Bob Dylan – Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks (2 Nov 2018)*

Everybody has his own version of the truth I guess. To me BOTT is about keep on keeping on. In Lily Rosemary & the jack of hearts Dylan is keeping on with what he always has done: telling stories and therefor perfect for the album.

 

Trouble is that the track is terrible. The album would have been perfect without it.

 

Knowing Dylan's way of writing, "Lily Rosemary & The Jack of Hearts" might just tell the most about the relationship(s) he's singing about but it's hidden. Hidden in plain sight.

 

Cupid stunt...

 

Just the sort of language you pick up in a roadside place.

 

Those lines also CERTAINLY suck the romance right out of the song. The same way that 7 a.m. sucks the ability to type and proofread away.

 

I remember hearing it on the docks that night.

 

Ha, yeah, just throwin' this out there...

If so, the 1st verse could be read as a kind of 'it's all over now?" (the show, the relationship, that dreaded and limiting 'curfew' irrevocably now lifted, but with a vacancy, and that 'gamblin' wheel' of risk and chance no longer spinning). The 'festival was over' and the duality and duplicity of '"the boys" were all plannin' for a fall' might take on a different meaning? That the curfew had been lifted adds perhaps to a sense of abandon and freedom,and also exposure, and perhaps "the boys" plannin' for a fall, is some sort of reckoning. The wall is a wall but perhaps as much an emotional divide. The drama dissipated, but still a nagging and pressing drilling going on, in the background, which maybe you can't focus on the needling, the machinations, though it's there.

It's interesting to me that Rosemary 'combs' her hair rather than 'brushes' it and is looking like a 'Queen' and with the false eyelashes, there just seem to me to be elements of disguise that could be interpreted as gender-based 'transfiguration' as well. Rosemary described as a Princess. Lily with a pair of Queens. It's interesting what Dylan does with and how he plays the face cards. The faces all seem 'made-up' to an extent and the characters could fit that expression of all being a real card in real life. It's like he goes out of his way to say of Big Jim as no one's 'fool' (Joker?) and the way the cards read at the end of the line it's as if Jim is holding that one 'Diamond' of all the asuits just waiting for when and where to play it. Except he's got to deal with the Jack of Hearts, Lily with the dye in her hear and the Two Queens, and Rosemary the Princess (another Queen?).

Between the mention of the boys all plannin' for a fall, the festival, the cabaret, the curfew that had been lifted, the mirrored room, the house lights, the backstage manager, there's 'a play' going on and 'a play' being made and Dylan or the narrator also uses or describes people or characters as if they are not only part of a card deck but that he is the dealer. The song could be such an elaborate ruse and grand hoax that the somewhat rueful and very casually played harmonica solo at the start seems like a overkill on what a lonesome and wonderful lark it all might be.

I think it gets a little more plot-driven as it moves along but there are still unique plays and other brief asides that pay homage to and make it equal to and greater than the sum of its entertaining, sobering, and memorable constituents, except none like the Jack of Hearts.

Maybe the metaphor 'closed for repair' is a telling one, outside of the plot and setting.

 

"Anyone with any sense had already left town"

Only the idiots were left, babe.

 

One of my favorite lines 'in the play' too...

"left town" and "shut down"

 

I agree with your second sentence, but not the first. It's an intriguing composition, but it has always seemed out of place to me on the 75 release in particular. On the other hand, the artist himself decided it did belong there, which is the opinion that matters.

 

Then again, this is an artist who has made a lot of strange decisions over the years.

 

I'm guessing this was mentioned once or twice in 425 pages, but if not Andy Gill's book on making BOTT is informative and well written. The NYC musicians seem to be a bit more tolerant and understanding of Dylan's recording approach (or non-approach as the case may be) than the Minneapolis musicans, who brought their A-game and didn't credit. One anecdote, for instance, is a guitarist suggesting to Bob raising the key of 'Tangled Up in Blue' a whole step. That seemed to substantially alter the entire feel of the track and even influence his vocals.

Also, David Zimmerman's rounding up the musicans and basically coordinating those Minneapolis recordings seemed to be a catalyst for Bob and him becoming closer. It must be challenging in its own way to be David Zimmerman, or Bob Young or Chris Jagger.

If you're this far into the thread, you'd probably enjoy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Twist-Fate-Making-Tracks/dp/0306814137

 

A note for those who have the 6 CD set and Clinton's monograph:-

Clinton's numbering of the notebook pages (listed on Page 116 in Appendix III of "No One Else Could Play That Tune") goes awry after Page 13. I'm guessing that the tiny numbers in pencil that we see in the images in the 6 CD book were added after Clinton studied the notebook and that he inadvertently turned over two pages when he got to page 13 not seeing that "There Ain't Gonna Be A Next Time" had eight verses written out over three pages. The song must have been a contender.

I imagine the numbering of the notebook pages was done especially for the reproduction to ensure that no errors were made in the printing process...

 

I just got back from an overseas conference, and my copy of the 6-disc set was sitting on my desk when I got home! Listened to the first two discs last night, and I'm loving it. That first band-runthrough of Simple Twist of Fate is stunning, it's a shame they couldn't make it stick. There's also a version of You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome about halfway through the run on the second disc that seems like it would fit right in on the Cutting Edge sessions, there's a real bite to Bob's delivery and the band gives it a laid-back rockin' delivery that screams 1966. That solo version of Lily too... Much prefer it to the released version, you can really follow the story a lot easier. Can't wait to keep working through...

 

Re-reading it now.

 

Any thoughts on the duplicate tracks on TBS 14 that also appear on the original album in terms of SQ? I read somewhere that they added echo and sped up BoT, so BTS might be a more authentic version? The original album has more bass than TBS. I prefer TBS 14 SQ to the other duplical tracks found on previous bootleg series CDs also.

 

And how'd that work out for everybody?

 

Seriously:
"Outside the streets were fillin' up " (with the ones that had not left town?)

 

For me, Dylan got it right with this album. The Minnesota takes are just so much more expressive than the NYC takes. Lily, Rosemary...makes the album as far as I'm concerned. While it's' nice to hear the mandolin on If You See Her, Say Hello, the organ is too low on Idiot Wind and Lily, Rosemary..for me on the new mixes.

 

Re. Lily Rosemary, wasn't there a whole elaborate theory about the Waite tarot deck, which features lilies and roses together, and of course also crops in on Desire?

It's tempting to see Dylan as Jack/Jokerman and then fill out the other roles. I think big Jim (the King of Diamonds) is the hardest fit, biographically: can we really see Sara's ex husband there?

I think the pleasure of the lyrics, at the symbolic level, lies in the way characters 'deal' each other and thus phase in and out of being: "...and drew up the Jack of Hearts...".

I love the song, its propulsive and seductive and cinematic. I can't get why some don't like it. I don't see it as autobiographical at all.

 

Interview: More Blood, More Tracks…More Bob Dylan Stories
November 20, 2018
Steve Wosahla

Interview with Kevin Odegard

Link:
Interview: More Blood, More Tracks...More Bob Dylan Stories • Americana Highways

 

Listening to You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 5 w band). That version would fit in nicely on the New Morning album.

 

Here's something from
Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts - Screenplay
about a couple of screenplays written based on Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts:

Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts (Bob Dylan)

Copyright Ram's Horn Music 1974, 1975.
Released on "Blood On The Tracks", 17 January 1975.
An earlier version was released on promotional copies of the album.
Live debut 25 May 1976.

Dylan approached scriptwriter (when?) John Kaye (who later wrote the 1980 film of Hunter S. Thompson's chaotic "Where The Buffalo Roam") to turn the nine minute song into a feature film. Kaye duly delivered a script but nothing more came of the project.

The song influenced "The Jack Of Hearts" screenplay, 1981 July 16 (3rd draft) by James Byron. A manuscript of this draft is kept at the Theater Research Institute, Ohio State University

(Research classification code: L.P.A.4.12.12; "For research use in the library only") (LC CARD #: NONE TITLE #: 5011848 OCLC #: 25273639 &jc920131; 1 v. (28 leaves); 28 cm; Filmscript; Forms part of: Eileen Heckart Collection).

The cover illustration is of a playing card, the Jack of Hearts, with the words "Jack of Hearts" written across it. The script is "Based on a ballad by Bob Dylan". It is also based on "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare.

The screenplay has been summarized by Jim Brown ([email protected]):

"The story opens with a large white stallion being stolen from a corral. Then we see Rosemary, Big Jim's wife, working as a teller in the bank he owns. It turns out Big Jim stole Rosemary, the bank, and most of the rest of the Colorado town from Rosemary's first husband, who, along with their five-year-old son, disappeared maybe twenty years ago. Remember that kid, he'll surface again, as -- you guessed it -- the Jack of Hearts.

"Into the bank comes the mysterious stranger (outside stands the stolen horse which, it turns out, belonged to Jim). He talks to Rosemary cryptically and then leaves his calling card, a Jack of Hearts. Jim knows that the guy who stole his horse is in town.

"That night at the cabaret, a mysterious woman does a weird card trick on Jim that basically lays out the whole story of usurpation and subsequent revenge metaphorically. All the cards get ripped up except for the Jack of Hearts. So Jack flirts with Lily, while Jim looks on jealously. Rosemary is ambivalent; she hates her husband and hates losing him to the younger woman.

"Finally, there's a card game, and in the ensuing fracas, the false father is eliminated (though the agent is not Jack, of course, but Rosemary).

"The story closes with the safecrackers (whom I guess I forgot to mention ... well, there were these safecrackers, see ...) hiding out in a cave when they are met by the Jack of Hearts. He reads in the paper that Rosemary is about to be hanged for her crime, and I think something bad happens to Lily as well. So the only one to come out ahead in the deal is the Jack Of Hearts"."

Ben Taylor
--
Leeds, England
[email protected]