tant mieux | so much the better...

I really want to like, or even better, I would like to love the cover of Dylan songs the same way I love the original of one of his songs – and sometimes, that happens, though not often, but read on, because that’s not what this review is entirely about, but let me continue. In the very least, I want to hear something that is on a par with the original. I want something that is a new and interesting take that makes for good listening that I would feel confident recommending to readers in my music column or to friends in general that this is something worthwhile and new - I don’t mean previous covers here. I don’t mean George Harrison. I mean something newer, and while I’ve heard a few, they are (pardon word rep.) few and far between. In short, I want covers of the sort of stuff that I would or might burn on a CD for a friend. I want and this is a pretty fair example, covers that are like Maria Mulduars’ recent disc, which wasn’t bad at all. Or not “like” hers, but on a par with or can I ask for better than (and there are quite a few), but they are in the past now. The artist I’m about to review I do not think is one of those people, but that just one opinion.

As any of us know that covers of songs can be just terrific, sometimes even better than the original. Some of the Beatles covers I’ve heard of late that just stick, like “Hello Goodbye” by Erin Alden, which really plays on my mind in the best possible way and with a take that is wholly unique. It doesn’t have to be better or worse, necessarily than the original, but just a take that is different and interesting and ideally, pleasing. Call me crazy, but yeah, I want my music that pleases me. After all, that’s the point, part of it anyway: music should move, please us, stay with us, inspire, and so much more, but it should always be memorable in the best possible way and for all the right reasons. Not memorable because it is so unbelievably bad that you can’t get it out of your head because it sticks in the groove like an old and bad record, like David Soul’s “Black Bean Soup” which, I admit, I owned as a child (an awful record) and that yes, stuck in the groove (“and soup, and soup, and soup, and soup” … ad infinitum.) This is not what I, anyway, am looking for.

No, I’m not saying Alden’s version of “Hello Goodbye” is “better” than the original, only that it offers us a different flavor and one that I, personally like. In this way, Erin Alden succeeds. The same is true of Paul Weller’s version of “Sexy Sadie,” but who would expect anything less from Paul Weller who traces his origins all the way back to The Jam, The Style Council, and has guest-played for any number of great groups, including Oasis and who plays that amazing guitar, some in the beginning but more toward the end of the song as guest guitar at the beginning of “Champagne Supernova,” but mostly toward the end, you really hear Weller shine. So without question Weller’s version of “Sexy Sadie” just blows me away and anyone else I know who has heard it.

And what of “Sweet Jane’ as sung by the ethereal voice of Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies on their album “The Trinity Sessions,” which is amazing and gives the song a whole different spin and a softer spin. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Velvet Underground’s version and adore Lou Reed but it’s good to have an alternate take that actually works. Call me crazy, but I like options.

There have been songs that Dylan wrote for others, songs that he specifically wrote to be covered like “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” which he originally wrote for Nico to perform (not for Nico as in for he was in love or lust with, as far as I know, but a song he wrote for her to perform…).

Still, it is the Dylan version of “I’ll Keep It With Mine” that I will always remember ~ well, any version that I’ve heard of his. (For the record, Judy Collins beat Nico to the punch before Nico recorded the song. Collins had somehow elbowed in.)

Regardless, the point is, I like Dylan’s version despite the fact the even he wrote it for someone else, which is sort of entertaining. I think the only cover of his songs that come to mind right away that I do like are “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” which has been done by some good people – Eric Clapton. “If Not for You” is another of which the Harrison cover (actually, Harrison recorded it first on his “All Things Must Pass” album, before it came out on “New Morning.” There is also a bootleg version of Harrison playing back-up of this song with Dylan in which he plays slide that is phenomenal, but again, only bootleg on that one that I’ve heard.

So as with math, then, there are exceptions to every rule and I’m sure if I sat and thought more I could think of other songs of his that have been well-covered and that I like, but I cannot say this of the recent Bryan Ferry CD . In this way, regarding Dylan, anyway, my tastes are very catholic. Margo Timmins has done some good Dylan covers, and so has Paul Westerberg (formerly of the Replacements) and there many others, but what I really want to talk about is not so much any cover (because obviously there are some that are pretty great) and Dylan likes collaboration, but the specific “Dylanesque” by Bryan Ferry.

Bryan Ferry seemed an odd person to be doing Dylan in the first place, given the difference between Ferry’s mellifluous “Slave to Love – Avalon” sound versus Dylan’s “All I Really Wanna Do – One More Weekend with You” sound. One is soft and smooth, the other is harder, not so easy to get used to and Dylan is likely an acquired taste. One does not immediately take to Dylan, I think. You may like one or two of his songs initially, but that’s it. For those I know who really like Dylan, they came to him slowly at first, then loved one album, hated another, then back again, and so forth. But then he morphs from album to album, so just when you think you’ve got him pegged enough that you can say, “I like Dylan” he is a whole new Dylan. You may like the old Dylan, the new Dylan, even what you think or can guess a Dylan of the future may be, but it’s hard to pin him down and no doubt, this is intentional because he gets bored doing the same thing over and over (who wouldn’t). Dylan is nothing if not a restless spirit. As for me, I’ve liked pretty much all albums now – or have come to, with the exception of a couple that don’t really thrill me quite as much, but each has something I like.

Ferry’s Dylanesque is odd. I keep listening to “Baby Let me Follow You Down” but first, the music is too up-front, by which I mean it’s too present. Ferry’s voice in the background quivers like a jellyfish on the left stranded on the beach, as if he is shimmying his way through the song while singing to create what amounts to a ghostly sound, and I do not mean “ghostly” as in “hauntingly beautiful” or some such copy from a back-ad, I mean “haunting” as in he sounds like a ghost that would go “Booo” or a child’s impersonation of a ghost; the voices we make for our kids. Just play Bryan Ferry’s “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” and there you have it. The song quivers too much when it should rock.

Or maybe this is Ferry’s version of rock? It’s certainly his version of Dylan; this much we know. I never thought of Ferry as “rock” anyway. New wave was more like it. That’s how Roxy Music struck me and that’s how Ferry remained in my mind, regardless of their origin or their plan, they seemed to land squarely in new wave and were good there, but that again, is just one opinion. “Slave to Love” is a great song and perfect for Ferry. Ferry is best doing Ferry. He too as an almost inimitable style (much like Dylan, I think) so here we have one artist who would be near impossible to imitate or cover in a way that it were as good as the original as well as Dylan, who likewise, is very difficult to cover.

Moving on – “The Gates of Eden” seems too slow here, even though it is probably or likely at about the same speed with the harmonica in the far-off background (or is that a synth?) that lend the song another-worldly feel. I feel like I’m standing near a cemetery somewhere with a howl of mist about my feet facing some prophet who is about to tell me my due, and maybe that’s the whole point of the song, but I prefer Dylan’s version which is slow, yes, and melancholic as well, but less… well… less absurdly tragic, which Ferry is almost famous for, sweeping that lank black hair off of his face as he swoops back with one of his “uh-ooo’s..” (you know what I mean) which again, work in songs like “Slave to Love” but not here. It works in Avalon. There is no room for melodrama here. Drama perhaps, but melodrama, no,and there is a world of difference between the two.

“If Not for You” isn’t too awful, it just sounds like an old man singing the song, and go ahead and tell me how old Dylan is (yes, we all know and his birthday too) but so what? He again has adopted a new style and when he recorded it, which is what we are really comparing this too, not Dylan’s performances today (which I still maintain out-do Ferry’s renditions and impressions), but we’re looking at covers of the original versions.

Perhaps that is just it; the whole album is very impressionistic. The harmonica weaves through pretty much every song, even songs that do not in their original have harmonica, so this is an addition and not one that really works in every case. He would have done better to stick to the plan, and the throbbing base-line here is too much for this delicate song. You need a strong base to carry the melody, but this is just too strong and again, too up front. I want to, if I were a regular listener, hear the singer up front and not the band front and center, but instead it sounds to me just the reverse. This could be just a matter of taste. The wicked guitar ending doesn’t work for me. We all know “Play fuckin’ loud” (Manchester Free Trade Hall, May, 66), but that worked for that time and place and for Dylan in that moment at that show after the whole “Judas” comment. Ferry is not my “Judas” and I’m not calling him that, so why so fuckin’ loud?

“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is one of the only songs on this album that I actually really think works. Ferry sounds more like Ferry and less like he’s trying to sound ‘different.’ It’s truer to the original and the arrangement is quite beautiful as it is in pretty much every cover of this song, but I do particularly like Ferry’s cover here, so score one for Ferry on this. He’s done a great job on this and sounds more sincere than anywhere else. Oddly, there harmonica here and it’s not exactly what Dylan did or does but it works regardless and in some ways again, I like it even more. It’s smart. It’s a good cover. What more can one say about this, and oh, gone is the ghostly voice and back is that beautiful mellifluous, dulcet tones we’ve come to love Ferry for and for which he is known. The back-up singers are low-key enough and do not dominate the song but add to it in a really gentle way. There is a sweetness here and a melancholy (read: not melodrama), that works this time and I’m glad for it. Kudos go out to Ferry for this one, I particularly liked the harmonica on this version.

What can I say about “Positively 4th Street”, one of my favorite songs of all time. I don’t like it. But I realize that there is no way I am ever going to like a cover of this unless it is phenomenal. Ferry is almost too laid-back here, and in doing so, he sounds like he is looking for sympathy, unlike Dylan’s big “Fuck you” which is what I hear when I hear this song. I hear “Fuck you, you let me down, see you later,” but what I do not hear is any plea for sympathy at all. Quite the opposite. I hear someone moving on.

One tires of people interpreting Dylan’s lyrics (although it’s endless fun and I’m not sayin stop), yet we do it regardless even though he told Joan Baez years ago that “years from now” (this was back in the sixties) “People will be listening to this shit and reading this shit and saying it’s about this or that… when I don’t know what the fuck it’s about.” and he laughs, according to Baez. I paraphrase there, but you get the idea.

Dylan new, like any artist or poet, singer or songwriter – anyone who creates for a living – if you have success, any measure of success, then with that will come the critics who will interpret and also, misinterpret and who is to say who is more authoritative? Right now I’m reading Christopher Rick’s book on Dylan and sin and it’s fascinating, but is he right? I don’t know. It’s interesting, but then, we can overlay a template onto anyone and force them into a system if we want to. Just plug the circuits into the fitting wholes and somehow the whole thing lights up like a Christmas Tree and we all go A-ha! as if it suddenly all made sense. Some interpretations are better than others, and no, I’m not arguing for no interpretation, simply that we need to be careful of our own hubris.

Really, the song remains the same and I suppose I like to stay as close to original source material as possible. If someone is going to tell me what Dylan has to say, then let it be Dylan. I do enjoy reading interpretations and books and read almost all of them, even if I don’t review them all, which I couldn’t possibly, I read them and find them fascinating.

I worked with my own husband on his Highway 61 Revisited (Mark Polizzotti, Continuum-Books, 33 1/3 series) and had endless conversations about what this or that song means and it was great and he is too kind in the acknowledgments because it was he who did the work there; I simply served as someone to bounce ideas off of and that’s about it. If I could add something of note when I went through various edits, great, but my point is this; I do love my husband, so let me preface this statement with that and I think his Highway 61 Revisited is about as close as any of the better critics can come to understanding Dylan. But do I think he is “more” or “less” right than you or I?

No, I do not.

I think he thought about it a lot, but at the end of the day, it’s all impressionistic, apart from the songs that we rather do know, supposedly, what they are about like “Ballad of the Thin Man” or “Dear Landlord” or even “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” which we can at least guess at, but that’s it. We cannot do much better than speculate. I do it all the time, don’t get me wrong. There’s absolutely nothing “wrong” in speculation, it just doesn’t mean that we have always reached the right answer, no more than I have, as I write these words here about Ferry’s Dylanesque, know that this is a “good” or a “bad” album. It’s all relative. It’s not my cup of fur, but hey…

In my honest view, I would not buy this album. I just would not. I would not because I know that other than the one cut, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, I wouldn’t listen to it. It’s really that simple. If you want to know more about the songs on this album, then check out the list at Amazon. I picked a few here. I could do a lot more like “The Times They Are A-Changin” which to me just sounds awful and out of context today. Yes, the times they are a-changin, but not like they were when this song was first recorded. Dylan has and had a prescience that is virtually unmatched.

This was part of his success – he could and did have his finger on the country’s pulse and knew what was going on (or down) at any time, pretty much. Songs like “A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall” were way ahead of their time and seemed almost to predict the future. If you listen to the bootlegs, you’ll hear Dylan talk of “Goliaths” and “greater Goliaths” whose heads will continue to grow as we chop off the head of one after the other. There’s no winning, he seems to say. Maybe so. Right now, it would seem so, but I’d like to ask him that. I really would. I see Goliaths today – but are mine the same as his? Everything is relative.

As Dylan said, every word means something else. We all have our different definitions of these words, even “people” he tells one interviewer in the documentary “Don’t Look Back” after she says, “Well, surely we can agree on what people are, can’t we?” to which he replies, “I don’t know… can we?”