Time Out of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan by Bell Ian

Author:Bell, Ian [Bell, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Published: 2013-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

Now that they are gone, you know, the truth it can come out;

They were never proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt –

Julius and Ethel, Julius and Ethel.

That left five tracks. Versions of each would turn up on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991, but that release would not solve the puzzle of what Dylan had done to Infidels. Two songs, ‘Lord Protect My Child’ and ‘Tell Me’, probably deserved to wind up on a ‘rare and unreleased’ compilation; two more, ‘Foot of Pride’ and ‘Someone’s Got a Hold of My Heart’, should be listed on the charge sheet among the bigger crimes of omission the artist has committed. Even these lapses are dwarfed by the failure to allow the release in 1983 of the song called ‘Blind Willie McTell’. Its absence from Infidels has set Dylan against everyone who has ever heard the work and bothered to pass comment. At the time, Mark Knopfler, fighting hard for the song, was aghast. His opinion still wins the listener’s vote. Fans and those who write about Dylan meanwhile debate whether ‘Blind Willie McTell’ was just the best thing he did in the 1980s or among the best things he has ever done. In that context, discussions of whether the version captured on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 is slightly superior or mildly inferior to a widely circulated, frighteningly powerful ‘electric’ rendition feel like casuistry.

Perhaps the real judgement on the artist is this: anyone who wants to hear how Infidels could (or should) have turned out has no choice but to reassemble the album from a range of sources, as though from spare parts. In this day and age, that’s no big deal. It was not especially difficult in the 1980s to hunt down outtakes and alternate takes: the better-known ‘acoustic’ version of ‘Blind Willie McTell’ was doing the rounds within a year of Infidels being released. The point is that Dylan is supposed to be known as a maker of albums as well as of songs, of artefacts with an artistic coherence and a considered design. The making of albums might be redundant in a pick-and-mix digital era, but it has been Dylan’s line of work for half a century. If Infidels had been a painting he would have stood accused of putting a boot through the canvas.20

As it was, he shredded his entire artistic scheme for the sake of one track, ‘Union Sundown’, mourning the fact that the land of the free market was losing out in capitalism’s race to the bottom. The song was an alert anticipation of globalisation and its discontents, but it was no ‘Blind Willie McTell’. Few of Dylan’s works save, perhaps, ‘Visions of Johanna’ and ‘All Along the Watchtower’ are as instantly haunting as this.

Seen the arrow on the doorpost

Saying ‘This land is condemned

All the way from New Orleans

To Jerusalem’

I travelled through East Texas

Where many martyrs fell

And I know no one can sing the blues

Like Blind Willie McTell

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