"Dylan" (1973): Track-By-Track Discussion

In the tradition of numerous other track-by-track threads dedicated to Dylan's less-regarded albums, here comes one for the 1973 release "Dylan" (aka "A Fool Such As I").

If you wish to participate I ask you to follow the usual rules:
1 - Please limit the discussion to the song at hand. Avoid skipping ahead to other songs (you can tell us your favorite song on the album when we get to it), and avoid making generalizations about the album as a whole until we've gone through all 9 tracks.
2 - Please avoid dismissing (or praising, for that matter) a given track without supporting your position. "This track is unlistenable" does not add anything to anyone else's experience.
3 - Discussion of works that intertwine with "Dylan" ("Self Portrait", "New Morning", "Another Self Portrait") is inevitable, but please avoid sharing your own personal fantasy revised track listings for any of the 4 albums, at least until we've finished the 9 tracks on Dylan and I can "unwatch thread".
4 - These guidelines have led to numerous successful threads. If you find them too restricting for your taste, feel free to start your own thread, or contribute to any of the multitudes of Dylan threads on this board where you can express your thoughts about the album as a whole.

On with the show.

 

Track 1: "Lily of The West"
(Traditional) - Recorded during the June 3, 1970 "New Morning" session that produced "One More Weekend" (as well as fellow "Dylan" cut "Can't Help Falling in Love"

Amazingly, Dylan's version can be found on YouTube:

 

This is a traditional Irish folk that was "Americanized" and covered by a great many artists.

Perhaps Joan Baez's version was the influential one here.

 

The song was revisited on 6-5-70. It's unclear (based on the references I have at hand, anyway) whether the song was taken again, or whether overdubs were added at that time. I'd bet on the latter - that at minimum the backing vocals were added at that time. It'd be interesting to hear a stripped down "Another Self Portrait" version of the released performance.

 

What a strong opener it is. In my top three covers as openers on Dylan albums.
Baez is, as is often undeniable, the midwife assisting at this beautiful baby's birth. I hear a link between three fictional girls when I play this song, namely Mississippi John Hurt's 'Corrine' or 'Corrina,Corrina' via 'Flora' of this song to Lily in 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts'. Quite a jump, I know. But I rate his and Baez's versions nearly as highly as those songs.
Nice thread. Let's keep going.
Even, as if after a third world war, it's just me and you ;-)

 

I love this album. A lot.

 

I like this tendition of Lily of the West Sounds very much like other folksongs from Self portrait . Dylan is in fine voice and the rather arrangement suits me like a glove. A stripped down version might be preferable but I sort of like this anyway. I love Dylans vocals during this era-he actually had a sweet voice at this particular time.

 

Clearly not the influential version, but just for fun, here's a performance of the Irish version.

 

I have to say I'd be overjoyed to hear an unbacked version, just to have another version of it. The backing vocals are primal to my enjoyment of this song, however.

 

Just one more:

Dylan was unquestionably familiar with this version, as it was the b-side of "Blowin' in the Wind".

 

I suspect I'd prefer a version without the backing vocals and the percussion.

 

An utterly subjective but entirely valid point taken from my wife's very positive opinion of this song: could it be one of those Dylan performances non-Dylan fans 'get' more than Dylan fans? Like the relative success of the 'Baby Stop Crying' single in the UK in '78.

 

I must confess I have never heard the Dylan record. I suppose I didn't consider it an "official" release because Columbia released it as revenge (they had Free Trade Hall 1966 in the vault) on Mr. Dylan for signing with David Geffen. I considered buying it a couple of times but, to this day, I've never heard it. So I will take the opportunity of this thread to familiarize myself with the record. "Lily Of The West" is nice enough but I'm not a big fan of this era. I can hear more than a little of Bob's own "As I Went Out One Morning" in this song though he obviously recorded "Morning" before this song but would have been familiar with it in 1967.

 

My initial reaction to "Lily of the West" when I first heard it 30+ years ago was that it reminded me of the albums my parents and neighbors would play in the early 1970s. Stuff like the Ray Conniff Singers or those Ray Charles country albums. I HATED those. Even at less than 10-years-old I heard that as "parent" music. So I dismissed "Lily of the West" pretty quickly. I revisited the song (and this album) with a far more open mind a ways down the road, and I like this song fine these days. But what I hear as the trappings of syrupy 1970 contemporary country are still the parts I'd like to hear stripped off.

 

That's a very illuminating connection and the more I playback the songs in my head the more I agree. The opening lines have a similar cadence and melody. I don't care about it being a revenge release in the slightest and never did. What put me off were the unfounded disparaging critical comments in the biographies about everything he did in 69-70 that didn't end up on NS or NM. I got over that hurdle after the first play of 'Lily of the west's.

 

I was five years old when I heard crooner Dylan for the first time. 'I'll be your baby tonight', and two from Self Portrait: 'Days of '49' and the IoW 'Rolling Stone' I remember really laughing out loud at the way he sung 'and I guess he's roaring yet' so I wasn't as judgemental.

 

Does anyone listen to the song in the context as a B-side of the 'A fool such as I' single? I've never played the two songs in that sequence. Just curious.

 

I've never owned the single, so I'm accustomed to it as the kickoff track.

 

Who played on the song and which instruments? I don't have much idea what I'm hearing prominently in the middle rear of the soundstage from the second verse onwards, very fast 1/16th notes on a harpsichord (electric?), is my guess.

 

Here is the listed personnel for the whole of the 6-3-70 session, not that that information is definitive or comprehensive. The backing vocalists are not listed, supporting the notion that they were overdubbed on June 5th.

Bob Dylan (vocal, guitar, harmonica & piano)
Charlie E Daniels (bass)
David Bromberg (guitar, dobro)
Ron Cornelius (guitar)
Al Kooper (organ)
Russ Kunkel (drums).

 

I'm familiar with the album cover but am drawing a blank on the contents.

I like this opener, Dylan in his other voice. Of the four versions posted, my two top picks would be Dylan's and the traditional Irish one.

 

A slight preamble to my "Lily of the West" insights, which is necessary for context. Apologies if this goes beyond what the OP wanted, I can edit it down if necessary:

I acquired the Dylan album on CD sometime in the afternoon on April 23rd, 1993. I remember this date because it was only a few hours before Bob's performance at the New Orleans Jazz Fest. My college friends and I had taken a road trip from Macon, GA, to see Bob. We stopped into a Tower Records in NO and there immediately upon entering the building was an endcap loaded with Bob, and three import CDs of Dylan, my "holy grail" acquisition. My friend didn't have a CD player in his car, so after the concert we headed back home and the listening pleasure of Dylan would have to wait.

Along the way back home (great concert, btw), we stopped for gas at a truck stop in Malbis, AL, in the wee hours of the morning. The perfect time to witness a guy causing a ruckus. He looked like a professional wrestler; he was wearing no shirt and no shoes and was shouting apocalyptic rants. We gave him a wide berth and went on with our business in the truck stop. Upon getting back in our car we saw what seemed to be dozens of state troopers giving chase out on the highway. They were headed our direction so a few minutes later we came on the scene, they had that dude's sports car pulled over (a 280Z, I think) and had him surrounded with rifles pointed at his head. We doubled back at the next interchange to see more of the action, and upon our second pass he'd been taken into custody, the car windows were all smashed out, and state troopers were pulling snakes out of his car trunk.

I am not making any of this up.

By the time I got back to my college dorm room I had a lot to sleep off, and when I woke up I was deathly ill. I had the crud coming on and knew it was going to be blowing up into a bad cold of some kind. Part of me was ridiculously worried I'd gotten too close to those snakes, but even if not the weirdness of that event combined with the sleep deprivation and exhaustion of the long road trip and concert plus getting sick...what better time than to cue up Dylan?

The first song on Dylan, "Lily of the West", takes me back to all those feelings and thus it's hard to judge it on its own merits. I'm sure we all have songs like that that we can't be rational about because the emotional remembrances it brings on are so overwhelming. All I can remember when I first heard the song was that it sounded so clumsy and forced and disjointed that it felt like I'd be destined to hate it like all the critics had promised I would. The driving acoustic arrangement was fine, but the thud of the electric bass was reminding me with every note that I had a bad headache; the spectral, detached backup singers were like a Greek chorus promising me the sickness was hardly over, in fact it had just begun. And that sped-up guitar trill that ornaments the arrangement (first heard at about 0:57) has all the sonic qualities necessary to describe sinus pressure in musical terms. Every time I hear it, I'm reminded of feeling sick with a bad cold.

It would have been cool to get a revised version of this song in Another Self Portrait.

I hope this has been insightful, or at least entertaining.

 

PG six did a nice version a few years back of “Lily”

 

This version registered in the U.S. in 1860:-

 

When she broke down in front of the jury and cried real tears, it was the best acting he ever saw fair Mary do.

Thanks for posting that - very cool. Reading those lyrics places this song in the category that Stephen Stills calls "Old Weird America".