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Hey everyone, I'm Jim Salvucci of the Dilentaunts and welcome to the latest installment of million dollar bash.
The 1974 album Planet Waves marked a series of firsts for Bob Dylan. It was his first official album with the band. It was his first record not on the Columbia label, and it was, believe it or not, his first number one album. The music represents, if not a return to form, a reset after the release of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and the Columbia compiled revenge album called simply Dylan. Compositionally, its a musical waystation between 1970s new morning and 1970 fives blood on the tracks. The songs feel personal and even at times intimate, and the influence of the band on the music is unmistakable, particularly Robbie Robertsons always superb lead guitar and Garth Hudsons meandering organ, which constantly threatens to explode the arrangements. Even paradoxically, though, its what holds them together.
Dylan's harmonica is pretty special, too. The album's opener on a night like this, is a jaunty, accordion driven love song. The lyrics are simple, rhyming night like this with touch of bliss, for instance. It stands in contrast to the magisterial cast iron song that follows, going on with its heavy guitar work and heavier lyrics, speaking of the top of the end. And that song in turn gives way to the outright jocularity of tough mamade with her meat shaking on her bones, which leads to the torch ballad hazel. Don't worry, I'm not going to catalog the album's ten songs and eleven tracks here, but it's worth noting that discrepancy. Ten songs but eleven tracks. That's because there are two versions of Forever Young, the most famous song on the album, and a perennial favorite one, is the anthemic hymn we are most familiar with, which closes side one of the final albums. Side two opens with the same song done as a country rock hunky tonk. This song, by the way, was quoted by Howard Cosell when Muhammad Ali defeated Leon Spinks in 1978.
It occurs to us that Bob Dylan struck the proper note in his great song forever young. May your hands always be busy may your feet always be swift may you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift. In 1980, Cosell reprised with even Muhammad Ali cannot be forever young. His hands are no longer busy, his feet no longer swift. If Cosell were still alive, maybe I'd watch more sports broadcasts. Planet Ways probably lands a few fans list of Dylan's top ten, but it still likely occupies a special place in their playlist of albums. It's highly listenable, offering a variety of song genres from rock to ditty. Theres a darkness mixed in with the joy. For instance, the grave dirge is sandwiched between the rollicking version of Forever Young and the loveliness of you, angel, you. I first found the album when I was in college in the early eighties, and ive loved it ever since. Again, not because it is such an objectively great album, but because it feels great. It also has my all time favorite personal misinterpretation of a Dylan lyric. Imagine how chagrined I was to learn after years of mishearing dirge, that the mediocre line in this age of fiberglass, I'm searching for a gem wasn't delightful verse, I'd imagine. In this age of fine repast I'm searching for a jam.
What can I say? Sometimes the ear improves Dylan. So with that, let's meet today's million dollar bashers. We're going to start with Court Carney. Say hi, court.
[00:04:03] Speaker C: Hi, everyone.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Up next, earn Callahan.
[00:04:08] Speaker D: Hey, everyone. Great to be here.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Rayleigh hearn.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Good to see you. And hear you as always.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: And last but not least, rockin Rob Virginio.
[00:04:18] Speaker E: Thanks very much, Jim. Glad to. Really glad to see everybody today.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah, great to see everyone. Unfortunately, Nina Goss could not make it today, so hopefully we'll get her back in the next month.
All right, so let's get our very long stream hot takes on this album.
[00:04:38] Speaker D: I feel like just as a one off, I've already shared my very hot take that this is a rare Dylan January release. It was released the day after my actual birth, so I'm just going to accept it as a gift.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Yes. And I think I told you it's a shame that your parents didn't name you Hazelden.
[00:04:56] Speaker D: I love that song.
So maybe it is a shame.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: How did you all first encounter this album?
[00:05:09] Speaker D: I think I'm just going to go. I think Carrie Winscott introduced it to me. And so my good friend, who was my Dylan, Betty, and I think we just listened to it over and over again one summer. Just, it became the album of the summer. And so it seems pretty appropriate. And I love it because it takes me back to that moment in time which is really before I became a full fledged adult. And so I really, there's a sense of innocence to it that I really cherish about it.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: How old were you? Do you remember?
[00:05:37] Speaker D: My twenties? Early twenties.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Okay, so you weren't a full fledged adult until when? Like your thirties?
[00:05:42] Speaker D: Oh, no. I don't even know if I am now.
I would say probably grad school, I'm sure.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Okay.
How about you, court? When did you first encounter this album? Do you remember?
[00:05:54] Speaker C: I was a big David Geffen fan in 1974, and so I was following what he had been doing. I was zero at this point. I'll have to tip my hat. I was not alive when this was released. I think this was a period, probably in my twenties where I was really into the bandaid, and I went into this period where I listened to rock of ages every day. That kind of period we've all kind of been in. And I think that's when I first clocked it. I don't think I clocked it through Dylan, really, as much as the band, and I didn't know what to do with it. It wasn't a record that I went to a lot. It's a record I listen to a lot now. I actually really like this record, and it's a record that has, like, a vibe to it. And then I used to think it was a vibe that fell apart when you listened to the particular songs, but I don't think that's really that true. I think there's. It's a fine record. I know it reminds me of a record, like, I know everyone puts it in the new morning category. There's a great line on Reddit where it's like, this is new morning after it went drinking or went out drinking or something, but I like it. I think it's in the meta world. Like, street legal is that record that every few years, people rediscover. It's like, did you ever know about street legal? And I think now we're in a period of street legal revitalization, but we've been. We're constantly revitalizing these records. But I think this is the same kind of thing. It's not a record that probably said too much to me at the beginning when I first heard it, but I really do like it without trying too hard. I really do like it.
It's easy to like.
[00:07:27] Speaker E: I agree with Cor, and I came to it from listening to the basement tapes a lot and listening to the band albums and being really intrigued about how, because the band, of course, developed their own sound on those albums. And to a certain degree, this is a kind of meeting of the kind of Dylan influenced ambiance of those basement tapes, and he's, to a certain degree, giving the band space on a lot of these songs to amplify the sound that they've created on their own albums. So, like court, I came to this album through listening to the bandaid, listening to the band, of course, followed, for me, an immersion in the basement tapes and wanting to see what they pulled out of the basement. And so, yeah, I find it does have this kind of vibe that hangs over the entire album. It's broken to a certain degree in songs like Dirge, which kind of foreshadows Blood on the tracks, which, to me, blood on the tracks. It casts a shadow over this album, right. In many ways, especially in some of the songs where Dylan touches on memories of his past. And I find. And we'll talk about this in more detail when we talk about individual songs, but the wonderful way on Blood on the tracks, where he interweaves the perplexities of relationships and memory, it doesn't quite come to that on this album, but I don't think that's what he was looking for on this album.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: How about you, Gregory?
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I came to it relatively late and definitely out of chronological order. And so by the time I came to planet waves, it became really impossible to listen to it just as its own thing. Right. You can't help but put it in the context of what came before and what came after. And it does feel like a really transitional album in certain ways, firmly rooted in Dylan's past, both because he's working again with the bandaid and because so many of the lyrics harken back, it seems sometimes directly to Duluth, right? But in a lot of ways back to what feels like his youth in Minnesota. But then, like Rob, it seems, in retrospect, in so many ways, to anticipate what it, you have to say is a superior album. But that's an unfair standard, because how many albums ever made are better than blood on the tracks? But, yeah, in terms of, especially the relationship songs, you feel like you're starting to sense some ambivalence, even more so than is is there. And new mourning and seeing certain fractures and fault lines that will turn into yawning chasms by the time we get to blood on the tracks. Not that I want to reduce it to purely autobiographical reading. That's always a mistake in Dylan. It's always there in Dylan. He's a personal songwriter, but it's always a mistake to just reduce it to that. But certainly some of the relationship troubles that we know developed outside the studio and off stage, uh, feel like they're casting a shadow here as well. And though it's not my original observation. I forget where I got it from. Maybe Paul Williams, maybe Clinton Halen, maybe Michael Gray. But the notion that Dylan is transitioning his whole life out west to Malibu around this time, too, and shifting record labels maybe is partially. Maybe that personal sort of upheaval helps explain why he's making so many references to his Minnesota youth. Because it hearkens back to other tumultuous times in his life, which mark a radical shift from one condition, one place, one state of being to another. So it feels like a very transitional album on a lot of levels.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: So is there an underrated song on this album? Something you think just doesn't get enough attention in the dylan pantheon?
[00:11:16] Speaker C: Non forever young songs on here?
I think that as a record, it's beautiful. People, people complain about the setting because they're not thinking of it as an lp. So it's like, why the two? We all get that, but I think there's a parallel. You've got hazel and something there is about you. Something there is about you, my God, that's buried in the end of side one. And then you have you, angel, you, which I think is a little dismissed, but I think it's great. And, my God, never say goodbye. Those sort of songs are completely overshadowed in the kind of the conversation, I think, because dirge comes in there, tough mama, which I have less mileage on tough mama than others. I think it hinges on your use of the word crotch.
Are we the dylan Thompson to this, then? That's where you fall.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: The best use of crotch by a Nobel laureate of all time, I think.
[00:12:07] Speaker E: Which has been expurgated from the website. If you look at the lyrics on the website to tough Mama, they've completely removed, really, their crotchless versus their crotchless.
It's really interesting, the lyrics they put up there, and I haven't done the research into, because he played the song somewhere on the never ending tour, like once or twice, and I don't know, but it was like 2001, it was re copyrighted. So I don't know if this is like a revision of it, but, yeah, it's interesting.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Well, and I know that we're focusing just on the album, but because we happen to be recording this just days after the release of the 27 disc tour 74, which I did not purchase and do not plan to purchase, I just lean on Ray Padgett to tell me what I should listen to, and he's done great work with tour 74. So major props to Ray Padgett. But I have to say one of my favorite songs that I have heard from all of those releases is nobody except you, which did not make the cut onto the album. And I think it's in Chicago is the version that I've heard. But what a great vocal. He just totally commits to that and completely wins my heart over with every word that he sings in that serenade. What a great tune. It's a shame that he couldn't have come up with that in the studio, because that belongs on this album. It's certainly part of the family, the genetic text of planet waves. Even if it didn't make the cut.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Onto the album, I believe nobody except you was one of the very first songs he tried to record for the album, too, and it just didn't go well for him or whatever. Dylan, when he leaves off, it's always pretty amazing.
Any other thoughts about underrated songs on the album?
[00:14:01] Speaker C: I don't know if it falls into.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: The category category of underrated because I've always loved Dirge as a song and it makes me wish I was a musician because I feel like probably there is a paper to be written about how Dylan writes differently for piano or sings differently for piano than guitar songs. But I can't pursue that any further than to say, I bet there's something there. But the thing that really made me think there's a lot more there than I ever gave it credit for was, is there a video component to this at all? Jim?
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Yeah, we always put the video on YouTube.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: Okay, well, I'll hold this up, but what I'm holding up, for those of you who can't see it or just listening to the audio version, is mixing up the medicine, that great gigantic coffee table book that was released, was it? Last year? With certain gems from the Tulsa archives.
And wow, what an astounding treasure trove of new information we have about Dirge and planet waves from the chapter contributed by Raymond Foy.
And he shows they reproduce one page of an initial handwritten lyrics where Dylan's making multiple references to Leonard Cohen. I'm like, what?
So there's a conference paper for someone to write the Leonard Cohen intertext. It's on page 250 to 86 and following for those of you who have the book at home. But yeah, so there are Leonard Cohen references in the original manuscript, but then, my God, some of the outtakes for liner notes that Dylan wrote are astounding. He writes dirge for dying America, the dream gone cold blue steel eyed women of death rising from the ashes of tumult, black vaporization, lights out, Haymarket Square angola, tombstone, Sacco and Venzetti, Ethel and Julius, and the four dead in Ohio. Like the master said, it's not what's here, it's what's left out. It's been a long ride and lot's been discarded, abandoned a long way. It's like, whoa, wait, what? And it surprises me that I never picked up on any of this because I'm usually the first guy to go to an allegorical reading. Dylan. I've got a whole chapter on religious allegory in time out of mind. Rob and I have had multiple conversations with allegorical readings of songs like as I went out one morning or tears of rage. And so I'm surprised it never occurred to me. I just dumbly read it like a relationship song. And it is that. But I think that Dylan's doing a lot more in the song than I ever recognized until this. This chapter in mixing up the medicine drew my attention to it, and I realized he is. It's another link, another foreshadow, I think, to blood on the tracks, because I think he nails that kind of song in a masterpiece like idiot wind, which is such a relationship song and yet so much more ambitious than that. Right? Is this kind of commentary on Watergate era America? But I guess he was already starting to get that ambitious songwriting. Those muscles exercised again on planet waves in ways that I had failed to appreciate until mixing up the Madison Greeley.
[00:17:14] Speaker C: Do we know. Are those the. Wasn't that supposed to be an insert or something, or was. Were these. It was ditched at the last minute. Is that kind of what happened?
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like there was an abbreviated version of interesting liner notes put out by Dylan, but not some of the gems that were left off, but that now we have access to, thanks to Raymond Foy's research in the archives. Yeah, fast. I don't think there's any. I can never hear that song the same way again after reading this chapter.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: So.
[00:17:46] Speaker E: Yeah, I agree. That was a song that really caught my attention this time around, and it was everything Greely has said, buttressed by, of course, those incredible liner notes from mixing up the medicine is exactly how I feel about the song, because it doesn't.
Surely, idiot Wind is a song that does it better, but all the elements are there, right? You've got this. Attacks dirge tacks between this raw confessional mode, but the opening verse is so lacerating. And then this mode that he discovers on blood on the tracks. I went out on Lower Broadway and I felt that place within the hollow place where martyrs weep and angels play with sin, where something that you might even think of as being part of, like shelter from the storm or something like that. And then, of course, as Greeley was just saying, so sing your praise of progress in the doom machine. The naked truth is still taboo wherever it can be seen. So he takes the lover's passion and the larger social surroundings and makes the song, forces us to think about this song as a kind of disillusionment with whatever progress might represent in american discourse. And then it ends with this kind of, like, really bitter, stripped down idiomouse. Right? I hate myself for loving you but I shouldn't get over that. And so it's. It mixes up these different modes in a way that is, I don't know if this is correct or not, if really would agree there's a little more seamless in idiot wind or kind of flows better, but all the elements in dirge are there that are then amplified and refined in idiot wind.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And if it's. If it's a breakup song with Lady Liberty or America or whatever, I have to put in what otherwise sounds like one of the most misogynistic lines Bob Dylan ever wrote. And though Raymond Foy doesn't comment on it, if you stare carefully enough at the yellow legal pad page reproduced there on page 287, you can read that the initial last line was going to say, I hate myself for loving you. Now get out of here, you bitch. What?
[00:20:02] Speaker C: What?
[00:20:03] Speaker A: That's what's written down there. I'm reading it on the page. So, yeah, I think at least he had the good taste to get rid of that line. But there's only so far an allegorical reading can go, I think, to rescue the kind of snarling rage that comes across at times in a song like this. Yikes.
[00:20:22] Speaker D: I.
To kind of go with that. And what you're saying about the cohesiveness of the album. Tony Atwood did a really wonderful analysis. I don't know if you guys have seen it. And then how Durga and wedding song kind of work together. Like, I love you more than life itself and first lines and how the imagery kind of works. I hate myself for loving you. Like, there seems to be parallel where one is really looking at. They're both are looking at complexities of relationships, but then you have the one that is obviously the negative aspect of it. He focuses more on wedding song and that analysis. But I thought that was really interesting to pair those two songs together, to look at them at this point in.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Concho, who did you say that was.
[00:21:03] Speaker D: By Aaron Tony Atwood until Dylan.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting. I never thought about the allegorical reading, same as you. I just took it straight up relationship song, but it makes total sense now, especially some of the lyrics at the end. And one of the. Is there another song other than Blind Willie Mactel where it's just guitar and piano like that? I don't think there is.
And there's another connection. There jumps a few more years, but blind Willie Mac tell is another one of these songs that's about something smaller and something vastere from New Orleans to Jerusalem. Right. Same kind of idea, same movement you get in idiot wind, and apparently the same movement you get in dirge. So that's a good get greatly. Thanks.
What about more?
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: No, please.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Well, I was going to say one of the more interesting readings I've ever come across from. One of the songs here is forever young. And though I don't buy this interpretation, I'll just put it out here, because props to it being for being so clever, even though I don't think it's accurate. But I know it was Clinton Halen. I think it was in still on the road, the second volume of his commentary on all the songs that Bob Dylan was known to have written up to that point. And he argued that the young and forever Young was Neil Young and that Dylan. Now, we do know that Dylan was on the record as being a bit myth, that Neil Young seemed to be filling the void left by him in that kind of singer songwriter guitar harmonica mode, and maybe felt like harvest was a bit too derivative. Of course, they've become great pals since then, but the notion of forever young being almost like a back off, stick to your territory. You do the young thing, I'll do the Dylan thing. The position is still filled. Thank you very much. Which I wouldn't put Dylan that, entirely past Dylan to have that kind of buried level, because that's the vibe I get from a song like fourth time around as an answer song to norwegian wood and John Lennon. So I guess it's possible. But I think it's an interpretive stretch on Halens part, but nevertheless an interesting one. I do think of it when I hear the song forever young now it's.
[00:23:28] Speaker C: Actually the forever Jungden, and it's about his shadow self, I will say.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Correct. I had a freudian slip there.
[00:23:37] Speaker C: A friend of mine loves this record so much that she has cast iron songs and torch ballads and that handwriting tattooed. And she also has shot of love in full color here. And I asked her before this conversation, I was like, so what is it about this record? And what is it about Bob Dylan? And she said, the very first thing she said was his voice.
Like, she just loves his voice on this. And I was thinking how much the voice carries. Because if you go back to the conversation y'all were just having, but you shifted to something there is about you. He's playing in that sandbox, but he has. Those verses are youth, Duluth, Ruth and truth. And if someone else did that, it would just be so terrible. But the way he sings Ruth is so wonderful. And the way those lyrics. But it's like what y'all are saying with Dirge, it's like he's playing. He's beginning to, what is it gonna say about this? And one thing that comes back to me is the one bit of trivia that always pops up that doesn't make sense is the fact that this was originally ceremonies for the Horsemen. Like, that doesn't make sense to me at all as a title, but he clearly wanted it, right. Wasn't even the fact that they delayed or whatever it was. Planet waves comes in late, and I was reading this mojo, do we all get Mojo still from 1996 or something? And Mojo has a thing in here that I've never seen before, which says that planet waves came from a piece of free verse about DMT, the divine and quest for answers. Waves on the planet still, I haven't seen the face of God.
That's pretty good.
But why was he going back to love minus zero? But why is he doing that? Where are ceremonies of the horsemen coming? That's a very peculiar thing to me. I think there's. This is what's so beautiful about this record is, like, all of his stuff. It's like, it might just be like, this is a great vibe, day drinking record. And then it's all this heavy shit on. The aura of it is so weird and interesting. And he's clearly playing with something. His voice is good. The other thing I'll say is that the missed opportunity is the band, which has arguably the best harmony singers in recorded music are used to so sparing the effect. But one thing I was going into was, if you listen to never say goodbye, Denko's there. Rick is singing and it's. Is there anything better than, like, Rick singing harm? It's just the best. He's just so good. It's so beautiful and touching. And the fact that he's almost a ghost in that song. He sings like a couple of lyrics and then he shares the final verse, but he's mixed so low. But there's nothing better than Rick Danko singing, unless you're talking about Richard Manuel singing and the two of them. The fact that they're not voiced on here as much, I think, is curious. That's where maybe the 74 recordings, which I haven't dug into either. I saved Ray's beautiful synopsis for later.
So. Yeah, no, I think that's interesting. It is a beautiful record. If you love pinched guitar playing from Robbie, you're going to love this record. And it's a very warm record, too. The Malibu sun. I don't know. I'm just saying shit. Now.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: At some point, Dylan abandoned having his musicians sing back up live. I'm not sure exactly what point. And I've heard this, like Rayleigh, I don't know where, but that he did this because he felt that they weren't playing as well when they were singing. And that's why he wanted dedicated backup singers, a dedicated chorus, which he would soon have in a few years after this album. So perhaps that's what's going on here. I don't know. I don't. This album was recorded very quickly, so I don't think there was a lot of overdubbing, if any.
[00:27:21] Speaker C: There.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Supposedly there. There was some. There was some vocal overdubbing by Dylan afterward. I don't really know the extent of that. But it doesn't. I don't think there was any instrumentation laid down. I think everybody was in the room together, like Dylan likes to do it.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: I'll throw in one other footnote to court's comment about just theories of where the title comes from, because I do love Planet waves. I don't know what it means. I don't see really what its connection to the album is. But I just. It's a cool sounding title, but I guess Raymond Foy, the author of this chapter I keep referring to glowingly reflections on Dirge from mixing up the medicine, but he's really deep into Allen Ginsberg. And he points out that Ginsburg had the book of poems called Planet News that Dylan may have had in mind, but that given these kind of allegorical readings about Dirge as not so much about an individual woman as about a kind of allegorical manifestation of America, that Dylan might have even more had Allen Ginsburg's follow up volume of poems in mind, the Fall of America Poems of the States, 1965 to 1971, and.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Really just froze on us. Gotta love zoom, love to know. He's probably saying something unbelievably brilliant right now. You froze there. Did you know that?
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Oh, no, I didn't know.
A storm is blowing through here. I think maybe I'm becoming unstable.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: Oh, so you were saying something about the. The book of poems, the second volume?
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So? So I said that the planet waves may be an allusion to planet news by Alan Ginsburg, but Ginsburg's follow up volume of poems was called the Fall of America Poems of these states, 1965 to 1971. There you go. There it is. And that now that we know more about some of Dylan's intentions behind these songs and this album, that might be an even better touchstone.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Let's talk about forever young. There's two versions here. People tend to have a strong version, a strong favorite there, and an aversion to the other. What are your thoughts about the two versions of forever young or the song in general?
[00:29:52] Speaker D: I did a deep dive in this because I think, and the guerilla corporate can attest to this. It made me think of this effort talking about in Denmark and particularly court's ideas about vulnerability and grayling brought up in the beginning. I'll get to the point, but how Dylan has gone through so much transition. And the one thing I think, particularly in the studio, that's comfortable for him in that homosexual connection that he has to the bandaid. And so we know the story because Halen tells it. And so we told him many different sources about Louie Kemp's lady friend. That's the palin. Or who made fun of Dylan trip. The slow version that I always say from Brony, I have to get this right.
It's just a glitch that I have. He loved that. He was incredibly made, fun, slow version. And then the stories that once Dylan heard that, I don't know that I accept this, but once he heard that, oh, you're getting Mushkin your old age, that he then did the funky tonk version. But I wonder if that original slow version is like. And all the stuff that we may read as more geekly personal and even sentimental is he's got this group of hooks that he does feel a sense of vulnerability with, and he can in a way that he maybe didn't in other albums. And so I just feel like that, that slow version, for me, it's the version that's the one that I tend to lean toward because there's something just, you know, what's ethereal and beautiful about it. It's just. I like the fast version, but I think this little one is like, we see them there's a sense of vulnerability to it that I don't feel on the fast one. I don't know if you guys have anything to say to that, but that was my hot take on that.
[00:31:30] Speaker E: I agree completely that the slow version is the version, and I always, in hearing this, the second honky tonk version seems to me to take the piss out of slow version, and this is, like, really pushing it a little bit. But forever young is this encomium towards, like, this praise of being forever innocent. May you be forever innocent, which, of course, we know is impossible. And I always think of Blake's introduction to songs of innocence, where he said, where he writes, I made a rural pen and stained I the water clear and wrote my happy songs. Every child made joy to hear. And that word stained, of course, is meant to stand out really, like, harshly ironically here, right? Like, you can't write about innocence because an innocent being doesn't write. It doesn't cogitate in that self, reflect in that way. It just is. And so it's got this yearning to it. And the sped up version of it, I don't know, to me, always had this kind of, like, embrace of that irony of obviously can't be forever young. And so forever young resonates with me. The sped up version, at least does with your. Resonates for me, Aaron, with your point about the homosocial community that he's shaped around himself in that way. Right.
[00:32:43] Speaker D: I think, too, this idea of being forever young, it goes as the counterpoint to what Gordon was saying about dirge, too. Like, this idea that we want to be forever young, but in dirge, we realize that it's an impossibility.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Right? And I think it becomes interesting, too, because the other context I can never not think about when listening to this album is that Dylan knew he had signed a new record contract and agreed to put out a new album with the band, but he also had agreed to go on the road. So even though they hadn't gone on the road yet, he knew that was coming after six years away, and he knew what the road was like, and he knew what the temptations of the road were like. And so this kind of clinging to innocence, again, I'm probably reading too much, and certainly too much autobiography into this, but I think even if it's only on some subliminal level, this clinging to innocence is also a clinging to a thing that you know is not real and cannot last, and probably sure as hell won't be lasting much longer once he's out with the tough mamas out on the road. And. And indeed, we know that it was the beginning of the end for that domestic life in more ways than one. But, yeah, to go back to Aaron's point there, was it halen or was it something Harry Hughes said in a. Maybe in a definitely Dylan gathering, that Louis Kemp's girlfriend was named Martha and that. That the original title for Dirge was Dirge for Martha. And so that maybe that. That Dylan started trying to rebut the charge that he was getting old with songs like Forever Young and for other songs like dirge form arts, forever Young.
[00:34:25] Speaker E: Is putatively, it's for his kids. It's for his children. Right. And then in wedding song, it always seems hilarious. I can't help but think of it as hilarious to me in Weddingsong, where he's trying to solidify this. I love that. What? The way you put that. Great contextualizing it in the autobiographical, where there's something here that he's got that he knows perhaps isn't going to last. You gave me babies one, two, three, and he doesn't even give you another line.
He just casts the kids away in that line. And what's more, you saved my life. And it's like, back to this, like, focus on the self and on the lover. And that's profoundly not how a family works. And the babies here are props, proof that they love each other in some way, hopelessly grasping after that proof of love. And this only exacerbates the sense of, for me, that the lover whom he addresses in wedding song is a prompt.
[00:35:20] Speaker D: As well, also to go with that, from going down the biographical route. Sever saved his life from being on the road after the motorcycle accident. And granted, he's about to go on the road again, and so we see the end of that.
Trevor Young, and maybe he's trying to grasp onto it.
[00:35:41] Speaker E: That's a great point. Absolutely. Like, save me, don't let me go on the road, Sarah, please.
[00:35:47] Speaker C: When you just said babies one, two, three, it highlights the fact that it sounds a lot like Vera, chuck and Dave or something. They're just like, whatever names you want to throw in there.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: And not for nothing, he had six kids with Sarah, his.
[00:36:04] Speaker E: Her old.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Her daughter he adopted, and then they had five together. Right. So he halved the number of children, although that would. It would be a really even worse lyric if he said one, two, three through six or something like that.
What about. I want to talk a little bit about the musicianship in this album because it is the band and I mentioned Garth Hudson's organ, which I find it lurks in the background. If you concentrate on it when you're listening, this is throughout the album, not any individual song. If you really concentrate on his organ, you realize it's doing so much. It's really holding things together. It changes the entire tenor. Although I believe in the first song, he's playing accordion. And Robbie Robertson's guitar. I love that pinched guitar. That's the court said. That's exactly right. He plays that throughout. He does that superbly. And then Dylan, by the way, great piano playing. Yes, but incredible harmonica. Forever young. Both versions, very different harmonica parts. Brilliant. Both of them really fabulous harmonica parts, and several throughout the album. So what are your comments on the musicianship in this album? Now that I've covered everything?
[00:37:15] Speaker C: The band's the most annoying band you have because you say Garth's the MVP, except that the MVP's danko, then the MVP is manual, then the MVP is Levi. That's the beauty of that band, that they're all so like, man, if you just listen to the drums on this or if you just listen to the. But I think Garth really is. It's really beautiful what he's doing, and it's kind of the Cajun thing early on, and then the spooky spectral stuff that comes through. It all seems to suit, like, I don't know. I don't get the feeling that Garth was, like, intellectualizing. I can't imagine that he and Garth and Bob were sitting there going, I think Hudson just has this weird sort of. I think he has a connection to the cosmos like that. I have a feeling, and I think he just. I can't imagine there's 50 different takes where he's doing something wildly different. I think he's just connected to the song in some spiritual way. He's hard to talk about, and I mean that, like, an emotional way. Like, he's just hard to talk about. He's a very beautiful spirit in the world. We're lucky to have him on tape.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: I love the funky guitars in going gone, too. Reminds you of the era there, right. But it just works so well, too, with that notion lyrically of going on, that sort of sense of one metaphor after another for things are going down.
And that's another one of those great songs that anticipate where Dylan goes next musically with blood on the tracks. And there was that great version, the very first world of Bob Dylan conference, where they showed us, wasn't it, the Fort Collinse show, great version of going gone there. But can you. For those non guitar players listening out there, and I don't. I'm not a musician either. Court, what does that mean? Pinched guitar playing?
[00:39:03] Speaker C: It's just how he play.
Robbie ends up not creating, but he focuses on the style of, like, it's hard to explain, but he. The way that his. I'm assuming he's using a pick on this stuff, and the way he's using the finger and the pick and pinching the string, it gives it that sort of.
I'm using the word pinch three times to describe when you're asking, what is pinched guitar?
[00:39:26] Speaker A: Say, well, that's great. I thought probably that there was an actual reference to the physical playing of the instrument.
[00:39:35] Speaker C: Yeah. What he's able to do is it gets his harmonic. So it's like, not just the note, but it's ringing above it. So you can hear that very clearly on this record, but throughout those band records, certainly he has that style that's. I'm making this up on the fly, but he has that sort of the weight acoustic, ancient sound, but then he has that kind of very modern electric sound that he really starts developing. And you hear it on this a lot. And it's just a way of how his finger and pick hit the string, and the way they're able to hit the note and also hit the harmonic above it gives it a very nice sort of ring. But it's not like. It's not like ringing. It has, like a muted ring to it. It's pinched.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Got it. No, that's a good explanation.
[00:40:20] Speaker C: We're 45 minutes into this. We just. We just mentioned going on, which. My God, that's a. That's a. That might be the only song that might be a little weird in the track listing like, that could have been a little bit lower because it's. It seems a little heavy so early.
[00:40:32] Speaker E: But anyway, I love the way pinched I used. I think about it as clipped. This kind of, like, decorous style that he's got always pulls me in at the beginning. Robbie's tone at the beginning of that song, I just love it so much. It pulls me in. And I love the way that he's got the bridge of the song is this really, like, full throated embrace of really a kind of series of bromines about following your one true love. And then I. It dissipates as they return back to the verses that those bromides about. Just follow your one true love and everything will be fine. And then, of course, it captures the song does, and the music and the lyrics, this disillusion of that after the passion fades and you're just gone. And there's a kind of, like, mournfulness about Robbie's playing on that song that I just love.
[00:41:27] Speaker C: You can just see that scarf flowing down as he's.
Maybe that's what it is, the scarf.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Purple.
[00:41:34] Speaker E: Right.
[00:41:37] Speaker C: This is our funniest conversation, I think.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: I think I've never noticed before.
[00:41:41] Speaker C: No one else thinks it's funny. But the Bible.
[00:41:45] Speaker A: That last verse, because I just have my lyrics book open. So I'm looking at that last verse of going gone. I've been walking the road. I've been living on the edge. Now I've just got to go before I get to the ledge. So I'm going. I'm just going. I'm going on the page. It doesn't. It feels almost like a generic image. He's just reaching for yet another metaphor of the going down. But now it's suddenly what strikes me is that he uses that same image and it ain't me, babe. Right.
The image of being on the ledge. But there he's referring to someone who's on the other side of the window, or maybe who's just gone out the window and it's ready to go down the ledge. But now he's the one who's experiencing that. I say he as if it's Bob Dylan. It's the singer in the song. And yet the same guy wrote both of those songs. And so that image of being at a ledge, it's a transition, but a scary transition of what comes next. I'm about to make a big leap here, and it could be dangerous, it could be fatal. And so it's not the first time that he's groped for that image in a song. And always at these transitional moments in his. Yes, life, but in his musical artistic career, too.
[00:42:56] Speaker C: I just want to add, for sound, it's interesting looking at the zeitgeist, but I looked up. Within, like, two weeks, you have planet waves, court and spark, another asylum record.
Grievous angel by Graham Parsons, sundown by warning Lightfoot. And then the next month, you got here come the warm jets and radio city by big star. But those. It's amazing. In just a couple of weeks, we have Aaron, and then we have planet waves, court and spark. Grievous angel, sundown. Those are really beautiful. All really warm, beautiful records. Well, and then, Aaron, you weren't a record, but you were there.
I was four, five months away, just waiting. I was like, this is gonna be my time. I'm gonna wait for number one song. When I was born, everyone. Anyone guessed the streak?
Dumbest shit I've ever heard.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: All right.
That's a wonderful thing to be born to.
[00:43:52] Speaker A: I was going to guess, don't go breaking my heart by Elton John and Kiki D. But I may be way off. I don't know what year that was.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: Well, I'm a lot older than you guys, but I was born the day that subterranean Hoonsick blues was recorded, not released. So I guess I'm subterranean.
[00:44:09] Speaker E: I don't know.
[00:44:10] Speaker D: Also in January.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: In January.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: And another mixing up the medicine reference. It's everywhere in today's episode.
[00:44:18] Speaker D: I talked to the court quite for Brony. I did. I read a lot of his interviews. And he said that they. No one really directed them what to do. Seriously. There's a real, like, they just wanted to play court. And they knew, again, that relationship that they had from playing in big pink. They just went in and then would go into the sound room and they would go to the sound booth and listen to it and be like, oh, okay. Like, they just knew what they needed to do is what he said. Like, they would talk about it and then everybody would just play. And I think. I don't know, it's just. It's that beautiful relationship that I feel. I hear the warts of director. That's what we hear on it, is that no one lives. I guess it's just. It's the anticipation of knowing what's expected and knowing what to play and when. And I think it's. It's evident in the pinched guitar, for sure.
[00:45:08] Speaker C: Well, I think the band had the luxury of playing with each other for so long. That helped. And then you have. I think they want it so much. That's part of it. If you listen to another January moment, we listen to the January 68 with the Woody Guthrie tribute. They're not practicing that 50 times. They're just, like, crashing through it. And it sounds fucking amazing.
[00:45:33] Speaker D: Go ahead. I was going to say that it's almost like when we. We were at the show in Oxford in April, and we were watching Jimmy Vaughn and Tony tell Jimmy Vaughn how to pick up cues off with Dylan. They. I think that was something that was just. They had already learned being in big pink and them playing together, but then also playing Dylan. That it was just almost natural and innate at this point. And so it just. It worked. And we hear that sound come through.
[00:46:02] Speaker C: But unlike having, like, a Tony or a. He's got all of them.
[00:46:06] Speaker D: Right, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly.
[00:46:08] Speaker C: It's working together and they want it. Like I said. I do think they want it. They're not trying to showboat. They're not a showboating band. Well, I retract as my scarf flows down onto my pinched harmonics. But I think for the most part, they're a band that really want to be part of the scene and they really want to do what's best for Dylan songs. I think that's. I think that's clear for the beginning. But they have this. They have the proverbial 10,000 hours as a band, or whatever it is, well, before they even did the shows with him in 66. So, yeah, I think in addition to.
[00:46:44] Speaker D: Wanting it to go back to what you were talking about when I was talking about in Denmark, is that there is just that relationship there that allows them not only to want it, but then to want to do it well for each other. Because there's that fraternal love. And I think that's the warmth of the record that comes through.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And that brotherhood, that musical brotherhood that you and Cor talked so eloquently about in Denmark that we're touching on now in our conversation. I think that's Scorsese, one of the greatest achievements of the last waltz. And I love so many things about the last waltz. But I especially love Dylan on stage with the bandaid and the way that Scorsese got it. He had the cameras in the right place and he had the right angles and the right lighting and the right editing to capture all of that nonverbal magic, that telepathy that they have with each other. Because you can just see they're reading each other's hands, they're reading each other's eyes in what to play and where to go next. And of course, they have perfect ears to hear things that the rest of us don't hear going on. And it's just all there, the package. And now we can see it, but we can hear it on planet ways, but we can also see it in the last walls.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: I'm hearing our customary silence at the end of our discussion because everybody's thinking, I got to get to my next thing. Well, this has been incredible. Again, every time we discuss anything, it's always amazing to me what comes out. This has been a beautiful conversation. So I just want to thank everyone for participating in this discussion of planet waves. You outdid yourselves. So thank you.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: Thank you. It's a pleasure, Jim. Thank you, Jim. Thanks everyone. Good to see you.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Dylan Tons podcast. Be sure to subscribe to have the Dylan Tons sent directly to your inbox and share the Dylan tons on social media.
