My reaction to both listening to ‘More Blood, More Tracks’ and reading the lyric booklet, from late in the evening, 11/2/18.
……….
Wild alternate lyrics for ‘Idiot Wind’ include “space is place, God is love, time is money.” I hear these lines in the same cadence as the brilliant end product, “you can have the best there is but its going to cost you all your love / you won’t get it for money,” verse. Rewrite!
Blood on the Tracks deals with capitalism too. The pressure to earn and consequences of dereliction are in ‘Tangled up in Blue’ and ‘Up to Me.’ ‘Lily, Rosemary, & the Jack of Hearts’ is partly about class and corruption. ‘Idiot Wind?’ Both parties are unscrupulous, materialistic. This album has heavy shit to say about America — from a realistic, not idealistic or defeatist, point of view. This is something Pete Hamill totally nailed in his liner notes that I’m not sure many others have hit in all this time. (Which the album would say is relative anyway)
http://www.bobsboots.com/CDs/cd-b28_Hamilltext.html
I love the first try with the priest in ‘Idiot Wind.’ He waltzes on a tilted floor. That turned to waltzed around while the building burned then sat stone-faced while the building burned.
The iconic line ‘early one mornin’, the sun was shining,’ was actually “5 AM”* to start before it was seemingly rewrote in what looks like a millisecond.
*(I was wrong about this in my original Tweet. The actual line is “5 in the morning,” which actually would have fit perfectly into the cadence of his delivery. He just preferred “early one mornin’.”)
Dylan seems like he is rewriting as he’s writing. He doesn’t pursue an idea then reconsider — he writes four ideas almost at once, then makes a decision or starts over. There’s nothing clean about his process — the new idea is not cordoned from the old by erasing or tearing pages. I’m fascinated by this. Its like the second draft becoming the third then fourth in the same line as the first — then you may have lines from each draft in there — so there really aren’t drafts. Its the same thing all the time. Trying to imitate this would be impossible for most. Ultimately he wrote these ideas and seemed to make his final selection for the album based on feel. First draft of Up to Me has like 50 edits on a page!
The Union Central’s pullin’ out
And the smell of stale perfume
Has been floating in my memory
Since I left the womb
And the loan sharks On Madison Square
Offered me charity
Someone set it straight
I knew it was up to me
Interesting stuff on ‘Shelter from the Storm’ “burnt out & exhausted” verses: one under consideration was ‘bushwhacked on the prairie / rolled on New Year’s Eve.’ Getting ‘rolled’ was an expression in the 70s referring to being jumped in or outside a bar. Bukowski was fond of it. Also the “hunted like a crocodile” line which was actually used was written quite small above “I was hanging in the distance / ravaged in the corn.” I actually prefer the original ‘in a little hilltop village the turning point was close’ to ‘they bartered for my clothes.’ I prefer that because I like how it references people having messianic expectations of partners that can turn into a “lethal dose” opposed to the one that was on the album which actually just feels outright messianic. Duality of the song is more apparent to me reading the lyrics. I’ve never really understood ‘Shelter.’ Is it a brilliant move that the arrangement and singing seem so sentimental and romantic while the lyrics are actually about how the need to love because the world is brutal can leave you brokenhearted, or should that’ve been more obvious? Maybe Dylan got a little obtuse in the 80s because people like me literally never understood what something like ‘Shelter from the Storm’ was really saying.
“Where Do You Turn (Turning Point).” Fuck I wish this had been recorded. Would have been a classic. But I hear it on the piano. Tough fit on ‘Blood.’ But damn its great. Also interesting to note the connection with the early draft of ‘Shelter’ which mentions a turning point. “Led by a heart that wanders astray / trapped by a brain I can’t throw away.”
“Its Breaking Me Up” is like “Where Do You Turn.” Jarringly direct writing from a master of cloaking. These are disarming, vulnerable lyrics for songs that feel like a broken postscript to Planet Waves, rooted in the emotionality of ‘Forever Young.’ An album that could’ve been.
Yeah I would rather have ‘Blood’ than this album but I’d also take these two over a few on ‘Blood’ because I love their honesty and Dylan would have hit the performances out of the park. He probably thought they were good songs but not what he was comfortable sharing with the public. “Just you and me and starlight in the room.”
Shittt. Love the original second to last verse of ‘Simple Twist of Fate.’
Like an acrobat does his stunt
Like a tiger now,
How he’ll hunt
Hunt her doen by the waterfront
Where the sailors all come in
Maybe she’ll pick him out again
Man! So much better than the parrot, imo. To those without the booklet the parrot verse is underneath in a square box… and sigh. That parrot. I mean its hard to quibble about one of the best songs ever written but wtf with that line? Is the guy a pirate or something?
There’s a song now “Ain’t it Funny” that is just indecipherable. That’s a goddamn shame because I’d love to read Dylan lyrics for a song called “Ain’t it Funny.”
I have found my white wale. The discarded verses from ‘Idiot Wind’ that hit me like a punch when I was 22 and hadn’t read again ‘till now. And they are better than I remember. They are brilliant. Oh happy night! These are brilliant lines which anyone who has felt alienated from their own experiences can understand:
In a backroom of refugees
Blue strangers
Tell me where I’ve been
But I don’t remember anything
To me its like amnesia has set in
And more genius, unused lines:
I woke up on the roadside
Daydreaming about the way things used to be
Until a vision of your yellow horse
Trampled me back to reality
I’ve had my fill of red tape and bureaucracy
Boulevard Variety 