Bill Fay R.I.P.

Dead Oceans recently announced the passing of Bill Fay, who died peacefully in London, aged 81.

They wrote: "Bill was a gentle man and a gentleman, wise beyond our times. He was a private person with the biggest of hearts, who wrote immensely moving, meaningful songs that will continue to find people for years to come.Bill’s first two albums, Bill Fay and Time of the Last Persecution, found a modest but loving audience upon their release at the dawn of the 1970s. While they weren’t considered commercial successes at the time, they continue to inspire devotion decades on, now known as overlooked classics from the era.

With enormous help from producer Joshua Henry, who tracked Bill down and convinced him to make another album, Bill later went on to make three more albums with Dead Oceans: Life is People (2012), his first release for forty years; Who is the Sender? (2015); and Countless Branches (2020), enjoying his cult status in real time.

Only a month before his passing, Bill was busy working on a new album. Our hope is to find a way to finish and release it, but for now, we remember Bill’s legacy as the “man in the corner of the room at the piano”, who quietly wrote heartfelt songs that touched and connected with people around the world."

'Bill Fay Was a Hidden Gem. One Musician Made Finding Him a Mission.' was the New York Times headline for an article exploring the background to Fay's album 'Countless Branches.'

Bill Fay made two albums at the beginning of the 1970s before losing his contract and disappearing from the scene. The strength of these albums, particularly the second 'Time of the Last Persecution,' led several musicians and producers to find Fay and assist in releasing more of his music.

Fay’s first two albums since his rediscovery, “Life Is People” in 2012 and “Who Is the Sender?” in 2015, were both profitable and effective follow-ups to the records he’d made 40 years earlier resulting in the recording of the most recent 'Countless Branches.'

Grayson Haver Currin notes that Fay's: 'self-titled 1970 debut featured idealistic odes to friendship, nature and peace swaddled in swooping strings and cascading horns. But only a year later, he’d turned to thorny rock for “Time of the Last Persecution.” Fueled by the horrors of the Vietnam War and the violence of the Jim Crow South, Fay railed against social corruption for 14 fractured songs, framing life as a revolving door of chances to get right with God.'

With the more recent albums Fay is: 'still writing about his distrust of governments and his belief in the goodness of people. Henry smartly dressed those songs in chamber-pop elegance. Tweedy lent his voice to a jangling tune called “This World,” while Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce added subtle harmonies to “Bring It On Lord,” a paean to valuing the days you have left. Fay’s voice wavered and rasped with age, the seams worn like proud wrinkles of wisdom.'

A Bill Fay song is often a 'deceptively simple thing, which carries more emotional weight than its concision and brevity might imply.' They are musical haikus on 'his recurring themes: nature, the family of man, the cycle of life and the ineffable vastness of it all.' The most recent releases being 'as pointed and as poignant as anything he’s ever recorded, as if songs waiting for their time have finally found their rightful place within our current zeitgeist.'

Bill Fay - Countless Branches - 'Countless Branches is the third of Fay's later-period albums, following Life Is People (2012) and Who Is the Sender? (2015). It might just be the best, too. It's palatable and concise, comprising ten tracks with bonuses pushing the total to 17. An incorrigible grouch might bridle at these guileless, gently philosophical songs, but they're delivered with such obvious sincerity that the rest of us will be charmed. As ever, Fay focuses on the search for meaning and substance in everyday life.'

Bill Fay's 'beautifully hymnal fourth studio album' Who is the Sender? 'contains sublime, heartfelt ruminations on nature and the world.' With less light and shade than Life is People but with a more consistently meditative tone, With profound simplicity, like that of Chance in Being There, Fay mourns the inhumanity of our warlike impulses while prayerfully calling for a new world to be manifest.

The song 'Who Is The Sender?' on Bill Fay's album of the same title is about the phenomenon which Fay sees as 'songfinding' rather than songwriting:

'Ask Bill Fay about his relationship with his instrument and he says something revealing, not "Ever since I learnt to play the piano", but "Ever since the piano taught me..."

What the piano taught him was how to connect to one of the great joys of his life. "Music gives," he says. And he is a grateful receiver. But, it makes him wonder, "Who is the sender?" ...

joy and sadness are indeed deep in this material, which Bill describes as "alternative gospel". Though it clearly stems from his belief, he doesn't seek to proselytise or convert anybody, but just hopes to share the concerns he puts into the words and the feelings that he receives from the music:

"Goodness, beauty, comfort. If something gives in the world, that's a good thing, isn't it? Maybe that's what music wants to do."'

Bill Fay’s songs on Life is People are simply astonishing - simple and melodic yet with unusual imagery and insights delivered with gravity and grace. 'Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People)' is a highlight from a collection of stand-out tracks; a celebration of the miracle of ordinary life, the infinite variation in each human face, which stirs his soul.

'Aside from Fay's plaintive cover of Wilco's Jesus Etc, Life Is People also continues with the lyrical themes established back in 1969-70 ... "They need space to convey," he stresses, "but, in a simple way, biblical prophecy. Not in some extreme or fanatical way but fundamentally, that this world - in the hands of different leaders, competing with each other economically - it can't carry on. It's belief in a change. There's comfort in that. I'm not so sure how you could handle the world if you didn't have that. It's God's world, yet we walk around as if it's ours."' (Mojo)

Bill Fay's Life Is People is an album to treasure produced by a man of real humility with a wonderful back story. The story is as follows:

"Bill Fay was born in North London, where he still lives. His debut on the underground Decca Nova label, Bill Fay (1970), included spacious big band jazz arrangements by Mike Gibbs, but it was the follow-up, Time Of The Last Persecution (1971), that cemented his reputation — a harrowing, philosophical and painfully honest diagnosis of an unhealthy society and a messed-up planet, that featured the cream of London's fieriest jazz session players such as guitarist Ray Russell. Unable to make ends meet as a musician, Fay wandered through a succession of jobs for years, writing songs privately. His albums were reissued in 1998 after being deleted for 27 years, and when the likes of Jeff Tweedy and David Tibet (Current 93) began singing his praises in the early 2000s, Bill began to come back into view. A third album, recorded piecemeal in the late 70s, was released in 2005 as Tomorrow Tomorrow And Tomorrow, by The Bill Fay Group. And Wilco even convinced the shy singer to join them onstage in London in 2007.

A CD of Bill's early demos and home recordings has also since emerged, but Life Is People is his first properly crafted studio album since 1971. He was motivated by American producer Joshua Henry, a fan who had grown up listening to the Bill Fay albums in his Dad's record collection. Spooling through Bill's home demos, Joshua discovered an incredible trove of material and decided to do something about it. Guitarist Matt Deighton (Oasis, Paul Weller, Mother Earth) assembled a cast of backup musicians to bring out the songs' full potential, Tim Weller (who's played drums for everyone from Will Young to Noel Gallagher and Goldfrapp), and keyboardist Mikey Rowe (High Flying Birds, Stevie Nicks, etc). In addition, Bill is reunited on several tracks with Ray Russell and drummer Alan Rushton, who played on Time Of The Last Persecution."

Fay's humility seems to run throughout this project - in his low-key, almost hestitant delivery, in lyrics such as "The never ending happening / Of what's to be and what has been / Just to be a part of it / Is astonishing to me" ('The Never Ending Happening')) and "I don't ask much, for myself / But for the one's I love" ('Thank You Lord'), and in liner notes which simply express profound gratitude for the support he has received from others in the making of this album.

His songs are simply astonishing - simple and melodic yet with unusual imagery and insights delivered with gravity and grace:

"Ranging from intimate to cosmic, epic but never grandiose, Bill's deeply committed music reminds you of important, eternal truths, and the lessons to be drawn from the natural world, when the materiality and greed threaten to engulf everything.

From the Eden-like hope for a better world in the opening "There Is A Valley" to the street sweeper gazing past the neon lights to the heavens in "City Of Dreams"; from the grand historical sweep of "Big Painter" to the compassionate hopefulness of "The Healing Day"; Bill's perceptive songs strike at the heart of the big issues facing us all today. But they're humble and down to earth too, full of striking images: witness the panoramic "Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People)", with its windblown seeds and grandmas blowing kisses into prams: as rapturous and soul-stirring as any music you'll hear this year."

'Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People)' is a highlight from a collection of stand-out tracks; a celebration of the miracle of ordinary life, the infinite variation in each human face, which stirs his soul. This is music to stir the soul, as Jim O'Rourke has stated "Bill Fay has quietly held his head high above the fray of chaos for years with the beauty of his music and the power of his spirit."

Bill Fay's classic Time Of The Last Persecution displays empathy in the face of apocalypse. Fay's songs are simply astonishing - simple and melodic yet with unusual imagery and insights (both whimsical and surreal bearing comparison with Syd Barrett and Nick Drake) delivered with gravity and grace.

Bill Fay was profoundly influenced by Teilhard de Chardin:

"Shortly after his debut was released, Fay stumbled across an old biblical commentary and quickly developed a fascination with the books of Daniel and Revelation. With the Vietnam War still escalating and the Kent State massacres in the headlines, the dark, apocalyptic tone of the ancient prophetic literature seemed disturbingly relevant. About this same time, Fay also began reading the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a mid-twentieth century Jesuit, scientist, and philosopher, who believed that all of reality, both human and non-human, is rapidly evolving toward an eternal state of unity and peace. The earth’s present travails (war, poverty, injustice), however overwhelming they may seem, are really the birth pangs of the coming paradise—evidence of both the deficiencies of our current existence and the imminence of the world to come.

Armed with these new intellectual resources, Fay fashioned a second recording that was darker and more desperate but ultimately more hopeful than the first. Time of the Last Persecution is dominated by Fay’s vision of the coming apocalypse, vividly described in songs like “’Til the Christ Come Back,” “Plan D,” and the bleak, bombastic title cut. Fay’s eschatology on the recording is a far cry from the Us-vs.-Them cynicism of religious orthodoxy, in which the chosen people are eternally rewarded while the rest of us are cast into a bottomless lake of fire. For Fay, as for Teilhard before him, deliverance is deliverance for all (hippie and soldier, young and old, human and non-human) from the structures and institutions that oppress and alienate us. And the coming of the messiah signifies that all of reality—however senseless it may now seem—ultimately has value and significance. “The album was a commitment,” Fay recently explained, “albeit a reluctant one at first, to the belief that there will be, and has to be at some point, some spiritual intervention in the world.”'

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Bill Fay - Thank You Lord.

Apocalypse in ART: The Creative Unveiling - Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

On Thursday I was at Apocalypse in ART : The Creative Unveiling, a CenSAMM conference at which I spoke along with Christopher Rowland, Kip Gresham, Elena Unger, Michelle Fletcher, Michael Takeo Magruder, Alfredo Cramerotti, Eleanor Heartney, Rebekah Dyer, Lilla Moore, Natasha O’Hear, Massimo Introvigne, and Matthew Askey.

The word ‘apocalypse’ originally indicated an ‘unveiling’, and the speaker in the Book of Revelation is a ‘seer’. This is perhaps one of the reasons that this ancient text (and others like it) have generated such a ferment of creative responses in the visual arts – as well as those other non-visual strands of the arts which have their own way of engaging our mind’s eye.

The rich variety of types of artistic unveiling (visual, musical, dramatic, literary) makes an engagement with the creative arts a deeply valuable way of understanding and appreciating the idea of apocalypse, alongside more traditionally academic modes of enquiry.

The conference sought to explore our relationship to art, its practice, its study and what the arts unveil to us. As artists or as audiences of art we can be profoundly transformed by our encounters with artistic creativity; indeed, we can find ourselves using the language of revelation to describe such encounters, regardless of our individual faith, religion or beliefs. Mark Rothko is quoted as saying, “the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”

I spoke about apocalyptic influences and imagery in the work of Bob Dylan:

‘I was born in 1941,’ Bob Dylan reminded his audience at a concert in 2009, ‘that was the year they bombed Pearl Harbour. I’ve been living in a world of darkness ever since.’

What did he mean? After all, he grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, Which was a ‘perfectly fine, respectable, middle-class, civic-pride sort of place’, ‘conventional, mainstream, solid,’ most of all, quiet (David Kinney, 2014 ).

What he meant was that, in those Cold War days, ‘in addition to the normal fire and tornado drills [you] had from time to time to crawl under your desk in order to shield yourself from the imagined explosion of an atomic bomb.’ (Robert Cantwell in Greil Marcus, 2010)

In Chronicles Dylan writes that, ‘In 1951 I was going to Grade School. One of the things we were trained to do was to hide and take cover under our desks when the air raid sirens blew because the Russians could attack us with bombs. We were also told that the Russians could be parachuting from planes over our town at any time.’ Andrew McCarron notes that, ‘In Dylan's case, the terrifying experience of hearing the air raid sirens as a ten year old and having to take cover under his desk left a lasting mark.’

McCarron goes on to say that, ‘Of his childhood and its anxieties, Dylan writes in Chronicles: “Back then when something was wrong the radio could lay hands on you and you’d be all right.” His most steadfast sense of identity was guided by the imaginative worlds that came to life through the blues, gospel, Appalachian, and country music that he heard and ended up playing himself.’ Howard Sounes notes that, ‘His musical influences included gospel, and much of the American folk and blues music that proved to be so formative was infused with biblical imagery as well.’

Much later Dylan was to state that, ‘Those old songs are my lexicon and prayer book … All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from "Let Me Rest on that Peaceful Mountain” to “Keep on the Sunny Side.” You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs. I believe in Hank Williams singing “I Saw the Light.” I’ve seen the light, too.’

It was religion that also gave the young Robert Zimmerman a language in which to express his sense of living in a world gone wrong. Bert Cartwright argues that he first explores ‘the Bible's apocalyptic imagery from an artistic perspective of potent symbol’ and then, as a result of his Christian conversion, ‘adopted a quite literal understanding of the way God would get even with and, with his chosen few, prevail.’

His knowledge of the Bible came, of course, from his Jewish upbringing, as well as from the music to which he listened. Sounes notes that, ‘While Bob was not brought up in an Orthodox home, he did receive a grounding in the Bible - an important source of imagery for his song lyrics long before his Christian conversion of the 1970s.’ Cartwright expands, writing that his ‘understanding of history wells up from the depths of a Jewish heritage that rehearsed each year within the family the liberating exodus of God's people from bondage.’ It was this ‘understanding of history embedded deep in Dylan's Jewish heritage that haunts him with questions of justice in the face of a growing despair for the human transformation of the world.’

There is one more key influence to explore; again musical, as you would expect. ‘In September 1960, Bob Dylan borrowed a copy of Woody Guthrie's autobiography Bound for Glory from a college classmate and became obsessed.’ ‘Dylan started mimicking his hero's speech patterns and even told the crowd at the Cafe Wha? when he arrived in New York for the first time the following January: "I been travellin' around the country, followin' in Woody Guthrie's footsteps."'

Dylan hunted Guthrie out at ‘Greystone Park Psychiatric hospital in New Jersey, suffering from Huntingdon's disease, which finally led to his death in 1967. Dylan wrote, and played to his idol, a new piece of his own called ‘Song to Woody’ which states that ‘Hibbing, Minnesota’s Bobby Zimmerman had escaped his past to reinvent himself as a lonesome hobo drifter’, like Guthrie, ‘like the best folk singers hopping off and on railroad cars destination anywhere’:

‘I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings

Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born’

Ross Altman notes that, ‘Listening to that first published Dylan song today, written when he was just twenty years old, one is struck by how world-weary the young troubadour already sounds … as he evokes a world that seems sick and it's hungry, tired and torn / it looks like it's a-dyin' and it's hardly been born.'

When you put all those influences together it becomes clear that what we have in the best of Dylan’s work is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture. It’s there, at the beginning in ‘Song to Woody’ and it’s still there in ‘Ain’t Talkin’’, the last track on what is to date the penultimate set of original Bob Dylan songs:

‘Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
No one on earth would ever know

Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Up the road around the bend
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
In the last outback, at the world's end’

In between these two markers, Dylan’s songs document where his pilgrim journey in the eye of the apocalypse has taken him; often with imagery of storms lighting his way. He has travelled the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: saw seven breezes blowing around the cabin door where victims despair ('Ballad of Hollis Brown'); lightning flashing for those who are confused, accused and misused ('Chimes of Freedom'); surveyed 'Desolation Road'; talked truth with a thief as the wind began to howl ('All Along the Watchtower'); sheltered with an un-named woman from the apocalyptic storm ('Shelter from the Storm'); felt the idiot wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognised himself as an idiot and felt sorry ('Idiot Wind'); found a pathway to the stars and couldn't believe he'd survived ('Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat'); rode the slow train up around the bend ('Slow Train'); was driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief ('I Believe in You'); heard the ancient footsteps join him on his path ('Every Grain of Sand'); felt the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire ('Caribbean Wind'); betrayed his commitment, felt the breath of the storm and went searching for his first love ('Tight Connection to My Heart'); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but he’s walking through the middle of nowhere trying to get to heaven before the door is closed ('Tryin' To Get To Heaven'):

‘The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.’

As Frank Davey writes, ‘Dylan's vision is essentially apocalyptic; again and again he tells of an evil world which is soon to be both punished and replaced tomorrow, perhaps, when the ship comes in.’ Songs like 'When The Ship Comes In' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin' both deal with rapidly approaching change described in apocalyptic terms. When the apocalyptic moment arrives, it is clear that some will be on the positive side of the change and others not. Dylan may well be speaking, as has been suggested by many critics, about young versus old and freedom versus rules but, on the basis of the lyrics themselves, it is not possible to be definitive because the language Dylan uses is deliberately unspecific. In neither song does he identify the specific nature of the change that is to come and it is this generality which gives these songs universality and continuing relevance because they can be applied to different circumstances at different times.

What can definitively be said about both songs however is that they are warnings about a coming apocalyptic change and the warning concerns on which side of that change we will find or place ourselves. Cartwright suggests that, ‘In his early songs of protest [Dylan] optimistically expressed a prophetic view of history in which an old order will fade, giving way to a more just and righteous existence. With the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the disillusionment of good causes becoming easily corrupted, Dylan became markedly more pessimistic.’

From ‘Slow Train Coming’ onwards Dylan equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ (also known as the Second Coming). The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is coming around the bend and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. According to Clinton Heylin this reflected the influence of Hal Lindsey, through the Vineyard Fellowship whose Bible classes he attended post-conversion. Heylin writes, ‘Aside from the scriptures, the classes sought to provide a grounding in the works of Hal Lindsey, the man to whom God in his infinite wisdom had revealed the true code of Revelation. . . . His book, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), became Dylan's second Bible and added an apocalyptic edge to his worldview, allowing Christ Come Again precedence over Jesus the Teacher.’

So, with 'The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar', Dylan sees the apocalypse coming as a curtain which is rising on a new age but not yet here, while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: 'Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes' ('Dead Man, Dead Man').

In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it seems consistent to also read 'Jokerman' from Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. There is much in the song that is negative about humanity: we are born with a snake in both our fists; we rush in where angels fear to tread; our future is full of dread; we are doing no more than keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within; we are going to Sodom and Gomorrah only knowing the law of the jungle (the law of revenge from the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy - 'an eye for an eye'). But these negatives are not the whole story as we also experience freedom, dance to the nightingale tune, fly high, walk on the clouds, and are a friend to the martyr. We have an inherent dignity and beauty to which only the greatest of artists such as Michelangelo can do justice. In 'Jokerman', Dylan captures well the Biblical portrait of humanity as made in the image of God but marred by our rejection of God with our potential for beauty and compassion perverted into a selfish search for self-aggrandisement.

The final verse comes straight from the Book of Revelation and describes the birth of the AntiChrist who will deceive humanity into following him rather than Christ. The accusation and challenge that Dylan puts to us in the final lines of this final verse is that we know exactly what is happening (after all, it has all been prophesied in the Book of Revelation) but we make no response; we are apathetic in the face of the apocalypse. Our lack of response is what is fatal to us because it is only through repentance and turning to Christ that we will be saved from the coming judgement. These final lines are both an accusation and a challenge because, in line with the prophecy of Revelation, Dylan clearly believes that humanity as a whole will be apathetic and unresponsive but they must also be a challenge because, if there is no possibility that any of us will respond, why write the song at all!

Yet for much of his career, while consistently writing in the face of a coming apocalypse, Dylan did not specifically equate that apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. Apocalyptic change in Dylan's work can be understood as generational conflict, Cold War conflicts, nuclear holocaust, Civil Rights struggles, and more. The generic message throughout is that apocalyptic change is coming and we need to think where we stand in relation to it. That message is as relevant today in terms of economic meltdown, climate change or peak oil, as to the Second Coming, whether imminent or not.

Dylan's manifesto for his work is 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'; a song about walking through a world which is surreal and unjust and singing what he sees:

‘I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.’

John Gibbens states that, ‘By biblical analogy we take the flood to be a judgement upon all the things that have been listed in the verse, ‘and therefore a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.’’’

This is a song which has been interpreted as dealing with events that were contemporary to the time such as the Cuban missile crisis and, more generally, the threat of a nuclear holocaust. That may well be so, but I think a more straightforward interpretation and one that is closer to what the lyrics actually say is to see it as a statement by Dylan of what he is trying to do in and through his work. In the song he walks through a surreal and unjust world, ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm (as Gibbens notes, the Biblical storm of judgement that is the flood) and he resolves to walk in the shadow of the storm and sing out what he sees:

‘I’m a-goin’ back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...’

43 years later, with ‘Ain’t Talkin’’, he was still writing songs where his central character is walking through an apocalyptic landscape. ‘Ain’t Talkin’’ reminds us of films such as ‘The Road’ and ‘The Book of Eli’ where flawed figures seek to protect and enable the survival of goodness – whether a son or a Bible – while travelling in violent licentious post-apocalyptic worlds:

‘Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
No one on earth would ever know

They say prayer has the power to help
So pray from the mother
In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell
I'm trying to love my neighbor and do good unto others
But oh, mother, things ain't going well

Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through the world mysterious and vague
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
Walking through the cities of the plague

All my loyal and much-loved companions
They approve of me and share my code
I practice a faith that's been long abandoned
Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road’

The suffering in this situation is unending. The fire's gone out but the light is never dying. He challenges us to say that he can't still get heavenly aid. In the last outback, at the world's end, he walks in the mystic garden talking with the woman at the tomb who mistook Christ for the gardener. His heart is still burnin’, still yearnin’ for the coming judgement and the resurrection of the dead.

In the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:

'He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey.'

For more on these themes, see 'The Secret Chord', my co-authored book which is an accessible exploration of artistic dilemmas from a range of different perspectives seeking to draw the reader into a place of appreciation for what makes a moment in a 'performance' timeless and special.
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Bob Dylan - Ain't Talkin'.

Bob Dylan: Trouble No More

I’m enjoying listening to Bob Dylan’s Trouble No More, live recordings from 1979 to 1981 commonly known as Dylan’s Gospel period, albeit without agreeing with the Christian Right political views and prophetic interpretation that he adopted at this time. 

This installment of The Bootleg Series has received primarily positive reviews mainly due to the quality of the band Dylan assembled at this time. However, those reviews almost exclusively repeat the lazy stereotype that Dylan’s “Christian trilogy” comprises three albums – Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love – and that ‘by the end of 1981 the Gospel era was over: Dylan's next album, 1983's Infidels … included no overtly religious material,’ being secular and political.

This is a stereotype for several reasons. First, the album that preceded Slow Train Coming and which Dylan was touring when his conversion began, Street Legal, features much Christian imagery from 'Changing of the Guards', which describes a conversion (the changing of the Guards) that could be individual or corporate, to 'Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)', where the central character experiences a new day after leaving town with Marcel and St. John, strong men belittled by doubt, while fighting with the enemy within and following a pathway that leads to the stars.

Next, Infidels includes much overtly religious material. In the political songs on Infidels, for example, there is a strong degree of continuity with lines from 'Slow Train'. ‘Union Sundown’ essentially expands on the Trumpean argument found in the lines: ‘All that foreign oil controlling American soil / Look around you, it’s just bound to make you embarrassed / Sheiks walkin’ around like kings / Wearing fancy jewels and nose rings / Deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and Paris.’ ‘Man of Peace’ is essentially an explication of the line ‘the enemy I see / Wears a cloak of decency.’

The period from Shot of Love to Infidels was an exceptional period of songwriting in Dylan's career which it is worth exploring in more depth; although many of the best songs from this period didn't make it onto the released albums. What characterised this period of Dylan's songwriting was that his faith came to inform his imagery/lyrics and was integrated into their subject matter instead of forming the subject matter as occurs in the earlier Slow Train Coming/Saved period when his faith was the sole content of the songs. It is a move from preaching back to poetry but this change doesn't mean that his faith is any less sure or apparent in the songs that he writes.

Throughout his career Dylan has written songs that depict the apathy of humanity in the face of the coming apocalypse. From Slow Train Coming onwards he equates the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is 'comin' up around the bend' and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Similarly, in ‘The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar’, he sees the apocalypse coming ('Curtain risin' on a new age') but not yet here while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he again calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: 'Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes' (‘Dead Man, Dead Man’).

In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it is consistent to read ‘Jokerman’, from Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. We are the jokermen who laugh, dance and fly but only in the dark of the night (equated with sin and judgement) afraid to come into the revealing light of the Sun/Son.

‘Jokerman’, though, is a greater song that any of those mentioned previously because its depiction of humanity is more nuanced. There is much that is negative: we are born with a snake in both our fists; we rush in where angels fear to tread; our future is full of dread; we are doing no more than keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within; we are going to Sodom and Gomorrah only knowing the law of the jungle (the law of revenge from the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy - 'an eye for an eye'). But these negatives are not the whole story as we also experience freedom, dance to the nightingale tune, fly high, walk on the clouds, and are a friend to the martyr. We have an inherent dignity and beauty to which only the greatest of artists such as Michelangelo can do justice. In 'Jokerman', Dylan captures well the Biblical portrait of humanity as made in the image of God but marred by our rejection of God with our potential for beauty and compassion perverted into a selfish search for self-aggrandisement.

The final verse comes straight from the Book of Revelation and describes the birth of the AntiChrist who will deceive humanity into following him rather than Christ. The accusation and challenge that Dylan puts to us in the final lines of this final verse is that we know exactly what is happening (after all, it has all been prophesied in the Book of Revelation) but we make no response; we are apathetic in the face of the apocalypse. Our lack of response is what is fatal to us because it is only through repentance and turning to Christ that we will be saved from the coming judgement. These final lines are both an accusation and a challenge because, in line with the prophecy of Revelation, Dylan clearly believes that humanity as a whole will be apathetic and unresponsive but they must also be a challenge because, if there is no possibility that any of us will respond, why write the song at all!

In ‘Sweetheart Like You’, also from Infidels, we see the possibility of response through a wonderfully contemporary depiction of Christ's incarnation. The song is written from the perspective of a misogynist male employee in an all-male workplace that is literally a hell of a place in which to work. To be in here requires the doing of some evil deed, having your own harem, playing till your lips bleed. There's only one step down from here and that's the ironically named 'land of permanent bliss.'

Into this perverted and prejudiced environment comes a woman, the sweetheart of the song's title. She is a Christ figure; a sinless figure entering into a world of sin and experiencing abuse and betrayal (is 'that first kiss' a Judas kiss?) from those she encounters and to whom she holds out the possibility of a different kind of existence. Dylan makes his equation of the woman with Christ explicit by quoting directly from Jesus: 'They say in your father's house, there's many mansions' (John 14: 2).

The song's narrator is confused and challenged by her appearance. He wants to dismiss her out of hand and back to his stereotypical role for her - 'You know, a woman like you should be at home / That's where you belong / Watching out for someone who loves you true / Who would never do you wrong' - but he can't simply dismiss her as she is really there in front of him and so he begins to wonder, 'What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?' All the time he asks that question there is the possibility that he may respond to her presence without abuse or dismissal.

In ‘I and I’ Dylan gives an honest depiction of the difficulties of response (based no doubt on his own inability to keep the moral standards that he seems to have perceived God to have expected of him and which, no doubt, his church at the time expected of him). The central character in this song has taken the untrodden path where the swift don't win the race (Matthew 7: 13 & 14 - 'Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.'). He has looked into justice's beautiful face and yet as we meet him we discover that he has just slept with a strange woman (i.e. he has had sex outside of marriage).

In creation, Dylan sings, we neither honour nor forgive. Instead we take; our nature is the survival of the fittest. When we encounter God, our sinful, selfish human nature encounters the demand for pure perfection - "no man sees my face and lives." 'I and I' is about the difficulty of living between these two poles; of having started out on the untrodden path but then having slipped back. The song is an evocation of the guilt that the protagonist feels; a guilt that forces him to leave the woman, to go out for a walk into the narrow lanes, pushing himself along the darkest part of the road to get himself back on track and then hearing the accepting, forgiving words of Christ in his heart, 'I made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot.'

‘I and I’ is again set in the context of the apocalypse: 'the world could come to an end tonight.' The protagonist is responding in the face of the apocalypse. Even though he has sinned he is leaving that sin behind, pushing himself along the road and listening to Christ in his heart. Another song in which the protangonist becomes aware of the coming apocalypse while being in the wrong place is ‘Tight Connection To My Heart’ (originally recorded during the Infidels sessions as ‘Someone's Got A Hold Of My Heart’). Here the protagonist grabs his coat because feels the breath of the storm that is the apocalypse. He is in the wrong place with the wrong person having valued the wrong things (lulled to sleep in a town without pity where the water runs deep, it's all been a charade, a big joke that he'll remember to forget) and now, when it may be too late, he is searching for his true love (his 'first love' - see Revelation 2: 4). His issue has been that he could not commit: 'Never could learn to drink that blood / And to call it wine / Never could learn to hold you, love / And to call you mine.' Like the foolish virgins, he may be left outside in the cold when the bridegroom arrives because he was not faithful to his true love at the moment of the second coming (Matthew 25: 1 - 13).

It is not possible to understand these songs without understanding the biblical material on which they draw. Without this, as is the case in much contemporary cultural comment, the work of art is actively misunderstood. This was the case with reviews of Infidels at the time which used ‘Sweetheart Like You’ as an example of Dylan's supposed misogyny. So these reviewers were using a song that actually critiques and undercuts misogyny as an example of misogyny itself and this fundamental misunderstanding was the result of a failure to recognise and understand biblical references and imagery.

Finally, gospel songs continue to feature frequently on subsequent Dylan albums (e.g. ‘They Killed Him’ and ‘Precious Memories’ on Knocked Out Loaded or ‘Death Is Not The End’ and ‘Rank Strangers to Me’ on Down in the Groove) in addition to many of the later classic albums such as Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind and Tempest being Gospel albums in essence, both in style and content. The argument that Dylan leaves Gospel music and religious content behind with Shot of Love is, therefore, fallacious.

What does this mean for Dylanologists? Firstly, that many critics fail to recognise and understand biblical references and imagery in both pre-Gospel era Dylan and post. Second, that Dylan recorded, at least, a quartet of Gospel albums, rather than a Trilogy. Third, that the questions and challenges raised by Dylan in his explicitly Gospel period remain relevant throughout his subsequent career and, in the case of his preoccupation with the Apocalypse, throughout his entire career.

Read my co-authored book The Secret Chord for more on this aspect of Dylan’s songwriting.

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Bob Dylan - Slow Train.

Angels for Peace

To celebrate the Finissage of Kim Poor’s exhibition ‘The Shadow of Angels’, we’re presenting a very special evening – ANGELS FOR PEACE – at St Stephen Walbrook with perfomances by the celebrated Aleppo-born concert pianist Riyad Nicolas and up and coming singer/songwriter Katya D’Janoeff. The Finissage will run from 6pm with music from 7.45pm.

One of the most exciting young artists to emerge from the Middle East. Riyad Nicolas was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1989. “Syria’s leading young pianist” (International Piano Magazine 2012) was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1989, and has already established himself as a leading figure of his generation on the international performing circuit. Among his recent achievements he lists First Prize at the Francaix International Piano Competition in Paris and his débuts at the Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall and the Cadogan Hall in London and the Kennedy Centre in Washington.

‘Syria’s leading young pianist … A fine account of Debussy’s Images Book I … Jean Francaix work delivered with Gallic Charm, and some superb Messiaen.’
International Piano

Katya DJ is 22 year-old London based singer/songwriter. Influenced by artists such as Amy Winehouse and Beth Hart, her sound incorporates elements of jazz/ blues influenced pop and she has been described as “… the best new artist I’ve heard since Adele.”

She has performed at various venues around London including The Troubadour, Chelsea Arts Club, The Pheasantry and Ronnie Scott’s and also at Somerset Series at Somerset House and other festivals this summer. Katya graduated from the University of Oxford in 2015 with a BA in Music and has recently completed a Masters (MMus) in Popular Music Performance at BIMM (British and Irish Modern Music Institute) in conjunction with the University of West London.

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Riyad Nicolas - Danse de laila.