I think the close examination of what exactly Bob is getting at with his invocation of military figures and post-war icons on Mother Of Muses is really interesting and shines a light onto his songwriting process. Has anyone considered that maybe he tossed these lines off quickly, without giving them a great deal of thought? I was comparing the creative process of Leonard Cohen and Dylan, in my mind, this morning. Cohen was a poet who wrote songs. We're led to believe he spent years honing the words to those songs. He was a published poet and novelist before he started his professional recording career. Dylan, on the other hand, and this is just my opinion, is a songwriter who writes great lyrics. The delivery and phrasing of his words, and the melodies sustaining them, creates as much meaning as the words themselves. Whilst it sounds like he spent some time considering the words to this collection of songs, his usual method is to write quickly in the white heat of the creative moment. Even his greatest songs have patches of verse and stray lines that seem less considered than others.
Possibly as I seem to remember that when Cohen once met Dylan he talked about a song he just finished after some years and Bob played him one he had just written and finished that morning! Richard
Muses is certainly a curious song. I'm unexpectedly fascinated by it despite not connecting with it 1st time round. There's a tentativeness and fragility in its delivery that provides a naked intimacy. The only track where I feel conscious of his age in a physical sense. Interesting because I sense that he was only a take or two away from something of the graceful but confident Nettie Moore type performance. Instead, we get a few vocal misfires and a delicacy that still manages to hit home after a few plays, at least to my ears. The playing on it is quite beautiful by the way.
Unless the published vinyl tracklist is a lie, Murder Most Foul is on side 4 - as someone else said, it's a perfect bookend to Multitudes and a perfect album closer - for me, it's a beautifully long drawn out coda to the album as a whole and is definitely part of it.
The record company have told us 3 times MMF is part of the album through the official email annoincement, their YouTube track reveal and tagging the 2nd CD electronically as RARW. I'm inclined to believe them.
Listening to MMF reminds me of reading George Saunders ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ , all the voices in that space between this life and the next...
Yes, you're right. I bought the LP when it first came out and my copy had the lyric sleeve. I remember reading and laughing at the lyrics (and this was pre-internet days) with low expectations for the album. It didn't meet them so I sold it on within a month. Today I only have the remastered CD in the Complete Albums Vol. 1 set.
But that's just marketing for you. Of course they're going to say that and I'm sure Bob couldn't care less but there is a reason for the separation of the track on its own disc which isn't labelled as RARW.
He has indeed. I was listening again last night and questioning myself about when I last thought Dylan's voice sounded this good. I don't have the answer but I know it's well over 30 years ago. To my ears that's an incredible achievement in itself. There are a few vocal flubs here and there but overall he sounds pretty great. The album is a masterpiece and definitely a top ten Dylan album.
Personally, I just feel thats too much to cling to in order to make the leap that it's not part of RARW. It's conceptually possible that the record company spun lie after lie to cover up that MMF is only a bonus track but it just doesn't seem reasonably possible. Seems to me the album has 10 tracks as Columbia announced and listed with the 17 min epic finale being deemed worthy of a self contained disc without explicit reference to the album title (in printed form at least - it is tagged as part of the album of course). I wouldnt rule out a decision being made to add MMF to the album after the splash it made. I'd certainly have an open mind on it but even if so, seems to me any late addition is just that: an "addition"
Agreed. The vocal misfires a couple of times (Muses most obviously) but is just great overall. So rich and 3 dimensional. Even the cracks and fissures are so impactful most of the time.
Of course, but it indicates that Murder Most Foul was not a discarded single that was included with the album as an afterthought as someone suggested. It was always meant to be part of the package, in whatever capacity.
I see on Jpc.de that there is a Japan made 2 CDs editionc coming on july... Bob Dylan: Rough And Rowdy Ways (2 CDs) – jpc
I think you've caught Dylan out. The lines are nonsense, but they're nonsense in a revealing way. Despite what the lines try to say, history actually seems weirdly inert in Dylan's imagination. It's a sequence of moments that have a totemic value for him. The American Civil War, the Second World War, the civil rights movement, the birth of rock and roll, the assassination of JFK. Frankly there is no meaningful sense in which any one of these moments cleared or carved the path for any of the others. Nor - to get right to the point - does Dylan have any interest in history as that kind of process. To live in history is to grapple with life, to struggle for change, to hope, to fear. Dylan stopped doing these things - as a songwriter, I mean - at some point around Time Out Of Mind. Since then he's left history behind him. It's not just that his sequence of historic moments largely stops in about 1964. It's that he makes no gesture whatsoever at any useful connection between those moments and the world we struggle with and rejoice in today. To look for connections would imply an active engagement with history. Dylan's position, on the contrary, is radically withdrawn and passive. Zenlike would be one word for it. Extreme reactionary pessimism would be an alternative description. So many of the comments in this thread seem to be worrying away at the question of what we should infer from the events and places Dylan has assembled and the ways in which he has assembled them. The question tends to melt away if you assume that Dylan adopts a "trance-like" lack of agency not just as a songwriting technique but as the basis of his whole outlook on life. PS I also agree with your observation about the vicious physical threats in Dylan's later work (though I think they're often very funny). Am I the only one who sees an obvious psychological link between these outbursts and the extreme enforced passivity of the singer's general demeanour?
One man's opinion: Ive been through the new record, all the way through, 5 or 6 times (along with listening to some songs multiple times in a row). It's a good record and i am thrilled to have it. However, it is greatly overrated. The record is his weakest musically... perhaps the weakest "music" he has ever released. Further, lyrically there are some points of interest and stylistically it is a departure for Dylan which is interesting. However, viewing his catalog since TOOM, this record ranks, for me, around the same as Together Through Life and Tempest. Its a solid "3 star" effort. However, the new record does not approach TOOM, L&T or MT. The new songs don't move me at my core like some of the songs of TOOM. The wordplay on the new record does not come close to that on L&T or MT.....and musically the new record is just weak. I believe in time people will recognize that the record is highly overrated. Its not a 5 star effort, "best in decades" type record. Its a good and interesting record which is something different from the greatest songwriter in the history of modern popular music.
I like that people are engaged in this album to such a degree. I dont sense that its for academics that but rather joy, wonderment and discovery. At the onset of the three singles Im not certain I believed this would be an ok this is very different kind of album. Those first three revealed as part of the working whole of "Rough And Rowdy Ways"
Yes. I doubt everything is researched and plotted out. Having listeners scratch their heads probably isn’t an issue for Dylan when he writes lyrics.
I don t think it s time for people to realise anything. We like it, don t like it, find it one of Bobs greatest or over-rated. It s just our opnions no more no less
There is a tendency to (over)-analyse Bobs lyrics. Iv been there to but have mostly stopped doint that and just lets the music and places take me wereever they take me. I enjoy most of the lyrics on the new album but don t understand much. It s like watching a painting unfold layer after layer.
I agree completely. I love this album and am enjoying it tremendously. I do not find it to be one of his best efforts, with the exception of MMF, however.
Im currently stuck on playing Key West over and over again. Spectacular track. Best album of all times.
Well said. In one these threads a few years ago (the "I And I" thread maybe?), we were discussing Dylan's withdrawal as a writer (and perhaps as a person) from the world around him. It seems to show little glimmers on "Infidels" ("The world could come to an end tonight, but that's all right") and, as you allude to, is in fairly full bloom by "Time Out of Mind" ("The party's over, and there's less and less to say"). By "Things Have Changed" and "Ain't Talkin'" it's clear that, in the words of the old spiritual, this world is not his home. The most telling line on this album to me is "I've already outlived my life by far". As John Mellencamp put it, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone. He's just old Luke, waiting on the judgment day.
urrent sales for RARW, 27,400. Pretty certain Bob gets the number 1 position tomorrow . Neil Young should be number 2 with just over 7000 sales. I wonder if the Vinyl for RARW had been released at the same time, it would have helped with a chart topper in the US.
