No One Can Sing the Blues Like Blind Willie McTell - A Nearly Perfect Bob Dylan Song

By 1983 Bob Dylan was emerging from his Born-Again period and returning to his prophetic roots. Dylan's work had always been biblical, but from 1979 to 1981 it narrowed to the 'end-of-times' evangelical born-again variant. He toured the country for three years encouraging his audience to repent of their sins.

The critics reaction to this was scathing. Audiences booed (not for the first time in Dylan's career).

Because my background is Pentecostal, I understood it thoroughly and was painfully familiar with it. My hope was that Dylan was intelligent enough to work his way through it. We all have to crawl through shit sometimes to get to freedom (see 'Shawshank Redemption').

Dylan worked his way through it, and musically, what he created was stunning and breath taking. The album 'Jokerman" was greeted with relief by critics who thought Dylan had renounced his Pentecostalism. They didn't understand what had happened.
Dylan did not abandon it, he incorporated it within his being and became stronger, wiser and more connected than before to the Divine Force that flows through the universe. The songs he wrote in 1983 that weren't included on Jokerman were stunning, powerful and spiritual. Many of these were included in the Bootleg Series released in 1991.
One of those songs was 'Blind Willie McTell.'  Dylan on piano and Mark Knopfler on acoustic guitar are the only musicians. The song evokes the ghosts of slavery while lamenting there is no one left to sing the blues to confront those ghosts.
Dylan surveys the landscape amidst these ghosts of past oppression and sees only greed and corruption today. The only appropriate response is to sing the blues and nobody could sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell. The images Dylan invokes are haunting and disturbing. Plantations are burning, whips are cracking, rebels are yelling, tribes are moaning and the undertaker's bell is tolling.
 Filled with despair as the blues singers who reminded us of our spiritual bankruptcy are now all departed, Dylan struggles to take their place. In doing so, he does not abandon his born-again Pentecostalism. He takes from it what is true and prophetic and incorporates it into the biblical vision he always had (see 'Hard Rain's Gonna Fall' and 'I'm All Right, Ma'). What emerged was something powerful and profound. Dylan didn't think the songs belonged on the album released in 1983. The only reason Dylan has given that he didn't include 'Blind Willie McTell' on Jokerman was that he didn't get it quite right.
We never get things perfectly, we never do. But sometimes we get close. This song gets very, very close.

Dylan's 'Foot of Pride,' A Prophetic Call For Judgement 'That We'll Never See'

When the first Bootleg Series came out (vol 1-3) I was struck by how many incredible Dylan songs never made it to record. 'Foot of Pride' is one of them. The lyrics are so stunning I print them in full.

Foot Of Pride

Like the lion tears the flesh off of a man
So can a woman who passes herself off as a male
They sang “Danny Boy” at his funeral and the Lord’s Prayer
Preacher talking ’bout Christ betrayed
It’s like the earth just opened and swallowed him up
He reached too high, was thrown back to the ground
You know what they say about bein’ nice to the right people on the way up
Sooner or later you gonna meet them comin’ down

Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back

Hear ya got a brother named James, don’t forget faces or names
Sunken cheeks and his blood is mixed
He looked straight into the sun and said revenge is mine
But he drinks, and drinks can be fixed
Sing me one more song, about ya love me to the moon and the stranger
And your fall-by-the sword love affair with Errol Flynn
In these times of compassion when conformity’s in fashion
Say one more stupid thing to me before the final nail is driven in.

Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back

There’s a retired businessman named Red
Cast down from heaven and he’s out of his head
He feeds off of everyone that he can touch
He said he only deals in cash or sells tickets to a plane crash
He’s not somebody that you play around with much
Miss Delilah is his, a Phillistine is what she is
She’ll do wondrous works with your fate, feed you coconut bread,
spice buns in your bed
If you don’t mind sleepin’ with your head face down in a grave

Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back

Well, they’ll choose a man for you to meet tonight
You’ll play the fool and learn how to walk through doors
How to enter into the gates of paradise
No, how to carry a burden too heavy to be yours
Yeah, from the stage they’ll be tryin’ to get water outa rocks
A whore will pass the hat, collect a hundred grand and say thanks
They like to take all this money from sin, build big universities to study in
Sing “Amazing Grace” all the way to the Swiss banks

Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back

They got some beautiful people out there, man
They can be a terror to your mind and show you how to hold your tongue
They got mystery written all over their forehead
They kill babies in the crib and say only the good die young
They don’t believe in mercy
Judgement on them is something that you’ll never see
They can exalt you up or bring you down main route
Turn you into anything that they want you to be

Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back

Yes, I guess I loved him too

I can still see him in my mind climbin’ that hill
Did he make it to the top, well he probably did and dropped
Struck down by the strength of the will
Ain’t nothin’ left here partner, just the dust of a plague
that has left this whole town afraid
From now on, this’ll be where you’re from
Let the dead bury the dead. Your time will come
Let hot iron blow as he raised the shade

Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back

Copyright © 1983 by Special Rider Music

Bob Dylan's Desolation Row - A Masterful Masterpiece Of Misery and Misadventure

'Highway 61 Revisited' was the first Dylan album I owned. The first side began with 'Like A Rolling Stone' and ended with 'Ballad of A Thin Man.' Breathlessly, I flipped the vinyl over to listen to the second side. I thought to  myself, how can we top that first side?
'Queen Jane Approximately' starts the second side off well. Then it just kept getting better. When the acoustic guitars launched into Desolation Row, I was exhausted. I just laid back and listened, already treated to the most amazing musical experience of my young life.
'They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown.'
Wow, that's how the song started. After a blind commissioner and a restless riot squad, we get to the refrain 'as Lady and I look out tonight from Desolation Row.'
Cinderella and Romeo inhabit the second verse, ending with Cinderella 'sweeping up on Desolation Row.' The song continues with a cast of characters culled from the Bible, Shakespeare and Classic Literature. The penultimate verse begins with a nod to Roman/Greek Mythology 'Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn.' The Poets Pound and Eliot are invoked and 'nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row.'
The last verse lets us in on the joke 'I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name.' The weariness and depression sets in as the writer states 'right now I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters, no, not unless you mail them from Desolation Row.'

I had forgotten about this song for years until I watched the brilliant, dystopic movie 'Watchmen.' The soundtrack featured a version of Desolation Row by the band My Chemical Romance. The song did not feel out of a place in a movie that reminds us that the American dream is really a nightmare.
I gravitate toward the dark and the deep. Pop mainstream Top 40 music makes me ill. Cotton candy for the brain. I need music that feeds the soul and stimulates the gray matter. I can't tell you what 'Desolation Row' means. But it seems to capture some basic elements of the human condition, hopelessness and helplessness.
Rather than sugarcoat how awful life can be, this song stares into the abyss and triumphs through sheer will power. Listening to it allows us to do the same.

Why I Wrote 'The Heretic' Like an Album

The interview between my reporter self and writer self continues as the past and present discuss vinyl record albums.

R: What literary style did you use in writing your book?

W: Remember vinyl albums?

R: Yeah.

W: Remember when you bought an album how it was to take the record out of the sleeve, place it on a turntable, lift the needle on the vinyl and then kick back and give it that first listen?

R: Yeah.

W: How many songs on the album did you have to like to say you liked the whole album?

R: Good question. But I'm supposed to be asking the questions.

W: Roll with it, how many?

R: Probably at least three.

W: You didn't have to like all the songs on an album to say you liked the album?

R: No. There were probably some songs I didn't like at all. Or at least at the time. And then, I liked different songs better over time.

W: That's how I wrote the book.

R: Don't follow you.

W: Think of the book as an album with 12 different songs sung in three different styles. Not every style will appeal to everybody. But one of them might. Not every chapter may appeal to everybody, but three of them might.

R: OK, what you're suggesting is we don't have to like the whole book?

W: I'd be surprised if anybody did. I'm happy if you like a couple of chapters or a couple of scenes.

R: Are you getting any feedback that suggests this approach, dare we call it a novel approach, is working?

W: Yes, a first-year law student, who was a philosophy major, liked the philosophic parts, didn't read much of the rest of the book, but said he was fascinated or moved by what he did read.

R: More?

W: A young adult who likes fantasy and science fiction only read those parts and liked them, offering good suggestions for sequels. Some middle-aged readers liked the middle-aged romance that is the one of the soul centers of the book.

R: What are some other centers, or themes?

W: A daughter seeks the father she knew only from pictures, stories and dreams.

R: What is the point of view? What's your agenda?

W: Good question.

R: I only ask good questions.

W: The marketing person who read my book couldn't figure out what my agenda was.

R: If you can't discern an agenda, it may be there is none. Or that it is disguised or buried. Which is it?

W: Back to music. Remember what Jerry Garcia said about Bob Dylan's songs?

R: Yeah, I'm You, course I remember.

W: For the benefit of our readers, please.

R: Oh, yeah. Jerry said Dylan left space in his songs for others to inhabit. It's why there are so many Dylan covers.

W: I've left space for readers to inhabit. When they read the book, it becomes theirs. Remember that interview Bill Hicks gave to the BBC?

R: Yes, he said he viewed his comedy act as conversation between friends.

W: My book is a dialogue on ideas between friends.

R: What are some of the ideas?

W: Where go after we die. Whether we are reunited with those we love and how. There is an elaborate ethical system that runs throughout the book. The chapter headings sometimes give an idea of the ideas discussed, like 'Redemption' and 'Divine Justice.'

R: What was the impetus for writing the book?

W: The death of my mother. It ripped a huge hole in our family's universe. The book is my way of coping with the losses in my life of people that I have loved and cared about, from my grandparents to my friend Doug Hosier. It's also my attempt to share with others possible explanations for the after life/before life that are quite heretical.