Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty at the New Orleans Jazz Fest.
Terrific version of “Green River” performed by Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty and the E Street Band at the New Orleans Jazz Festival on May 3, 2014.
Plus an excerpt of “Proud Mary”:
Springsteen, “The Promised Land”:
Here’s better video of a portion of “The Promised Land”:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
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Right now you can check out the new Black Keys album, Turn Blue, at iTunes for free.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
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Sharon Van Etten’s Are We There is due out May 27, 2014. It just got a mindblowing review in the New Yorker.
While we wait for it we can watch Van Etten cover Bruce Springsteen’s “Drive All Night” at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ.
Plus here she talks about her connection to Springsteen.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
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09 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot Cover)
10 Since I Met You Baby (Ivory Joe Hunter Cover)
11 My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen Cover)
12 I Wonder If I Care as Much (Don Everly Cover)
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
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Peter Buck, Corin Tucker, Bill Rieflin, Krist Novoselic and Scott McCaughey in the studio. Photo by Lance Bangs.
The other day I posted about the debut performance by super-Earth, the new supergroup formed by Peter Buck and Corin Tucker. Not it turns out that Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic is also in the band.
These two photos are by Lance Bangs. The group is currently recording. No news on song titles or when recordings will be available.
ucker, Buck, Kurt Bloch, Bill Rieflin, Novoselic, and Scott McCaughey in the studio. Photo by Lance Bangs.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
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Page two of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” manuscript.
Yesterday I did a post about Bob Dylan’s manuscript for “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” which is being auctioned by Sotheby’s on June 24, 2014 in New York.
I wrote that what I found most interesting about the manuscript was that Dylan had written “Hiroshima” and under that, “Nagasaki” just a few inches from the chorus to the song. I wrote “it’s clear that Dylan meant the song to refer, at least in the chorus, to nuclear annihilation.”
What I found amazing about Dylan writing the names of the two cities the U.S. dropped atom bombs on during World War II, was that he had denied that the song was about what Studs Terkel called “atomic rain,” when Terkel interviewed him in 1963.
Clearly, Dylan was putting Terkel on, I concluded.
In fact, Dylan wrote the song in the summer of 1962, as tensions between Russia and the U.S. were building to the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 – this was a time when the whole country feared a nuclear conflict.
Dylan told journalist Robert Shelton that he wrote “A Hard Rain” in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which wasn’t exactly true: “Every line in it is actually the start of a whole new song,” Dylan said. “But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one.”
The reason I’m coming back to this is that today I got a comment about my post. A reader wrote:
“Interesting that the notations about Hiroshima / Nagasaki would be pulled out from all the other random notations in the song notes as ‘proof’ that the song is about nuclear fallout and nothing else. Surely that theme is an influence here, but I don’t think it means that Bob was lying’ in the interview by saying that meaning expands beyond that. It’s the rare Bob song that is about one thing and one thing only, in my opinion!”
Now I certainly didn’t mean to say or imply that the song is only about nuclear war, but I think it’s pretty clear that one of the meanings of “hard rain,” was “atomic rain.”
Dylan is infamous for misleading or putting on interviewers. Since the early ‘60s he’s said whatever he felt like saying, whether it was true or not. In fact, he purposefully made up fictitious stories about his past. In the fall of 1961 he told CBS that he’d worked in a carnival, which wasn’t true:
Dylan: Yeah, well, I was in the carnival when I was about 13 — all kinds of shows.
CBS: Where’d you go?
Dylan: All around the Midwest, uh, Gallup, New Mexico, Aptos, Texas, and then … lived in, Gallup, New Mexico and …
CBS: How old were you?
Dylan: Uh, about 7, 8, something like that.
“Bob Dylan” is, in fact, a character that Robert Zimmerman created, a character that changed from a scruffy acoustic guitar playing folk singer to a mod rock ‘n’ roller to a Nashville crooner, to mention just a few of Dylan’s personas. One could look at the character “Bob Dylan” as a kind of living montage — a character Zimmerman created and then has been refining and developing ever since.
So misleading Terkel was nothing new, and Dylan has continued to mislead and confuse interviewers in the 51 years since that Terkel interview. That’s part of what “Bob Dylan” does. And in fact, what he’s doing is similar to what fiction writers do. They invent a story that, if they’re good, gets closer to the truth than non-fiction.
Regarding the “other random notations in the song notes” that the commenter brought up, I don’t think they’re all random.
Bob Dylan frequently looked to older songs and poems, sometimes as more than inspiration, when he wrote his own songs.
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is structurally based on the question and answer refrain pattern of the traditional British ballad “Lord Randall”, published by Francis Child, according to David Hajdu, author of “Positively 4th Street.”
For his melodies Dylan had been borrowing from old folk songs, so his notations of old folk songs including “Black is the Color (Of My True Love’s hair)” and “Railroad Boy” don’t strike me as random, but rather they may have been songs he was thinking about as he came up with the music for “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”
Writing the name of the rock ‘n’ roll group, The Dominos, and their hit, “Have Mercy Baby,” shows that even in 1962 when he appeared to be a hardcore folky, Dylan was into rock ‘n’ roll. And the references to comic book super heroes and a line from Edgar Allen Poe show that Dylan was drawing from a wide range of pop culture in addition to old folks songs and poetry as source material for his songs.
Perhaps most telling is that he wrote “Robert Houdin book” on the manuscript. As I wrote yesterday, that “likely refers to a book about the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, who is considered the father of modern conjuring.”
Dylan himself has proven to be quite a magician, transforming a middle-class kid from Hibbing, Minnesota into an international rock star, and conjuring up from bits and pieces of pop and folk culture, some of the greatest songs ever written.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
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Page two of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” I’ve manipulated the contrast to make the words more legible.
In 1963, when Studs Terkel spoke about “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” during a radio interview with Bob Dylan, he made a comment to Dylan about how the song had come out of his feelings about “atomic rain.”
“No, no,” Dylan said. “It’s not atomic rain, it’s just a hard rain. It isn’t the fallout rain. I mean some sort of end that’s just gotta happen … In the last verse, when I say, ‘the pellets of poison are flooding the waters’, that means all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers.”
Now it turns out Dylan was telling stories, and not being frank with Terkel.
Two pages of the working manuscript for “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” will be auctioned by Sotheby’s on June 24, 2014 in New York.
In examining photos of the manuscript pages that appeared in a New York Times story about the auction of this manuscript and the one for “Like A Rolling Stone,” it’s clear that Dylan meant the song to refer, at least in the chorus, to nuclear annihilation.
Right on the manuscript maybe two inches to the right of the line “It’s A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall” Dylan wrote “Hiroshima” and under that, “Nagasaki” — the two Japanese cities the U.S. bombed during World War II. A uranium gun-type atomic bomb (Little Boy) was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by a plutonium implosion-type bomb (Fat Man) on the city of Nagasaki on August 9. according to Wikipedia.
Clearly Dylan was being Dylan when he spoke to Terkel.
Unlike the manuscript for “Like A Rolling Stone,” where that song was a work in progress, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is finished. But what’s interesting about these two manuscript pages are other things that Dylan has written on the pages.
For instance, near the right edge of the second page it says “Robert Houdin book,” which likely refers to a book about the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, who is considered the father of modern conjuring.
On that same page Dylan wrote “Black is the color of my true love’s hair,” which is the title of an Appalachian folk song that Joan Baez recorded in 1962; on the manuscript, below the name of that song, Dylan has written “Baez Club 47.” Club 47 was a Cambridge, Massachusetts folk music venue where Dylan performed.
Joan Baez, “Black is the Color (Of My True Love’s Hair)”:
Also written at the side of the manuscript is “Railroad Boy,” which was the name Dylan and Baez used for a song that was variously called “The Butcher’s Boy,” “Go Bring Me Back My Blue-Eyed Boy” and “London City.” Dylan heard a 1928 recording of “The Butcher’s Boy” by Buell Kazee on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Below “Railroad Boy” is a line from the song: “She went upstairs to make her bed.”
Bob Dylan, “Railroad Boy” (May 1961):
Buell Kazee, “The Butcher’s Boy”:
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, “Railroad Boy” (1987):
Dylan wrote “Doctor Strange.” near the bottom of the page and “Miss Masque” and “Bullet Girl,” all names of comic book super heroes, although the third super hero was actually called “Bulletgirl.”
Miss Masque.
Dylan quoted from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat,” writing down the phrase “solitary eye of fire.” The short story is about “a murderer [who] carefully conceals his crime and believes himself unassailable, but eventually breaks down and reveals himself, impelled by a nagging reminder of his guilt,” according to Wikipedia.
And he wrote “Have Mercy Baby,” and “Dominoes,” referring of course to The Dominoes’ “Have Mercy Baby,” an R&B hit in 1952.
The Dominoes,” Have Mercy Baby”:
Clearly even in 1962 when Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” he was already a master collage artist, utilizing bits and pieces of culture from the past to craft his own unique art.
The two manuscript pages are expected to sell for between $400,000 and $600,000 according to the New York Times.
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (Town Hall, New York, April 12, 1963):
Page one.
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Oh to have been a fly on the wall as Bob Dylan wrote some of his now classic songs.
Until time travel becomes possible, the closest we may get to observing Dylan the songwriter in action are the four pages from the working manuscript for “Like A Rolling Stone” that Sotheby’s will auction on June 24, 2014 in New York.
On the pages, along with many of the lines that ended up in what some believe is Dylan’s greatest song, a song that certainly changed people’s ideas of what rock ‘n’ roll could be upon it’s release in July of 1965, are lyrics that Dylan clearly was considering for inclusion, but which didn’t make the cut.
The chorus, for instance, didn’t fully come together until page four of the manuscript. On page one there is a version of the chorus that reads:
“How does it feel
How does it feel
To be (or not to be) on your own
Direction (road back home)
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”
Right below the second “How does it feel,” Dylan has added “Is it ain’t quite real.”
And at the side of the page it says “Al Capone” with a line drawn to the word “direction” in the chorus.
Page two.
On the second page of the manuscript is a version of the chorus with “path unknown” as one of the lines.
At the top of page three is written: “How does it feel/ Behind the wheel.”
At the bottom of page three the chorus is again a work in progress:
How does it feel to be on your own
It feels real (dog-bone)
Does it feel real.”
Then he wrote “New direction home” but put a line through “new” and wrote “no” under it.
Then: “When the winds have (unreadable word that could be “flown”)
“Shut up and deal like a rolling stone
Raw deal
Get down and kneel.”
Page three.
By page four this is the chorus:
“How does it feel, how does it feel
To be on your own
Like a dog without a bone
Now you’re unknown
Forever complete unknown
New direction home
No direction home
Like a rolling stone.”
“If you look at these four pages, you can see that at this stage there are rhyme schemes that he didn’t pursue, and I suppose the chorus is the biggest surprise,” Richard Austin, Sotheby’s manuscript expert, told the New York Times. “Here you have a chorus that is such an iconic piece of history, but it clearly didn’t arrive fully formed. And you wonder, if he chose another rhyme, would it have had the same impact?”
Dylan has written names of songs and books on the pages, which may or may not relate to the song itself: “Pony Blues,” a song by Charley Patton; “Midnight Special” (and above it “Mavis”); “On the Road”; and “Butcher Boy,” which likely refers to “The Butcher Boy,” an old folk song that the Clancy Brothers recorded.
“It was ten pages long,” Dylan once said of the manuscript for “Like A Rolling Stone.” “It wasn’t called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest. In the end it wasn’t hatred, it was telling someone something they didn’t know, telling them they were lucky.”
Page four.
There’s also a mostly discarded verse that reads:
“You never listened to the man who could (illegible) jive and wail
Never believed ‘m when he told you he had love for sale
You said you’d never compromise/ now he looks into your eyes
and says do you want make a deal.”
And what ended up being the third verse reads like this in part:
“You never turned around
To see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns
When they all came down
And did tricks for you to shake the money tree.”
There’s a line drawn through that entire last line.
The four manuscript pages for “Like A Rolling Stone” could sell for as much as $2 million.
This is so great you need to just stop reading and click ‘play’ on the SoundCloud player below.
Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Thurston Moore cover the Gun Club’s terrific “Nobody’s City.”
The song appears on the just released Axels & Sockets, a collection Jeffrey Lee Pierce covers. Pierce, of course, was the leader of the Gun Club. (There’s another excellent cover at the bottom of this post.)
Album track list:
01 Iggy Pop & Nick Cave (feat. Thurston Moore) – Nobody’s City
02 The Amber Lights & Debbie Harry – Kisses For My President
03 Black Moth – Mexican Love
04 Julie Christensen – Weird Kid Blues
05 Slim Cessna’s Auto Club – Ain’t My Problem Baby
06 Crippled Black Phoenix & Cypress Grove (feat. Mark Lanegan & Bertrand Cantat) – Constant Limbo (Constant Rain)
07 Nick Cave & Debbie Harry – Into The Fire
08 Kris Needs Presents…Honey – Thunderhead
09 Mark Lanegan & Bertrand Cantat – Desire By Blue River
10 The Amber Lights & Xanthe Waite – Kitty In The Moonlight
11 Ruby Throat – Secret Fires
12 Andrea Schroeder – Kisses For My President
13 James Johnston – Body And Soul
14 Primal Scream – Goodbye Johnny (Andrew Weatherall’s Nyabinghi Noir Mix)
15 Hugo Race – Break ‘Em Down
16 Cypress Grove – My Cadillac
17 Lydia Lunch & Jeffrey Lee Pierce – The Journey Is Long
18 Mark Stewart & Jeffrey Lee Pierce (feat. Thurston Moore) – Shame And Pain
This one is damn good too:
Black Moth, “Mexican Love”:
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