THE BOB DYLAN CRITICAL CORNER

TABLE OF CONTENTS (click on the title to view the article and on the names to know about its author)

2005, Riola (Bologna, Italy): Hermatena Edizioni, ISBN 88-88437-22-3, soft covers, 232 pp, EUR 19.00

Bob Dylan's work can be imagined as a hall of mirrors. Time and again the poet invites us into 'a room full of covered-up mirrors', and challenges us to take off the covers, gaze into the smiling mirror that is each song, and discover within it arcana, mysteries to be plumbed. Does Bob Dylan see his own songs as clearly as the listener who looks inside their mirror and has had their author on his mind? Such is the point of view favoured by a certain group among Dylan's more loyal admirers, those who believe the songs are there to be endlessly interpreted - that they belong less to Dylan himself than to the listeners for whom they have become an indissociable part of their lives. Nicola Menicacci's remarkable new study certainly comes from a Dylan fan of this stamp, and is a book addressed to the members of that special group of companions in interpretation.

Nicola Menicacci is already known in Dylan circles for his often daring and always absorbing readings of Dylan songs that have been published over the years on the Bob Dylan Critical Corner site. This volume (so far available only in Italian, though the author promises an English version), takes a particular period in Dylan's songwriting - 1974-1989, from the Blood on the Tracks to the Oh Mercy songs - and reads the lyrics of those years in the light of a philosophical postulate. The postulate is that during that period - and essentially only that period, with a handful of exceptions before and after - Dylan's songwriting is consistently coded in two layers of meaning - one on the surface, immediately accessible; the other, hidden and symbolic. As the author puts it in his introduction, this group of Dylan songs would then have the status of 'messaggi cifrati' ('messages in cypher' - 9). Nicola Menicacci argues that the symbolism which he deciphers (or de-cyphers) in these songs should be related to an esoteric belief-system to which, he contends, Bob Dylan secretly subscribed over those years. This system could approximately be described as pertaining to the alternative or counter-historical spiritual tradition, running against the grain of established Christianity of whatever stamp, that has manifested itself over the centuries in such movements or currents as Gnosticism, the Cathars, the Templars, the Grail cult, the Rosicrucians and Freemasonry, and in such sacred places as Jerusalem, Glastonbury in England and Rennes-le-Château in France.

Certainly, there is no lack of songs from the period concerned whose texts can well lend themselves to such a reading: among those that spring to mind are 'Shelter from the Storm', 'Isis', 'Golden Loom', 'Changing of the Guards', 'Angelina', 'Caribbean Wind', 'Ring Them Bells' and 'Dignity' (all of which, indeed, are discussed in this book). Where Nicola Menicacci's thesis gets really challenging is in his discussion of the Christian period: in the albums of those years, he maintains, the songs' evangelical surface is in fact a manifest content masking a latent content deriving from an underlying esoteric world-view that is in no sense orthodoxly Christian. If we are to see Dylan as 'the last chevalier', some kind of latter-day Templar, then the songs discussed become a cascading series of dreams - dreams replete with symbols that call out for interpretation. At this point, as Alberto Cesare Ambesi suggests in his preface, we might see Nicola Menicacci's argument broadening out from Dylan's work into wider areas of cultural symbolism - illuminating, in Ambesi's words, 'il vasto horizzonte della simbolistica' ('the broad horizon of the study of the symbolic' - 8). The book does, nonetheless, remain very much a study of Bob Dylan, theoretically and conceptually audacious yet grounded at all moments in the detailed analysis of the song texts proper: it is, to quote the author himself, 'un'analisi di Dylan adottando tale cammino' ('an analysis of Dylan that follows such a path' - 9).

In illustration of his thesis, the author deploys a very considerable number of symbols and concepts betokening his wide reading in his chosen field. Thus, if we look at the discussion of Blood on the Tracks that constitutes the book's first major analysis, we find 'Tangled Up In Blue' explicated in relation to Mary Magdalene ('she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe': 'Questa posizione ricorda da molto vicino la Maddalena che lava i piedi di Gesù' ('this position closely recalls the Magdalene washing Jesus' feet' - 22); beyond this, the whole album is placed in a broader context of esoteric symbolism taking in the Templars, the Grail, Joseph of Arimathea and more. 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts' is read through the prism of the Tarot and the Song of Songs; 'Shelter From the Storm' is illuminated via Masonic symbology. The stage is set, and effectively the same method - textual interpretation plus background exposition - is pursued across the volume. We are, thhen, dealing with a series of close readings of Dylan song texts, shored up consistently by a specific interpretive and contextual methodology. In this sense one might wish to file Nicola Menicacci's book on the same shelf as the studies of Michael Gray, Stephen Scobie and Aidan Day - with, nonetheless, the important difference that here the methodology, unlike the approaches employed by those critics, is neither literary-critical nor based in musical history, but, rather, relates Dylan's work to a set of broader historical and cultural traditions. For further enrichment, analogies with the world of fine art appear throughout: Dylan's verbal symbolism is likened to the visual symbolism to be found 'inside the museums' through contemplation of the canvases of such masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli or Nicolas Poussin (here we may note in corroboration that Chronicles Volume One, whose pages could not be fully taken into account in this study, has amply confirmed Dylan's interest in the painterly heritage). Such is the method employed that it may be no exaggeration to suggest that this volume breaks new ground in Dylan studies.

The author's expositions of the various arcana invoked to illuminate the songs are, certainly, exemplary in their clarity and lucidity. However, the majority of those who read this book will surely do so because they are interested in Bob Dylan, and the main task of the reviewer is to examine its specific usefulness and value as a contribution to Dylan studies. What matters here is, of course, the song analyses, and at all points the author displays both a detailed knowledge of the texts - including, where relevant, the multiple variants (outtakes, live versions, etc) - and a vibrant sensitivity to their language and symbolism. Those seeking new close readings of Dylan songs will not be disappointed, and in what remains of this review I shall concentrate on how Nicola Menicacci succeeds in broadening our understanding and appreciation of the key songs discussed.

If we move forward in time to Desire, that album's remarkable track 'Isis' is, from its very title, an obvious candidate for spiritual exegesis: indeed, in Bologna, not far from where this book was published, the Abbey of Santo Stefano, a jewel of Romanesque architecture, has a plaque on its outside explaining that on the site there once stood a temple of Isis. Nicola Menicacci reads Dylan's dream-narrative as offering 'un misto della dea egiziana e della Maddalena' ('a fusion of the Egyptian goddess and the Magdalene' - 42), its pyramids as Egyptian but also Masonic, and its journey as an initiatic path to reunion with the archetype of the Lost Bride. The alternate lyric to 'Sara' that appeared on Live 1975, where the song's female protagonist is endowed with 'strength that belonged to the gods', is seen as making of her a manifestation of the archetypal Black Madonna. 'Golden Loom', another song from the Desire period that is replete with symbolism, is read with recourse to the Temple of Solomon, the myth of Osiris (again recalling Isis) and the alternative story of Jesus' marriage with - here too - Mary Magdalene.

On the next album, Street-Legal, 'Changing of the Guards', another song visibly lending itself to symbolic analysis, comes over as simultaneously evoking, in a breathless rush of esoteric allusion, 'i Cavalieri Templari, la Sposa che finalmente si ricongiunge al marito, i Tarocchi, l'Arca dell'Alleanza ed il Graal' ('the Templars, the Bride finally reunited with her husband, the Tarot, the Ark of the Covenant and the Grail' - 59). The song's 'wheels of fire' are sourced to the Book of Daniel, and its 'rolling rocks' to the apocryphal Gospel of St Thomas. For 'Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)', the 'tail of the dragon' is related to the Book of Revelation, a link corroborated by a historic detail from Venice, where, we are told, 'il Canal Grande ricorda vagamente la forma di un dragone' ('the Grand Canal vaguely recalls the outline of a dragon' - 66). 'Where are You Tonight? (Journey Thhrough Dark Heat)' is read as an initiatic journey rich in esoteric lore (the song's 'St John' is interpreted as John the Baptist, a figure revered by the Templars; the 'lion in the road' as a symbol of the tribe of Judah; and the twin whom the narrator fights as a reference to the apocryphal figure of Jesus' twin brother, who appears in Thomas' gospel).

Street-Legal was of course followed by Slow Train Coming, and Nicola Menicacci opens his discussion of this controversial work of Dylan's with a detailed analysis of the album's front cover picture (by the artist Catherine Kanner). He argues that its 'geometria nascosta' ('hidden geometry' - 102) contains a concealed 'M' (for Magdalene) and a secret pentagram, and concludes that the message of the cover - as seemingly approved by Dylan? - is not that of the songs: we are dealing with a Dylan divided between his official (and shocking) espousal of evangelical Protestantism and a continued fascination with the esoteric. Out of this tension, the author argues, would come Dylan's return to his Jewish roots in 1983. This analysis underpins a number of very special readings of the Slow Train Coming songs. The 'England or France' reference in 'Gotta Serve Somebody' is taken as pointing to the two countries most associated with the Grail legend; the woman in 'Precious Angel' is seen as literally - thus esoterically - angelic, and is also linked, through the song's Egypt allusion, to the Queen of Sheba; the 'iron rod' of 'When He Returns' is read as Masonic; and it is even suggested that the unnamed snake of 'Man Gave Names to All the Animals' could just be, not the devil of Genesis after all, but an emblem of the higher esoteric knowledge. Over the 'Christian period' as a whole, Nicola Menicacci concludes, 'il messaggio esoterico e gnostico non andrà comunque perduto, anche se in molte occasioni … farà fatica a farsi strada' ('the esoteric and Gnostic message does not disappear, although at many moments … it emerges only with difficulty' - 105). Taken as whole, his reading of Slow Train Coming creates a subtext or counter-text for what is apparently a hyper-orthodox album, thus challenging all received assumptions.

A similar analysis is applied to Saved. The 'empty cup' of 'Covenant Woman' becomes the song's narrator seeing himself as a shattered Grail; the Calvary reference in 'Saving Grace' is linked to a crucifix of esoteric import, to be found in Rennes-le-Château. The next album, Shot of Love, together with the fine group of songs around it - notably 'Caribbean Wind' and 'Angelina' - that surfaced on Biograph and The Bootleg Series vols. 1-3, offers more immediately obvious ground for the esoteric reading, as these are songs in which we can retrospectively see Dylan moving away from the more rigid Christianity of the two previous albums and back into his old syncretic world-view and cryptic, multi-levelled songwriting mode. The rose on the back cover of the album now appears as a Rosicrucian symbol, to be linked to 'Caribbean Wind' and its 'Rose of Sharon' from the Song of Songs. 'Every Grain of Sand' is read through an esoteric prism, with its sun beating down on the 'steps of time' seen as a Masonic symbol and its 'journey' as another initiatic path. 'Angelina', with its surrealist imagery (its god 'with the head of a hyena', its 'tree of smoke', its 'pieces of men marching/Trying to take heaven by force'), is linked to the proto-surrealist visions of Hieronymus Bosch, a painter whose work is often read esoterically (some think he was a member of a dissident sect), and, in particular, to the Flemish artist's 'Temptation of St Anthony' (today housed in Lisbon). 'Caribbean Wind', in its multiple versions, receives a full-blooded arcane reading, with its imagery linked (via 'the theatre of divine comedy') to the great Florentine Dante Alighieri, a poet whom some associate with the Templars, but also to a reinterpreted legacy of Cain (the first fratricide's descendant Tubal-Cain makes his bow as the 'man who invented iron'), not to mention the world of the Kabbalah and, specifically, the Jewish mystical text known as the Sefer ha-Zòhar, with its 'paradise lost' references.

This last link with the Jewish esoteric tradition sets the stage for Infidels, the album which is generally seen as marking Dylan's break with born-again Christianity and his return to his Jewish roots, embraced in a more generous songwriting spirit. This album, opening with the gloriously eclectic symbolism of 'Jokerman', lends itself more than most to esoteric readings, be they specifically Hebraic or of more universal import. That first song is, as we might expect, given a painstaking symbolic going-over, taking due account of the textual variants of the out-take version (as in 'scratching the world with a fine tooth-comb'). Nicola Menicacci's own fine tooth-comb yields us a Jokerman who is a composite of elements from the Tarot, the Pentateuch and the Arthurian legends, and who might just even be Baphomet, the alternative deity allegedly worshipped by the Templars - but who remains in the end (like Bob Dylan himself) enigmatic and ungraspable: 'Il Jokerman è quindi tutti e nessuno' ('The Jokerman is, then, everyone and no-one' - 170). On the same album, 'I and I' is read in terms of the Kabbalah, the mystic attributes of God and the Shekinah (the female principle of esoteric Judaism): the author concludes that with this song 'la sapienza giudaica e la conoscenza esoterica si fondono insieme' ('Jewish wisdom and esoteric knowledge become one' - 177) - albeit I might myself incline to read 'I and I''s duality as more specifically dramatising the conflict between liberal and orthodox Judaism. Similar readings are applied to several of the other songs from this period, notably 'Foot of Pride', interpreted through an esoteric gloss on Psalm 36 ('Let not the foot of pride come against me'), and 'Blind Willie McTell', a song whose lines from the first stanza as reshaped by Dylan in live performances, 'This land is condemned / All the way from New Orleans / To New Jerusalem' do indeed, alas and as I write in September 2005 at a time when a hurricane was blowing, seem to have an uncanny force of prediction that reverberates somewhere beyond the precincts of the rational.

Nicola Menicacci reads the Infidels album and its associated songs as embodying the high point of Dylan's presumed interest in spiritual arcana, but, at the same time, marking 'la fine della continuità esoterica dell'opera de Dylan' ('the end of the esoteric continuity in Dylan's work' - 193). Between Infidels and Oh Mercy, the one song that warrants the author's attention is 'Dark Eyes', often seen as the one outstanding track on Empire Burlesque and here read as a return to the cult of the Magdalene or Black Madonna archetype. The Oh Mercy complex of songs (the album proper and its out-takes 'Dignity' and 'Series of Dreams') appears as a kind of swan-song of the esoteric Dylan. In 'Ring Them Bells', the emblematic 'wheel and the plough' are read in terms of Talmudic symbolism, while the reference to Saint Catherine (who, we are reminded, is Siena's patron saint) is taken as having hidden Cathar connotations, evoking the ill-fated fortress of Montségur. 'Series of Dreams', with its playing-card imagery, is interpreted as harking back to the Tarot, while, finally, the epic journey of 'Dignity' appears as an unfinished quest for the Grail, with the words near the end 'I'm at the edge of the lake' taken as recalling no less a sheet of mystic water than the Lake of Avalon itself.

There by the lake, the esoteric search seems to come to a halt. Nicola Menicacci believes that Dylan's work since Oh Mercy, independently of its generally recognised quality, shows few if any traces of spiritual preoccupations - barring such stray flashes as the Song of Songs allusion in 'Love Sick' from 1997, it is a time when, esoterically, 'nothing is revealed'. He offers three possible explanations for this apparent falling-off: either Dylan had, by the time of Oh Mercy, reached so high a level of spiritual awareness that he no longer needed or wanted to communicate that awareness through his songs; or, from then on he quite simply lost interest in things esoteric; or, he is in a period of transition which will yield new arcane revelations from him in the fullness of time: 'che … molte altre rivelazioni aspettino solo il momento propizio per essere divulgate' ('a spate of fresh revelations may simply be biding their time' - 216). Be that as it may, Nicola Menicacci concludes that, from Blood on the Tracks through to Oh Mercy, it is more than legitimate to contend that 'in un arco di tempo molto lungo, Dylan abbia svulippato un concetto in maniera coerente …, ampliandolo ogni volta e fornendo nuovi elementi di indagine' ('over a very considerable period of time, Dylan developed a concept in coherent fashion … amplifying it continuously and furnishing new elements of research' - ibid.).

The reading of Bob Dylan offered by this book is, obviously, not only fresh but controversial. There is no a priori reason to suppose that Nicola Menicacci's interpretations of Dylan's song texts are the only legitimate ones. They are, however, perfectly possible and justifiable interpretations, underpinned by a dense and complex conceptual apparatus. Anyway, neither Dylan nor the book's author is 'asking us to say words like yes or no': we are not given answers, we are asked to ask questions. Those who feel, as I do, that Dylan somehow predicted 9-11 in the 'Love and Theft' album and that several of his songs of rains, floods and winds have now also proved to eerily anticipate Hurricane Katrina (think of those trees in 'Man in the Long Black Coat', 'bent over backwards by a hurricane breeze') may wish to concur with our author that there are elements in Dylan's creative process that run far deeper than the Western rationalist paradigm.

On the issue of esoteric analysis, I would, though, venture to enter a caveat with respect to Dylan's 'born-again period'. The genuineness of his evangelical conversion, for as long as it lasted, does not appear to be in doubt and has been amply documented by the 'Christian rap' material that accompanied his concerts at the time: it does not seem entirely likely that the Slow Train Coming and Saved songs were conceived as nothing but a deceptive Christian surface hiding esoteric depths. Nonetheless, it can certainly be argued that those songs operate in more than one dimension, and the hypothesis is indeed fascinating that Dylan's esoteric interests did remain active in that period on an unconscious or semi-conscious level - informing the Christian songs from below and conferring additional significance on them at a deeper level.

All in all and allowing for any possible reformulations for the 'Christian period', what we have in Nicola Menicacci's carefully researched, challengingly argued and eloquently expressed volume is indeed a startlingly original contribution to the wide universe of Dylan exegesis. In the pages of this book, the adventurous reader will discover new routes through the palace of mirrors of the Zimmerman songbook, and will come face to face all over again with Bob Dylan's unrivalled capacity to explore the depths of human consciousness and creativity. For Dylan the gypsy, more than anyone else, is the great artist of our time who knows how to 'bring you through the mirror'.

The Birth of a Masterpiece: review of Andy Gill and Kevin Odegards’ "A Simple Twist of Fate – Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks" (Da Capo Press Edition, 2004, 246 pages plus illustrations in b/w, ISBN 0-306-81231-2)

"Blood on the Tracks" has always been my favourite Dylan album. When I entered the Dylan world - at the age of sixteen in the mid-eighties as "Empire Burlesque" was crawling across a circus floor of a music world that was more and more turning into a devastating industry – my first step was the purchase of Alan Rinzler’s "The Illustrated Record". The book size was particularly impressive because it offered a real size (full scale?) reproduction of the album covers. Long before the Compact Disc established itself as the reference format for audio listening, thus declaring the end of those fantastic decorated album covers (think of the Beatles’ "Sergeant Pepper" or Andy Warhol’s fantastic banana for The Velvet Underground), browsing through the pages of such a book was also an adventure into graphics, a museum of images from the debut album all the way to "Street Legal". It was interesting to notice a very young kid walking arm in arm with a nice young lady in what a friend of mine (Federico Fiumani, leader of the Italian rock band Diaframma) defined "the portrait of happiness" (Fiumani in 1992 quoted that cover for his "Anni Luce" album), or a young man smiling with a country style guitar while touching his hat as if to greet everyone, a skretch with the word Moonglow, or a suspicious curly-haired fellow in his late thirties leaning out his head while standing in the doorway before hitting the street.

The cover for "Blood on the Tracks" was very attractive, with that big red stripe on the right and that profile picture that indeed looked like a divisionist painting. As Rinzler quite rightly pointed out, it really seemed as if blood was all over that image. Reading the book, I happened to know it was the faithful chronicle of a marriage in troubled waters, a very deep expression of sorrow and sadness. A few months later I bought "The Songs of Bob Dylan from 1966 Through 1975" and started to play a few songs from the album. I had already listened to "Simple Twist of Fate" and "Shelter from the Storm", the Budokan versions, and I moved through "Tangled up in Blue", "You’re a Big Girl Now" (whose "oooooh" vocal in the middle of each stanza really sounded to me like a cry for help from a person in deep need – "I can change I swear"!), "Idiot Wind" and "If You See Her Say Hello".

I finally put my hands on the album a couple of years later. I had waited until then in order to be prepared for what was known and considered as Bob Dylan’s masterpiece. I approached it with deep respect, up to the point of asking it to my old friend Lorenzo as a present for my twentieth birthday. Lorenzo actually bought the album, which came in a combo with "Another Side", the same format I choose when I bought those albums on CD due to the breaking of my record player.

"Tangled up in Blue" sounded very different from what I had imagined, as "You’re a Big Girl Now" did too. I particularly liked the acoustic material and found something weird in those songs I later discovered (through the late Robert Shelton’s biography) were re-recorded in Minneapolis. Again, when I purchased "Biograph" and the first "The Bootleg Series" box I discovered the beauty of the New York sessions. "You’re a Big Girl Now" sounded fantastic to me, as well as "Idiot Wind". "Tangled Up in Blue" was simply another song, and when the "Jerry McGuire" soundtrack unveiled another alternate version for "Shelter from the Storm" I was totally convinced – as I already wrote for this site – that the NY sessions could have given life to Dylan’s greatest album ever.

As the years passed, I could get hold of an old bootleg with many alternate tracks from the New York sessions, which was also useful for the researches I engaged in for my book and also deepened my curiosity about why the album was half re-recorded.

Part of these questions found an easy answer in Andy Gill and Kevin Odegards’ "A Simple Twist of Fate – Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks" (Da Capo Press Edition, 2004, 246 pages plus illustrations in b/w, ISBN 0-306-81231-2).

The result of a long, detailed investigation, "A Simple Twist of Fate" offers a further, profound glimpse into the genesis and making of this album. Structured in ten chapters, plus an interlude between chapters three and four and two appendices, as well as a bibliography and index, the book begins soon after Christmas 1974 with Dylan standing by a coffee machine with his then five-year old son Jakob - later to follow in his father’s footsteps as the leader of the multi-awarded band The Wallflowers – prior to a recording session with musicians selected and found by Dylan’s brother, David Zimmerman, who in those days was working in the music business in the heart of snowy Minnesota.

Starting from there, the reader is slowly taken into the making of these sessions, including the difficulty to find the rare Martin guitar that Dylan asked for (model 0042G); whilst the Minneapolis sessions are covered in much more detail, the book offers a glance at the birth and writing of the songs, in the summer of 1974 which Dylan spent in his farm in Minnesota with his children and a red-haired woman, Sara being somewhere else, thus confirming - as the authors themselves state in the first pages - that "his marriage was on the rocks". Throughout Gill and Odegards’ work we discover the real role David played in turning this album from a draft to a finished product, how some of the musicians consider the great recording engineer Phil Ramone as merely a person who recorded what Dylan was playing in New York (though he suggested some of the musicians to be used at those sessions), but also how Dylan pushed Buddy Cage’s pedal steel playing in the Big Apple to play what he had in mind with little, subtle mind games that first got Cage angry, and then made him deliver what Dylan (who sat in the control room with none other than Mr. Hammond and Mick Jagger) had in mind, soon to get rid of his anxiety insulting a laughing Minnesota-born singer-songwriter, clearly satisfied with the result.

The Minneapolis sessions, recorded with the same band that cut the "Deliverance" movie soundtrack, are described with an accuracy that could alone justify the purchase of this book. The interviews revealing Dylan’s ability to change song keys instantly with no need for a capo or a notepad to strip down the changes are really precious memories for the Dylan aficionado, and for those who doubt the man’s ability to deal with anything resembling music.

As soon as the reader has turned the book's last page, it may be very interesting to him to listen to the entire album as it was recorded in New York, the spectral, dramatic beauty of "Idiot Wind", the bitter, shiny sadness of "You’re a Big Girl Now", and then turn to the official release, just to notice how the entire atmosphere changes, how Minneapolis in the winter could be different from the humidity of a mid-September New York, not to mention the influence the musicians themselves had on the songs and the new, remarkable vision that emerges from every new version, the various takes of the same songs, the changes in the lyrics for what remains the best album Dylan has delivered to music history, an album that influenced not only the future course of rock but many people in their own lives too. As Stephen Gilligan wrote as part of a dedication for a book he donated me after our first work together: "it was but a simple twist of fate that brought us together but may you continue to meet me in the morning of your new life".

Dylan books come in many shapes and sizes, and this one is full of merits but is, surely, for hardcore Dylan fans only: in other words, it is not to be filed with the works of Greil Marcus, Michael Gray and Stephen Scobie, books which keep one watchful eye on the need to explain the master's work to the world out there. Troubadour joins Razor's Edge, Muir's book from 2001 on the Never-Ending Tour which I reviewed at the time on Bob Dylan Critical Corner, at: <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6752/reviews.html#Dusty>. Like its predecessor, this volume is addressed to the totally converted. This is clear from a statement like: 'I am expecting everybody who reads this book to know [Good As I Been To You] well' (196). That album is indeed worth knowing well, but given that in the same chapter Muir also cites its 'stunning lack of commercial success' (206), it is obvious that we are dealing with a book targeted on a very specific constituency, namely the inner circle of fans - those who, as Andrew Muir does, would in all seriousness and without irony, echo Dylan's own words from 'Talkin' New York' about the man 'ravin' about how he loved my sound'.

That circle is actually not that small, and what has transformed its nature in recent years, allowing fellow initiates to know each other with unprecedented intimacy, has of course been the Internet. Dylan discussions once confined to the restricted periodicity of paper zines now take place at lightning speed by email and via such channels as dedicated mailing lists or the Usenet group <rec.music.dylan>. Setlists are posted for all to see the minute the concert is over, and a new Dylan album generates endless discussion as soon as it is released, if not before. There has, then, been a sea-change in the mode of relating of Dylan fandom, and this change is reflected in the revised editions of books such as Gray's and (especially) Scobie's, whose earlier avatars preceded the emergence of the Net. Andrew Muir's Troubadour, it is safe to say, would not have existed at all, in the form that it takes, without the on-line Dylan community.

To be more specific, Muir's book reflects in its structure the transition from fanzines to cyberspace. It should, though, first be said that the title is a shade misleading. The term 'troubadour' is arbitrary and, frankly, belongs to the world of Dylan cliché. It is also not quite true (as Muir himself admits) that the whole book is about 'early and late songs of Bob Dylan'. The first part consists of a series of briefish individual song analyses (eight chapters, ten songs) ranging chronologically from 'Blowin' in the Wind' to 'Farewell Angelina'. Then come two thematic essays, respectively on the idea of confusion and the imagery of windows in Dylan, and a further song analysis (of 'If You See Her, Say Hello', a song that is neither 'early' nor 'late'). The material up to this point is a recycling (with some rewriting) of texts previously published in 'a variety of fanzines' (vi), among them one edited by Muir himself, and thus represents that end of things' contribution to the book. After that follow four much longer chapters devoted to album analysis and covering Dylan's last five studio releases. These are on, respectively: Under the Red Sky; Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong; Time Out Of Mind; and (at nearly 70 pages by far the longest chapter in the book) "'Love and Theft"'. The subject-matter of the first three of these later chapters immediately suggests comparison with Michael Gray's Song and Dance Man III, but excessive overlap is avoided thanks to Muir's method. He relies in this 'later Dylan' section on Internet sources - Dylan websites and online discussions in which he has participated - to an extent which Gray, though taking the new medium into account, does not. These chapters thus acquire a curious patina, coming over as, at one and the same time, an individual fan's reflections and the collective product of a dedicated community.

The song analyses which form the first part of the book are a mixed bag, but all contain material that Dylan researchers should find useful. Muir is particularly helpful on the variant lyrics of 'Farewell Angelina' (Dylan vs. Baez versions) and 'If You See Her, Say Hello' (going into considerable detail on the 1976/1978 live rewrites). There is also some valuable information on the Gaslight Tapes variant of 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right'. However, the meat - or as some might prefer to say, the seitan - of Muir's book is to be found in the last four chapters.

The essay on Under The Red Sky is mostly about Dylan's use of nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale themes on that album (and in the Basement Tapes songs). It is interesting to learn here that Dylan features prominently in the Chatto Book of Nonsense Verse, an anthology from 1988 edited by Hugh Haughton. All in all, the chapter comes over as a strong and sustained defence of Dylan's writing on an album which many dismissed on release, in those pre-Harry Potter days, as 'kid's stuff'. For Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong, Muir, like Gray, combines the two albums into a single chapter and provides some gritty background information on the songs covered by Dylan. He makes a helpful distinction between Dylan's method of appropriation on the two albums - on GAIBTY, close emulation of a specific earlier version (Paul Brady's 'Arthur McBride', Nic Jones' 'Canadee-I-O'), but on WGW a much freer form of interpretation, if not rewriting. Time Out Of Mind is given a detailed song-by-song analysis: Muir concurs with virtually everybody that this album's four recognised major songs - 'Standing in the Doorway', 'Tryin' to Get to Heaven', 'Not Dark Yet' and 'Highlands' - are far more impressive than anything else on it, and makes this (not exactly original) position interesting through a close account of both the song texts and Daniel Lanois' production (of which he is not the greatest fan).

It is, though, for '"Love and Theft"' that Andrew Muir has made the greatest (and the most successful) effort. He convincingly argues that this album finds Dylan perfecting the new, cut-and-paste, multi-allusive songwriting method which he had first deployed, with mixed results, on TOOM ('It has seemed to me from the first that Time Out Of Mind is partially successful while '"Love and Theft"' is wholly so' - 255). The analysis of L&T is arranged not track by track but thematically (Dylan and the South, self-quotation, humour, etc). Muir fully and gratefully references the multiple Internet sources that have helped him unravel the tangled skein of this album's endless musical and literary allusions. Indeed, as the author of two such articles published on Bob Dylan Critical Corner (and subsequently in paper form - so from Internet to fanzine, in that order! - in 'The Bridge') - on the album as a whole (<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6752/theft.pdf>) and on 'Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum' (<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6752/dum.pdf>) - I am pleased to be acknowledged as one oof the writers on L&T by whom Andrew Muir's 'thoughts have been coloured' (322), and am happy to find myself quoted some half-dozen times in text and notes. I do have to point out, though, that I am throughout designated as 'Christopher Rollanson [sic]' rather than Rollason, and that the quotation ascribed to me on page 313 is the work of someone else. Maybe, though, I should be flattered by the very Dylanesque gestures of being made to wear a mask and having 'someone else speaking with my mouth'!

To return to Muir's excellent analysis of the album, I found that, while I was familiar with the majority of the allusions unearthed, other, highly illuminative points were completely new to me. I did not know that the first two lines of 'Po' Boy' come from 'an 1866 minstrel performance of Othello, written by George Griffin' (Richard Jobes, quoted by Muir, 273), or that the phrase 'your funeral, my trial' from 'Cry A While' is the title of a number performed by Sonny Boy Williamson (284). I also have to applaud Andrew Muir for his valiant rescue of 'Sugar Baby' from the dead hand of the po-faced politically correct: surely the line 'There ain't no limit to the amount of trouble women bring', to which he says some object on ideological grounds, is immediately cancelled out by the line that follows, 'Love is pleasing, love is teasing, love, not an evil thing', and cannot be said to represent any kind of cast-in-stone 'attitudes to women [sic]' (300) any more or less than any line from any of L&T's endlessly fluid and emollient songs represents any hard-and-fast 'attitudes' to anything. Indeed, it is precisely that fluidity of this remarkable album that Muir's analysis successfully and enthusiastically celebrates: 'it is a new form, created out of his lexicon, minstrelsy, literature … It is literary, it is burlesque, it is a type of modernism and it is "low art", it is popular music; it is '"Love and Theft"'' (322).

All in all, this book, though not faultless, is one that Dylan scholars should value. There are a few errors here and there: 'Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window' was not a total non-hit (as Muir implies on p. 125). as it was Top 20 in the UK; 'Take A Message to Mary' is not a traditional song (128), but was written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant; the Neil Young album which features 'Unknown Legend', the song quoted in Dylan's notes to 'World Gone Wrong', is not 'Harvest Gold' [sic] (201) but 'Harvest Moon'; the name of the American composer Aaron Copland is not spelt 'Copeland' as Muir would have it (282). These, though, are minor blemishes on a book that is most certainly worth the time of all serious Dylan fans and students, thanks to its enthusiasm, commitment and informativeness. Troubadour is not designed to win new converts to the cause, but the converted will, beyond all doubt, enjoy being preached to from Andrew Muir's 'pages and the text'.

Bob Dylan's music has marked my 49 years, a soundtrack to our mutual development. In this time, Bob has made some dodgy albums and played some duff concerts. However, my passion for the raven with the broken wing, the over-turning tables and the strumming of his gay guitar has never abated.

So in this retrospective year, I travelled to Brixton to see the master at work. I joined 3,000 fellow believers hoping for a glimpse of the visceral force recently demonstrated in the Scorsese documentary which traced his impact on 20th century popular music.

Here is the good news. Dylan challenges his canon with as much vigour as ever. His re-interpretations of classic songs and reinvention of minor works continues to confound, surprise and amuse. The band are superb and the sound quality is exemplary.

There is only one problem - he can't sing anymore. '"Love and Theft"' is a great album, apart from the singing. Imagine what 'Mississippi' would have sounded like if he had recorded it even as late as 1988.

Yet, even on '"Love and Theft"' and on 'Time out of Mind', he wrote melodies adjusted to his diminishing voice. Tonight, 'Summer Days' and 'Cold Irons Bound' were his most convincing performances.

Often, however, he set himself melodic challenges beyond his vocal ability. At times (as on 'Girl from the North Country') the result was painful.

Another problem is his current predilection for what some have termed 'up-singing'. This takes the form of an increase in vocal scale at the end of a line. 'Once upon a time, threw the bums a dime in your PRIME'. Good for a song, perhaps, but not for six. Now, the more imaginative may claim that this represents an idiomatic recreation of a certain North American dialect, and English readers would recognise a similar trait amongst the Geordies of the North East. But let me be frank - it's irritating.

And yet, still, I enjoyed it. This maverick of a man, a genius of popular music and forever young in spirit, exudes such charisma that you listen enraptured and cling to the mystery of his creation.

Unable to play the guitar due to arthritis and unsteady of gait, a cracked-voice Bob knows his place in history. None of us know how long it will be before the 'Never Ending Tour' concludes. We must treasure these moments and we do. The audience is ecstatic, but is this mere nostalgia? Bob knows but, as usual, says nothing.

BDCC is pleased to feature, in English translation, this article by José Manuel Ruíz Rivero, which usefully complements 'Guitars and Tarantulas', the long essay on Dylan and the Spanish-speaking world by Christopher Rollason already on the site. The Spanish version of this text will be published in the Pamplona-based zine FANZIMMER, in which José Manuel has already written on Dylan and Lorca.

English translation and adaptation by Christopher Rollason. Quotations from 'Don Quixote' are from the translation by John Ormsby (originally published in 1885) on the Project Gutenberg site at www.gutenberg.org.

Chapter which treats of many and great things coming to pass between Don Quixote and Bob Dylan, of which he who reads may learn

I have a Moroccan friend living in Écija (Andalusia), a great book-lover, who tells me that whenever he reads he seeks similarities or parallel ideas between Dylan's texts and writers, be they Spanish or not, since he is sure that most of the books he owns fall under the shadow of that grand tree, Bob Dylan. On one of the branches of that tree, we find Don Quixote (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615), by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616).

When he read Fanzimmer No. 12, he was most surprised to find that our friend Antonio Curado forgot to mention in an article of his that Dylan's Tarantula does indeed namecheck none other than Sancho Panza, in the chapter Cowboy Angel Blues (this circumstance is, by the way, not signalled in the notes to the Spanish translation which I own (Tarántula, translated by Ignacio Renom with notes by Vicente Escudero, Madrid: Ediciones Júcar, 1996).

My friend declared that if our much-admired Dylan is identifying himself with Sancho, we should not be surprised, for in Cervantes' novel Don Quixote's faithful squire represents the popular element, the wisdom of the humble - a theme much appreciated by Bob.

In Fanzimmer No 6 (summer 2004), Joaquín Rodríguez began his article on Tarantula quoting Dylan's line 'here lies bob dylan murdered from behind' (translated into Spanish), and went on to declare that these words are not so much an outlined epitaph as a message of freedom. According to Joaquín, looking to the future we can now see Dylan's creative renaissance somewhere round the corner, for with time he would offer us a masterpiece in Chronicles Volume One. In Tarantula, in the chapter The Vandals Took the Handles (An Opera) Dylan, Joaquín believes, is continuing to pay homage to the work of Cervantes. We can see a similarity at the end of the first part of the Quixote, in the first part of the premature epitaph that occurs at the end of Book I, chapter LII. The Spanish original reads:

… en la sepultura de don Quijote

Aquí yace el caballero,
bien molido y mal andante,
a quien llevó Rocinante
por uno y otro sendero.

… ON THE TOMB OF DON QUIXOTE:

The scatterbrain that gave La Mancha more

  Rich spoils than Jason's; who a point so keen

  Had to his wit ….

  And sought renown on Rocinante mounted;

Here, underneath this cold stone, doth he lie.

A somewhat more literal rendering might run: 'Here lies the knight, /manhandled and ill-faring,/whom [his steed] Rocinante

bore/down each and every path'.

Also, in one of Dylan's most memorable love songs, 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands', dedicated to his then beloved wife Sara,

we may find the imprint of Cervantes  in the sad-eyed lady and sad-eyed prophet. Don Quixote is called the Caballero de la Triste

Figura (the Knight of the Rueful Countenance), and his beloved Dulcinea is described  in Book I, chapter I as having a 'nombre a

su parecer, músico y peregrino y significativo' (Ormsby: 'a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant').

In the same song, Dylan's imagery of  'my warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums' recalls a passage in Cervantes' Book I, chapter XL

(''Donde se prosigue la historia del cautivo' - 'In which the Story of the Captive is Continued'): 'y los que llaman del almacén, que

es como decir cautivos del concejo' (Ormsby: 'what they call those of the Almacen, which is as much as to say the slaves of the

municipality, who serve the city in the public works and other employments' - 'almacén' literally means 'warehouse').

Besides all this, says my friend, the cover of the bootleg of the magnificent concert which Bob Dylan gave in 2004 in Alcalá de

Henares, the city of Cervantes' birth, features an image of Don Quixote by Picasso, thus bringing together the two geniuses, Dylan

and Cervantes. May this serve as a tribute for the celebrations taking place in 2005, all over the world, of the 400th anniversary of

the publication of Cervantes' masterpiece - with Bob Dylan there in the background.

Perhaps we may even imagine Don Quixote and Sancho Panza wandering endlessly across the vast plains of La Mancha, seeking

their utopia, from inn to inn, walking trails of travel, two hobos drifting 'like a rolling stone' …