls for, and of course the ancient device of blending romantic longing with religious devotion that’s all over his songs inherently swings both ways.

As somebody with no religious faith to speak of at this point in time, I’m convinced he views his music as an expression of a deep relationship with the God of the Bible. And sometimes I find myself enjoying it as such; but more importantly (and consistently) I also find it tapping into my own, not particularly Christian feelings about love, life, longing, hate, lust, loss, divorce – oops, apologies to MOJO. But seriously, I assume that’s the way he wants it, that he’s concerned with moving as many people and opening as many hearts as possible these days. He been through enough in his life and career that there’s some appreciation for whatever walls people need between their spiritual lives and intellectual identities, and more power to him. If it’s his prerogative, he’s probably doing more to spread “the Love” with this approach, and there’s nothing sneaky or underhanded about it.

I listened to Bob’s overt gospel music when I wasn’t any kind of Christian believer, and I loved it back then for its passion and incisiveness — and even humor. In the end, and ironically despite all the accusations that Dylan is a charlatan, I guess it’s the truthfulness that comes through in his songs that keeps us listening. That’s the high wire he generally succeeds in staying upon. Even when it’s not particularly clear what he’s singing about, the songs still seem to possess that ring of truth, and usually on more levels than one. I don’t know what crossroads you have to visit to get that kind of deal.

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Thanks in particular to Karen who writes:

Great post on the pondering of goodness. Augustine, like Dylan can sometimes make my feeble head spin, but when I stay with them, I am much better for it; I offer another scriptural citation for you that comes to mind when listening to Dylan’s It’s All Good:

Genesis 50: 15-21 , The passage is about Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers- the same brothers who had wished him harm when they sold him into slavery. Were it not for the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat musical, less folks would be acquainted with this remarkable man. His choice to forgive his brothers is but a small foreshadowing of what our good Christ has done for us. Joseph reminded his cowering brothers:

Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? you intended harm to me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children. And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.

I think of Joseph every time Dylan playfully hollers that refrain It’s All Good. Now am off to re-read Confessions

Perfect passage. (So, the next time you’re sold to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels, just try to remember that it’s all good.)

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And thanks to Marek Breiger for his take — a little different to mine, but a very thoughtful angle:

Sean: Your latest post is thought provoking. To get to Dylan’s Augustine I thought of the lyrics to the song. the singer/poet’s complicity in the saint’s death waking “alone and terrified” and then the ending: “I bowed my head and cried.” The song conveys to me the reality of sin, of betrayal but also the possibility of atonement and forgiveness. Dylan ran away from simple mantras, left and right, about making the world a better place but his greatest songs are about the possibility of change. Looking back to “With God on Our Side,: Dylan’s Judas seems to me to be not the Judas completing God’s plan but a man who will have the rest of his life to repent and regret. In “It’s all good” there is an implication beneath the sarcasm that it can be good but only through human effort and atonement. Dylan may have become more truly religious as he has left Orthodox Judaism and Christianity. No longer is the earth a nightmare but blaming God is blasphemy. It can be all good only through human effort and toil. Last week I was at the National Steinbeck museum in Salinas and the museum featured among other books, East of Eden, an important work during Dylan’s formative years. Steinbeck’s Cal is redeemed through his atonement. Steinbeck used the Hebrew word Timshel (thou mayest) to convey his idea in the novel. In his Nobel speech Steinbeck spoke of human “perfectibility” the idea that the human race can change and that the function of the writer is to provide models for humanity that demonstrate courage, compassion, sacrifice. The questions in Blowin’ in the Wind can only be answered by humanity, one person at a time. I think that Dylan implies that our first step is to understand our own self-centered-ness and mistakes and cruelty and to spend our lives seeking to do right, to follow the golden rule, the Sermon on the Mount, the teaching of Judaism and Christianity in terms of seeking justice. The first step is to awaken “alone and terrified.” or to quote “It’s Alright Ma,” “Even the president of the United States must have to stand naked.”

Dylan has provided models, some from his own life, or a world gone wrong and implied in those songs is the knowledge of what we must do to try to make things right. Dylan believes in a creator but he also, it seems to me now, believes it is up to man.

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On a slightly different topic, Reinier from Holland recently wrote:

First of all, thanks for your site! entertaining and interesting to
read! My question is the following. Some time ago I watched Dylan’s
interview with Ed Bradley on 60 minutes. His answer on the question
why he is still doing music, is the one that made me wonder, what’s up
with Dylan? A lot of people seem to think that Dylan said the he made
a ‘deal with the devil’.

Ed: Should I ask who you made the bargain with?
Dylan: With the, ah [laughing], with the, y’know, with the chief commander.
Ed: On this earth?
Dylan: On this earth and in the world we can’t see.

What’s your opinion on this? why are all these people saying that he
made a deal with the devil? I mean, I my opinion it seems very strange
and unlogical that someone who makes a deal with the devil would
record gospel albums. What’s your opinion on this matter? and what do
you think Dylan really meant?

Thanks for the email and the kind words. As for the “deal with the devil” theory: I know that there is one crackpot in particular who wrote a big piece accusing Dylan of being in league with Satan because of that remark. I don’t believe that guy knows anything about Dylan’s work or very much else — he’s just looking for attention. But other people may associate Dylan’s words with the old legend about Robert Johnson and the crossroads, where Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil to obtain his talent to play the blues.

I don’t personally thing it’s very complicated. I just think that Dylan was referring to God. Even though the devil is sometimes called “the ruler of the earth,” God obviously can be described as the ultimate ruler both of earth and everywhere else. I also think that Dylan sometimes refers to God in a military way, as in the “chief commander.” In the old gospel song “Wade in the Water,” there’s these lines:

The enemy’s great, but my Captain’s strong
I’m marching to the city and the road ain’t long

The Captain there is God, or Jesus. Of-course you recognize the line after that which Dylan took for his own song, Marching to the City. And in Lonesome Day Blues, Dylan writes:

Well my captain he’s decorated – he’s well schooled and he’s skilled
My captain, he’s decorated – he’s well schooled and he’s skilled
He’s not sentimental – don’t bother him at all
How many of his pals have been killed

I think the captain in that song can be understood as God, too.

So, that’s about all there is to it, in my opinion. Ironically, I think if Dylan had come out and straightforwardly said, “I made a deal with God,” it would actually have caused a lot more controversy. People would have said, “He’s lost his mind again.” He’s learned to be more oblique. It’s easier for him to let people think he made a deal with the devil!

All the best, and commiserations on the World Cup.

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Confessions

And unquestionably I am so deranged, but, with hindsight, it’s not so hard to understand why my mind was making the kinds of connections it was. The primary reason is what you might reductively characterize as a stylistic feature that is shared by Augustine and Dylan: they both interweave Scripture into their writings in a nearly seamless way. Augustine, in Confessions, will regularly begin a thought of his own in his own words, yet continue it or finish it with a line or phrase from the Psalms, or some other book of the Bible. He doesn’t stop and say, “As the Bible says, blah, blah ….” He just slips it in, much as Dylan slips in phrases or paraphrases of the Bible so commonly in his songs.

In addition to this, the themes of Confessions include both the sinfulness that is part of human nature and the writer’s hunger for closeness to God — themes which can be found by the attentive listener in much of Dylan’s work. And Confessions is written in a voice actually addressing God; the you that he is talking to is you, my God.

Spirit on the water
Darkness on the face of the deep
I keep thinking about you baby
I can’t hardly sleep

The above could be hardly be clearer, but there are so many far less obvious instances where the real depth of a Dylan song is best plumbed when the you is heard as you, my God. That theme has been dealt with in this space before, and by other writers too.

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So, generalities aside, it so happened that last week I was listening anew to the song It’s All Good from Together Through Life, put in mind of it again by that good article in Obit magazine. Now, I know I’m far from being the only one to reflect on the idea that this can be heard as a kind of profane echo of Genesis (as I put in it in my review of the album). It brings to mind that phrase which is repeated over and over again in the profoundly beautiful first chapter of Genesis, capped by verse 31: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”

It seems to me that you either hear that somehow in this song, or you must conclude that there’s nothing going on in the song other than sarcasm; i.e., Dylan’s simply listing a lot of horrible things and sarcastically repeating the contemporary glib-ism, “It’s all good.” The problem with that is that Dylan is not inclined towards simplistic sarcasm in his songs (try naming another song that’s purely sarcastic). He’s better than that. Layered ironies, to be sure; sarcasm, not so much. Add to the equation the established fact that the Bible is never far from Dylan’s lyrics, and the echo of Genesis becomes more and more likely. We already have the biblical and prophetic-styled mention of widows and orphans in the song.

Is the song therefore saying that all of the troubles and suffering covered in the lyrics are in fact good, because, after all, it’s all God’s and it’s all good? I don’t think that’s the case, but rather I think that the song is, like so many great Dylan songs, posing a question which the listener can reflect almost endlessly upon. It’s something like this: When God created everything, it was all good. In some sense therefore, it still is fundamentally all good. But why then are things seemingly so broken down? What is the reason for all the misery, and all of the crime? Posing questions in a listener’s head creates a richer and more enduring song than what you’d have if the song were simply delivering a black and white statement. (And then, some questions can be said to be answered by asking.)

And on the same day last week when I listening again to this song, I happened to be reading something where the writer in question referred to the fact that a maxim of Augustine’s is the following: “What is, is good.” Or, put loosely another way, “It’s all good.” It’s certainly not a concept unique to Augustine, but it is one he develops in his own way. And he develops it, in fact, in Confessions.

There are various complete texts available online, but I’ll quote from the modern Henry Chadwick translation which I own (in the anachronistic form of a paperback book).

The basic idea is in the first paragraph below, but the next two develop it in important ways so I’m including them too. So, from (Saint) Augustine’s Confessions, starting at Book 7, part XII, with Augustine, as previously mentioned, addressing his reflections to his God:

It was obvious to me that things which are liable to corruption are good. If they were the supreme goods, or if they were not good at all, they could not be corrupted. For if they were supreme goods, they would be incorruptible. If there were no good in them, there would be nothing capable of being corrupted. Corruption does harm and unless it diminishes the good, no harm would be done. Therefore either corruption does not harm, which cannot be the case, or (which is wholly certain) all things that are corrupted suffer privation of some good. If they were to be deprived of all good, they would not exist at all. If they were to exist and to be immune from corruption, they would be superior because they would be permanently incorruptible. What could be more absurd than to say that by losing all good, things are made better? So then, if they are deprived of all good, they will be nothing at all. Therefore as long as they exist, they are good. Accordingly, whatever things exist are good, and the evil into his origins I was inquiring is not a substance, for if it were a substance, it would be good. Either it would be an incorruptible substance, a great good indeed, or a corruptible substance, which could be corrupted only if it were good. Hence I saw and it was made clear to me that you made all things good, and there are absolutely no substances which you did not make. As you did not make all things equal, all things are good in the sense that taken individually they are good, and all things taken together are very good. For our God has made ‘all things very good’ (Gen. 1:31).

For you evil does not exist at all, and not only for you but for your created universe, because there is nothing outside it which could break in and destroy the order which you have imposed upon it. But in the parts of the universe, there are certain elements which are thought evil because of a conflict of interest. These elements are congruous with other elements and as such are good, and are also good in themselves. All these elements which have some mutual conflict of interest are congruous with the inferior part of the universe which we call earth. Its heaven is cloudy and windy, which is fitting for it.

It is far from my mind now to say, ‘Would that those things did not exist!’ If I were to regard them in isolation, I would indeed wish for something better; but now even when they are taken alone, my duty is to praise you for them. That you are to be praised is shown by dragons on earth, and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, the hurricane and tempest, which perform your word — mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, reptiles and winged birds; kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth, young men and maidens, old men with younger: let them praise your name (Ps. 148: 7-12). Moreover, let these from the heavens praise you: let all your angels praise you in the height, our God all your powers, sun and moon, all stars and light, the heaven of heavens and the waters that are above the heavens: let them praise your name (Ps. 148: 1-5).

So, in addition to exploring the idea that all things are good, you may notice that there’s another way in which Augustine’s train of thought jibes with Dylan’s. One of the verses in Dylan’s song goes:

Wives are leavin’ their husbands, they beginning to roam
They leave the party and they never get home
I wouldn’t change it, even if I could
You know what they say man, it’s all good

What does he mean, he “wouldn’t change it even if [he] could?” Shouldn’t one want to change something which is unjust?

Yet, Augustine, above, says something similar, about the troublesome things of this earth: “It is far from my mind now to say, ‘Would that those things did not exist!’”

One can take that kind of philosophy too far, of-course, if applied practically, but Dylan’s song, as mentioned earlier, is putting the question in front of the listener, rather than dictating an answer. Augustine for his part is saying that all things which exist constitute a reason to praise God. Corruption in his view is a privation of goodness.

I’m not trying to maintain here, by the way, that Dylan’s song was inspired by Augustine’s writing. Augustine has no patent on the concept, and, despite Dylan’s writing of a song called I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine, I have no idea if he’s even read Confessions. I think it pretty likely, though, that they were both inspired by much the same source.

Whether one fully accepts Augustine’s theology, or Dylan’s, surely there’s no question that it is all very wholesome food for thought. So I guess, just like they say: it’s all good.

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One criticism which that reviewer makes is that some things in the film feel overly contrived. As in: “Three random encounters with Dylan acolytes, for example, are a bit much for one December night in Dublin.”

Actually, I’ve spent enough time in Dublin myself to know that this part, at least, is not at all unlikely.

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I must admit your headline “Bob Dylan Obit” shook me a little….ha! Thanks for posting the link. The quote with its equation of Dylan to great poets like Keats etc., made me think of “Dylan and the Nobel” by Gordon Ball which, as I’m sure you know, is a defense of his nomination of Dylan for the Nobel prize. Great read for all unfamiliar Dylan fans…others too.

(PDF file) (http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/22i/Ball.pdf

I had not actually read that before, so I appreciate the link.

As far as the Nobel Prize goes … with the standards they’ve adopted for handing out the Peace Prize these days, I’d expect Lady GaGa to get the one for literature any minute now.

If you ask me, they should put all the money back into making dynamite. Now there’s a wholesome and reliable product.

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I hadn’t picked up on this until now, but reading the fan reviews of Bob Dylan’s most recent show, in Ireland on July 4th, I see that near the end of the concert some yobbo was shining a green laser at the stage, including right into Bob’s eyes. As one person describes it:

Then, someone began to point a green laser at the stage, first at Denny then, increasingly, at Bob. As the last number ended, I expected Bob to do band announcements and maybe one more number but by now the laser was being conspicuously pointed at his eyes. He moved to back of stage, lowered his head, and a huddle ensued. He turned back to the front; the laser pointing resumed; Tony stood in front of Bob, protective as ever, and pointed in the direction of of the source. There was a hurried standing to acknowledge the crowd, even more tentative than usual, and the band left the stage very quickly. A sad end to what has been a good leg of the tour.

Despicable. Some of these lasers can cause permanent damage to a person’s retinas. Please God that Bob and everyone else in the band is unharmed. Maybe this is the new fun thing for morons to do at concerts. I’d characterize it as assault and battery. And the kinds of people who assault other people for no reason, other than sheer villainy and bloody-mindedness, should, if you ask me, be locked up for life. They’re the bottom of the barrel. Of-course, most people would think a life sentence too harsh, so let me instead advocate something more reasonable; say, forty years with no parole.

One would hope the security people who sometimes nab people’s cameras would be on top of a dangerous goon like this, or that he received vigilante justice from nearby fans. But the only sure way to protect people from such as these is to lock them away in a deep dark cell and throw away the key.

Peace out.

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There’s been a flurry of attention in the media to the 1985 “Live Aid” event, what with its 25th anniversary occurring this past July 13th. Inevitably then there have been some things said and written about Bob Dylan’s famous/notorious performance that day. I wrote about that here in some detail quite early on in this website’s life, and I don’t see any need to update it, but I’ll post the link: The Whole Wide World is Watching.

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While the Baby Boomers were busy building their ordinary lives, buying vacation homes and packing their IRA’s with ready dough, then getting foreclosed on a lot of those houses and seeing a third of the value of their pensions disappear overnight, Dylan was off somewhere shaking his head, sucking an eye-tooth, pulling at that mean little moustache he wears these days. He’s not surprised. Bad news is to be expected. Life is about harm, the collapse of hope; and then, at the very end, that unavoidable date with the Reaper. Whoopee! Thanks a lot, Bob! We needed to hear that.

Actually, many of us did, and do. When Dylan says it, it stays said. The credibility he enjoys is enormous among a certain demographic; he is the most honored American songwriter of our time, and by virtue of the prominence of American cultural product in the world, the most honored and influential songwriter on earth. Among Americans and Europeans and South Americans and Russians and South Africans and Israelis and Norwegians he enjoys the status that two centuries ago was accorded the preeminent poets – he is the Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth of our time, our Emerson, Dickinson, and Whitman, and our Auden and Neruda and Mandelstam to boot. He has fulfilled for nearly 50 years the classic functions of the seminal poet, that is, to register his times in vivid and memorable words, and to prophesy.

It’s appropriate that an unusually perceptive article about Bob would appear in a publication that is devoted (I take it) to death, from various angles. The way in which Dylan’s work has always faced up to “death’s honesty” is arguably the single most distinguishing characteristic of it, in the context of the last fifty years of pop culture. That alone has qualified it to be called prophetic.

Of-course, one can in a certain sense “face” death’s honesty and come up with nihilism — and many have done just that and still do — but another distinguishing characteristic of Dylan’s work is that this is not his conclusion. It’s not the taste left on one’s lips after consuming his songs. He once joked back in some 1960s interview that all his songs end with, “Good luck, hope you make it.” In actuality, they do. “Everything’s collapsing, the world is depraved, you can’t trust anyone, you’re gonna die … hope you make it!” The question is what making it really means.

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Do you keep up with Dylan the Younger’s work? His last three albums have songs on them which, while not overtly political, show tremendous respect for the military. In fact, in my opinion it goes beyond respect. If I didn’t know he was Bob Dylan’s son, and therefore unlikely to have served in the military, I would guess the writer of songs like “Days of Wonder”, “Back To California”, “War Is Kind”, and “Valley of the Low Sun” had deployed to the desert a time or two. He captures very well the combination of weariness and determination, of frustration and pride, that Marines and soldiers know so well.

As with his father, reviewers make assumptions about his politics and tendentiously interpret his songs. And like his father he doesn’t go out of his way to directly contradict them. But, as you may know, “War Is Kind” is far from the ringing denunciation of the Iraq War that most reviewers assumed it to be. Rather, it takes as given the tragic reality of war, while sketching a character caught up in a war. And I’ve never seen a coherent review of “Valley Of The Low Sun” with its chilling exhortation, one returning vet to another, to “act like you mean it, paradise was in the valley of the low sun.” I doubt a civilian can make sense of it.

At any rate, keep up the good work. Jakob’s getting better and better as a songwriter, and is certainly a serious, thoughtful artist.

The answer to the question, “Do you keep up with Jakob Dylan’s work?” is a simple “No.” The little I’ve heard over the years never greatly grabbed me, and most of the new music I listen to these days is from artists who are old, and often dead. But that’s just me. I appreciate the insights from someone who has given Jakob a good listen and has something quite different and interesting to say about his songs.

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