Dream Twister: The Dylan Archive

Day 4-5: Nov. 16-17, 2017

I’m writing this on Friday because I ended up cutting a day from my visit to the Dylan Archive; I got home Thursday evening and I was too tired to think about writing. I had reached a point in the work where I had to decide whether to continue to transcribe “Jokerman” drafts — some with very interesting discarded lines — but my hand was aching and I already have transcriptions of the major stages in its development. Or I could have opened a new box of materials on, say, Street Legal, but I would only have a few hours to look at it. Or I could give myself some time to rest and reflect on what I had discovered. I chose that last option, broke camp, and came home a day early. But not until finding yet more pieces in the “Jokerman” story.

On Day 4 (Thursday) I went in for just a couple hours, and Mark brought out something just for completeness’ sake: the folder of “copyright sheets” for “Jokerman.” He said that these usually don’t hold much of interest, but since I was so deep into it, I might see something. And indeed I did. It turns out Bob applied for a copyright for “Jokerman” twice — once with the lyrics to what I am calling version 1 (v1) on May 5, 1983, and a second time with the lyrics to what I am calling version 2 (v2) on Nov. 25, 1983. The two versions are very different, and the copyright info should enable us to piece together a fairly precise narrative about the song’s development, especially the key turn from v1 to v2. I think that moment is recorded on those two sheets of Ritz-Carlton notepaper, and it has something to do, surprisingly enough, with Alexander Pope.

In the upper left corner of what is probably the first Ritz-Carlton sheet are these lines:

the fool breaks in

where Angels tread not

These lines are recognizably an attempt at Pope’s famous line from the Essay on Criticism: “Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread” (625). Dylan does get the line right in the final draft of the song, but along the way he tries several times to find a place for the line and to get the phrasing right. I’m guessing he finally looked it up. My point is that this Popean moment in the Ritz-Carlton had to be after the May 5, 1983 copyright registration where it does not appear, and well before the Nov. 25, 1983 copyright registration where it does. It makes sense that Dylan’s reservations might begin when the band started rehearsing the song, but I have not (yet!) heard the session recordings. It’s easy to see the attraction of the line for Dylan — fools are a common target, and angels had been of particular concern on the gospel albums. But the line is also part of a complete re-envisioning of the second half of the song. The opening 2 stanzas fell into place pretty quickly. The problems start with the “man of the mountain” stanza, but Dylan settles on most of the lines, if not the formatting. The stanzas after that gave Dylan fits, and he finally scraps pretty much everything except the “molotov cocktail” line from v1.

I’ve become convinced as well that “Jokerman” and “Man of Peace” may have been conceived together. I mention this because as I recorded earlier, Dylan had similar problems with “Man of Peace,” except with 4-5 interior stanzas instead of the closing stanzas. The drafts of “MoP” all have 12-13 stanzas; the final version has only 8 stanzas. Unlike the revisions of “Jokerman,” in “MoP” the answer to the struggles with those interior stanzas was just to drop them altogether.

None of this is quite what I expected from my time at the archive. I was hoping to track down hard connections between Dylan and English Romanticism, primarily by way of Allen Ginsberg, and I had started compiling some evidence from bios, letters, etc. before I left. But “Jokerman” is part of the project, and there were a number of documents in that folder, so why not start there? You know how Keats felt on first looking into Chapman’s Homer — a whole world spread out before you — well, that’s kind of how I felt when I opened that first folder. I took the first trail and it seems to have led to El Dorado.

Oh, and before I left town, I spent about 45 minutes listening to session recordings of rehearsals and very early attempts at “Mississippi” and “Floater” from Love and Theft. And yes, it was a cool as you think.

Practical lessons from the trip. Since no photography or photocopying is allowed, unless you have a photographic memory, you’re going to do a lot of transcription if you intend to do the sort of close textual analysis that I do. I also see this as a sort of service to the community, and I expect that I’ll send typescripts of my transcriptions to the archive for others to use and refine. Also, I would have done better to schedule a day off or at least a day away from the archive at mid-week. By day 4, I was fried.

Probably related to that, I also learned that there are levels of isolation and monkishness that even I cannot tolerate. I was lodged at Extended Stay America – Midtown which wasn’t bad. I had booked 5 nights for under $300, and that included a (miniscule) kitchen. I brought my lunch to the archive — it’s kind of isolated itself — and ate all my other meals in my room. The room was a bargain, and had cable, flat screen tv, and a/c, but was otherwise pretty Spartan. I upgraded the wifi for $5 a day, but after 6 straight hours of reading and transcribing each day, I was exhausted, and the room in the evening got a little claustrophobic. The hotel was near plenty of chain restaurants (ugh), but there was virtually no green space, no place to walk where there wasn’t a bunch of traffic, no place to escape that I didn’t have to drive to. The pool was outdoors and closed, no hot tub, and the fitness room had only a treadmill and stairclimber, neither of which is good for my hip. It would have been worth a few bucks to have a hot tub, hotel bar, or even a recumbent stationary bike. I felt like Travis Bickle without the masochism.

I’ll close by thanking the Dylan Archive for their help in my research. This is a great resource that is just getting started. The items have been individually numbered and placed in folders and boxes, but otherwise, virtually everything is still to be done — establishing chronologies, cross-referencing, constructing the conceptual network connecting all these scraps of paper. (I’m reminded of the hapless editor of Teufelsdrock’s papers in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus.) Various policies about use, photography, etc. presumably will evolve as researchers ask for what they need. Even things like a magnifying glass are important — luckily I carry one in my backpack. I’m pretty excited about this work, and now that I’m retired, I can do more or less what I want with it. My family situation demands that I stay in Little Rock. The archive is only 4 hours away. Not so bad.

Day 3: Nov. 15, 2017

So, just to start, the highlight of day 3 was Take 1 of “You’re a Big Girl Now,” the first thing I listened to from the Blood on the Tracks New York session tapes. Bob solo, voice aquiver, harp sweet and tentative. Heartbreaking. I listened to whatever was there. The sound was crystal clear. The only take of “Meet Me in the Morning” was really fine as well. I’ve requested the Love & Theft sessions for tomorrow. Yeah.

I feel like on my first two days here, I did solid, focused work on things I need to know, particularly for the paper I’m working on about “Jokerman” and “Man of Peace.” So I felt justified in trusting to serendipity and exploring sort of random stuff today. I spent the morning with 18 assorted pages — large, small, manuscript, typescript — related to Infidels. This included full lyrics for songs I’ve never heard of, a sort of longish poem-thing, and roughly 4-6 pages of notes related to a song with the line “Step away from the pit baby.” I think I may have also found the earliest bit of “Jokerman” yet on one of those pages — just 2 lines: “You know . . . you know what he wants / You dont show . . . any response.” I have been disappointed about how little there is related to “Sweetheart Like You,” just a couple of lines with the word “sweetheart,” and few random trashy pick-up lines, but nothing like deliberate development.

I spent the afternoon with the 36-page (by my count) Shot of Love notepad. This is a 4×6 (I think) pad of paper, glued (precariously) at the top, with “MEMO Anna” on 2 lines of red block letters, centered at the top. All the notes were manuscript in black ink. Page 20 to the end becomes a pretty clear effort to provide fair copies of song lyrics. They include the title, written vertically in block letters and bracketed. The lettering is even and precise. Indeed, I’m not entirely sure that those pages are in Bob’s hand. What I have seen so far has been surprisingly legible, but this is a whole different level of precision. Who knows? Someone better with handwriting will have to check it out. I will say that on Monday, I saw the “Sweetheart Like You Lyrics” which were for copyright purposes; they had been prepared by someone else, and okayed by Dylan. My point is that it would not be unheard of for someone else to compile an initial fair copy.

 

For tomorrow I have requested the materials related to Street Legal — the front bookend of Bob’s Christian period. The new official bootleg covering the gospel years had not yet arrived — a week after release (gee, thanks, bobdylan.com) — when I left home a few days ago, but I anticipate that much of what I want will be included. Instead of looking at that stuff, I’m devoting my time here to stuff otherwise not available. I’m also hoping to listen to the session tapes from Love & Theft. How can I not?

If you’ve read this far, here are the contents to the Shot of Love notepad:

Shot of Love notepad (“Memo Anna”); manuscript in black ink

Archive ID: 2016.01 B82 F08 01

Page#   Contents

1          Lets keep it between us lyrics – partial

2          World full of trouble / Caribbean Wind notes

3-4       You making a lyer [sic] out of me lyrics – partial

5-6       Somethings in life – notes / partial

7          She was from Haiti, like a peach, young velvet & ripe

8          I believe you now – notes

9          Yonder come sin – notes

10        Caribbean Wind

11        You don’t need it — very few notes

12-19   Blank

20        Let’s keep it Between us lyrics (first with vertical titles in block letters)

21        this may be the moment that you were born for – notes

22        West bound soul – notes

23        The Groom’s still waiting at the altar

24        Some Things in Life

25        Every Grain of Sand

26-27   Yonder Come Sin

28-29   Caribbean Wind

30-31   Making a lyer [sic] out of me

32        Cover down – partial / notes

33-36   Blank

Day 2: Nov. 14, 2017

Just to give you a sense of where I am. The Gilcrease Museum feels on the edge of town, in a beautiful setting. The Helmerich Center for American Studies is a beautiful building. I’m set up in the Zarrow Reading Room. Mark Davidson is the contact person. He has an office right near where I’m working. I’m the only person in a large room full of tables (There was a second person there today, looking at old manuscripts). The tables are wired for computers, but none are allowed. Mark is a great guy, and he has the boxes I requested ready. I can see already that I have been optimistic in my initial requests about what I can do. I spent all day Monday on 17 documents related to one song. The Shot of Love notepad is 34 pages.

From what I understand I am only the second researcher to use the Dylan Archive. There are plenty of applications, but many of those are from people who are not really academic researchers. There will be a public aspect to the archive, but they are not ready for that yet. But they are organized enough to allow scholars to come in and work with the documents. I’ve already recorded the chronology I suggested for the “Jokerman” drafts. In my sequencing I offered only the most obvious evidence to establish chronology, but that is just the basis for a deeper look at the nuances of the song’s development.

That means looking at what image patterns replaced other image patterns. Bob tends to oscillate between two core images at particular moments in the development of the lyrics. This leads to 2 questions: 1. What do the terms of the choice reveal about the author’s intentions? and 2. The points of uncertainty occur at particular moments in the song; why at these moments?

*****

Today (Tuesday) was great fun but in different sorts of ways. When I got to the archive, Mark Davidson was in a meeting, so I had some time to kill. I spent that hour typing up my transcriptions of “Jokerman” drafts from yesterday, primarily to help me review what I wanted to do today. Today I wanted to tie up a couple loose ends about “Jokerman” — primarily transcribe the Ritz-Carlton notes. I did that, and then looked at the few papers concerning “Sweetheart Like You” and “Every Grain of Sand.” There was surprisingly little about those, but I’m hoping serendipity will be my friend tomorrow.

I started my look at “Man of Peace” by looking at what I’m thinking is the single most important document so far — the page with early lyrics for both “Man of Peace” and “Jokerman.” I’m guessing that the two songs were birthed together, and Bob ran with “Man of Peace” first. I had already transcribed the “Jokerman” lyrics from the page, so today I transcribed the typescripts of the “Man of Peace” lyrics, and then began the task of transcribing the manuscript notes on those typed sheets. The “Man of Peace” lyrics were not as bountiful as the “Jokerman” lyrics — only 4 typed sheets, 2 sheets apiece for two different versions. But the changes were more subtle than in “Jokerman,” and frankly a bit more tedious to transcribe. All of the typescript versions have at least 12 stanzas. Three of the four have 13, and I do wonder is there is a missing page to the one that has only 12. The official version of the song has only 8 stanzas. The typescripts show what happened.

The problems are primarily in stanzas 6-10. Over four drafts Bob juggles mansions, mirrors, screeching saxophones, and the birdman of Alcatraz. Even Socrates shows up calling us back to ancient Greece (anything to rhyme with “peace”). But it just won’t work. So he just cuts them out altogether. A few phrases get repurposed to other points, but basically those problematic stanzas just disappear, presumably leaving a more focused vision of Satan in disguise.

The most frustrating thing is the need to transcribe so much. The terms of the archive do not allow photography of any type, so I have to copy everything out by hand in pencil. There is only so much deep analysis one can do like that, so a lot of what I am doing is gathering info to work on at home. But there are these great moments when I open a new folder and spread the sheets out on the table in front of me, and just take it in. None of the folders I have seen has had the sheets in any sort of chronological order. I’m not sure how they were ordered / numbered in the folders initially, but I was told that there is no physical evidence for the sequencing of sheets in a folder. So you have to rely exclusively on internal evidence. It’s lots of fun.

And for the last 2 hours today while I was transcribing stanzas of “MoP,” I was listening to the session recordings for Infidels! Including 2 or 3 songs I had never heard before — “Tell Me,” “This Was My Love,” “Julius and Ethel.”

This is just so cool, y’all.

Tomorrow I’m heading into the unknown. Unidentified left over lyrics from Infidels and the Shot of Love notepad. Wish me luck!

Day 1: Nov. 13, 2017

Wow. Today was my first day in the  Dylan Archive. I spent the entire day going over drafts of “Jokerman” from Infidels. There were 17 items. They were in no particular order in the box, except that the manuscript sheets were on top of the typescript pages, and they started with a sort of outline of the song we know in manuscript. This outline was followed by two truly amazing brainstorming sessions, covering both sides a yellow sheet of legal paper each. Then on small yellow paper an attempt at the stanzas we now have. And a couple small sheets of random notes on Ritz-Carlton note paper. All this would suggest that the typescript pages would be drafts increasingly like the final song we know. Instead, the typescript pages reveal a wildly different song, but a song that was not very satisfying: “hanging out in trees with the birds & the bees / when you not on your knees you are / in the river / catching fish.” Yeah. Not great.

The more I looked I could see the patterns emerge. The quote from Alexander Pope — “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” — gave Bob fits. It first appears on that Ritz-Carlton note paper, but he gets it wrong: “Fools tread in where angels . . . .” Dylan knows he has the quotation wrong — it doesn’t scan — and over a few drafts he moves it around, trying to get it to sound right. At some  point he must have looked it up. It may have been a book of quotations, or an 18th century anthology because on the next song on Infidels, “Sweetheart Like You” he quotes Samuel Johnson’s famous remark about patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel.

One image that seems to have been there almost from the start is the image of the Jokerman as a “dream twister.” Bob was torn between what to rhyme with it. No matter how he moved it around it, it had to rhyme with either “mister” or “sister” and the choices become “nobody to call you mister” or “nobody to marry your sister.” The sister  finally wins, although the “mister” dominates the early drafts.

There’s lots more to this, but for now, here’s the sequence of drafts:

******

“Jokerman” drafts

Dylan Archive item: 2016.01 B35 F03

There is more evidence than I list below, but these seem the most obvious indicators.

#          Explanation

10        Least developed draft (1 full stanza), on same sheet as work on “Man of Peace”; pencil notes on sheet all refer to “Man of Peace”; did “Jokerman” begin as part of “Man of Peace”?

14        photocopy of #12 without pencil notes

12        original of #14, with pencil notes

11        introduces preacher of darkness

13        “animal preacher” penciled in

15        “animal preacher” typed; “milkcow blues preacher” penciled in

16        “milkcow blues preacher” typed in

07-08   stray lines on 2 sheets of Ritz-Carlton NY note paper; first attempt to get the Alexander Pope quote right; this is the key moment in the development of the song; the transition point between the two very different versions

01        outline for v2

03        1st brainstorming for v2 – 5 stanzas

02        2nd brainstorming for v2 – 6 stanzas

04-05   v2 full draft attempt 1 – stanzas 1-3 on small legal paper

06        v2 full draft attempt 1 – stanzas 4-6 on small legal paper (extension of #04-05)

09        v2 attempt at typescript full draft – “standing out over the waters”

17        v2 attempt at typescript full draft – “standing over the waters” amended “(on)” above “over”

Still not the final lyric:

Stanza 2: Alexander Pope has not yet replaced the lack of a “store bought shirt”

Stanza 3: “friend to the martyr” has not yet replaced “scratching the world with a fine tooth comb”

Stanza 4: “law of the jungle” has not replaced the “crystal ball”

Stanza 5: “false hearted judges” have not yet replaced the “trap”

Stanza 6: priests are “pimps” not pocketed (paid)

****

And for the completist, here is a picture of  a page from my transcriptions for today. It’s page 2 of Archive #2016.01 B35 F03 12 (got that?) Item 12 is 3 stanzas in typescript with penciled notes at the bottom. I tried to reproduce the positioning of the pencil notes to keep the associated ideas together — experience from reading Blake’s notebook. The arrows are all Bob’s.

[Picture removed by request.]