Vol. 17 No. 22 · 16 November 1995
pages 24-27 | 3648 words
Time Longer than Rope
Greil Marcus writes about Bob Dylan and the basement recordings
‘Lo and Behold!’ opens on the rails, the first notes on the piano setting the wheels in motion, the singer with one foot on the platform and the other foot on the train as it pulls out within the room. It’s the summer of 1967, in the basement of Big Pink, a couple of months into fooling with old tunes, moving across a common landscape, new songs now coming in a rush; almost three decades later, you can still hear Garth Hudson snap the switch.
You are not Logged In
- If you have already registered login here
- If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
- If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
- If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
- If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions
Lo and Behold!Bob Dylan
I pulled out for San Anton’,
I never felt so good.
My woman said she’d meet me there
And of course, I knew she would.
The coachman, he hit me for my hook
And he asked me my name.
I give it to him right away,
Then I hung my head in shame.
Lo and behold! Lo and behold!
Lookin’ for my lo and behold,
Get me outa here, my dear man!
I come into Pittsburgh
At six-thirty flat.
I found myself a vacant seat
An’ I put down my hat.
‘What’s the matter, Molly, dear,
What’s the matter with your mound?’
‘What’s it to ya, Moby Dick?
This is chicken town!’
Lo and behold! Lo and behold!
Lookin’ for my lo and behold,
Get me outa here, my dear man!
I bought my girl
A herd of moose,
One she could call her own.
Well, she came out the very next day
To see where they had flown.
I’m goin’ down to Tennessee,
Get me a truck ’r somethin’.
Gonna save my money and rip it up!
Lo and behold! Lo and behold!
Lookin’ for my lo and behold,
Get me outa here, my dear man!
Now I come in on a ferris wheel
An’ boys, I sure was slick.
I come in like a ton of bricks,
Laid a few tricks on ’em.
Goin’ back to Pittsburgh,
Count up to thirty,
Round that horn and ride that herd,
Gonna thread up!
Lo and behold! Lo and behold!
Lookin’ for my lo and behold,
Get me outa here, my dear man!
Used by permission of Dwarf Music. All rights reserved.
This article is also available for purchase from the London Review Bookshop. Contact us for rights and issues enquiries.
- print this article
Letters
Vol. 17 No. 24 · 14 December 1995
From Tony Woolfson
As a Glasgow-born Canadian, resident for four years in Switzerland, and a new subscriber to the LRB, I was concerned that there might be too much of a ‘London literary’ tone to your journal, somewhat alien to my rootless sensibility. Until, that is, I read the piece on Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus in my very first issue (LRB, 16 November).
In August 1982 I drove from Boulder, Colorado, through the Bad Lands of Nebraska, Wounded Knee and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and on up to Sault Saint-Marie, and down across Manitoulin Island to Toronto. I took those endlessly long, straight rural roads, the ones you truck on at exactly 50 miles an hour, for ever. As I came through Minnesota on my way to Minneapolis-St Paul I noticed a huge mushroom cloud, from fields being burnt – ‘Señor, Señor, can you tell me where we’re headin’, / Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?’ At the next intersection I noticed the road sign: I was on Lincoln County Road Number 2; sure enough, I was in Bob Zimmerman land.
I was also one of the lucky ones who heard Bob Dylan doing ‘There’s a slow train coming, coming round the bend’, and ‘Man gave names to all the animals – in the beginning, in the beginning’ among many other greats, just after he went and got himself ‘born again’, and everyone was so pissed off and there were only two thousand of us in Toronto’s Massey Hall that night.
Tony Woolfson
Zurich
Vol. 18 No. 2 · 25 January 1996
From Frank Phillips
Massey Hall, Toronto, seems an ill-fated venue for slightly over the hill recording artists. Twenty-nine years before Tony Woolfson (Letters, 14 December 1995) witnessed Bob Dylan perform there before an audience of two thousand, Massey Hall hosted the legendary Quintet of the Year concert, often touted as the last act of bebop, and featuring Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. As Ross Russell, Parker’s biographer tells it, ‘the concert was ill-advisedly scheduled for the same night as the Rocky Marciano-Jersey Joe Walcott heavyweight championship fight, and attracted only about seven hundred people to the twenty-five hundred capacity Massey Hall.’ If Russell’s figures are correct the 80 per cent turn-out for Dylan doesn’t seem so bad.
Frank Phillips
Reading
