Whose Masterpiece Is It Anyway?
Leon Russell & The Blue Rock Sessions

‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’, with its enigmatic narrative and surreal imagery, begs more complex interpretation. Keats, who collapsed at the foot of the Spanish Stairs in Rome, is a potential source favoured by many critics; in an early edition of Song And Dance Man, Michael Gray alluded to a possible reference to the character of Dick Diver in Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is The Night (the title of which was borrowed from, of course, Keats). Others have made comparisons with Henry James’ fictional American heroes and their vexed encounters with Old Europe; or suggested that the ‘wild geese’ are a direct reference to ancient Roman legend; or claimed that if, like the unfortunate Keats, you stand at the foot of the Spanish Stairs, you can see two identical church steeples above you, and ‘you can almost think that you’re seeing double’. There might also be a case for suggesting that despite most critics’ assertion that the song reflects a fear or acceptance that the masterpiece may never be painted in the future, the narrative is rooted firmly in the past, with Proustian ‘train wheels’ (which needn’t be nearer to Rome than the subway beneath Manhattan) ‘runnin’ through the back of my memory’. (A critic unworthy of the name could even suggest that Dylan was reliving a mood or a moment from his first trip to Rome with Odetta in early 1964.) Even without that pathetic fallacy, imagining the narrative into the past tense alters the thrust of the song, as it allows for the fact that, far from being incomplete, Dylan’s masterpiece had already been created. Past or future, the errant masterpiece leaves another song’s narrator to regret: ‘I don’t have much to say’.

In the end, the origin of the imagery doesn’t matter. It’s intriguing that in the original lyric, Dylan refers to his date with ‘Botticelli’s niece’, as art history teaches us that Botticelli’s regular model for his portrayals of the Madonna and Venus was a Florence girl called Simonietta Vespucci, niece of the more famous Amerigo Vespucci. Intriguing, but irrelevant, as such sourcing tells us nothing about the way in which the song works upon our minds and our emotions, or its artistic success. And neither, on this occasion, will I - beyond noting here that the wonderful phrase ‘smooth like a rhapsody’ is a perfect example of a contradiction in terms. My Oxford dictionary provides several definitions of ‘rhapsody’, among them: ‘a romantic piece of music that is not regular in form’. Ecstatic, then, but never smooth.

New Morning and Beyond:
Biding Time, Biting His Tongue

The songs on New Morning can be divided into two kinds, according to the primary theme they address: songs about the satisfactions of life in the New Eden I have been describing and songs that betray a gnawing sense of discomfort in paradise. That is, there are songs about his present and songs about a future he can’t quite imagine for himself.

The celebrations of Eden are the most numerous, and they include the album-ending ‘Father of Night,’ a song whose seemingly unconscious psychological turmoil gives it a subterranean link to the songs of discomfort, and the execrable ‘The Man in Me,’ a song about which I refuse to be baited into saying anything except that I wish it would just go away. I like country corn as much as the next guy, but ‘The Man in Me’ lays it on too thick for my stomach.

‘Day of the Locusts’ is not primarily about the singer’s new world - its main subject is his relief at escaping the old one. The song is about Dylan’s acceptance in 1970 of an honorary degree from Princeton, and while he’s often shown himself willing and able to deploy images of American higher education as symbols of a cultural death-wish, he fails to pull off anything like that here. The feelings the verses convey point only to the singer’s peculiar temperament: the manners of academia, and of institutionalized society in general, make him anxious and uncomfortable. I know how he feels, believe me, but the matter is just not that interesting, even to those similarly afflicted.

On the other hand, the chorus is fabulous, one of the finest patches of poetry on the entire album. It’s also another example of Dylan’s deft way with incremental repetition. In its first and third iterations, the locusts are singing “off in the distance,” but the second and fourth times around, the singer is no longer merely listening to them. By replacing the repeated first and third line (‘The locusts sang off in the distance’) with two lines that refer equally to the locusts and to the chorus celebrating them (‘The locusts sang, yeah, it give me a chill’ and ‘The locusts sang their high whining trill’), he seems to be joining them in song. His chorus is truly choral.

Red, White and Blue Shoe Strings - II  

Our little merry gang were the last load of punters in the bar and by the time that the bar staff asked us to finish up so they could get to their beds, it was probably later than was sensible. However, appreciating that enough was probably enough and keen to retain some stamina for the tour, we drank the final dregs with little fuss and struggled into our coats. The sight of a dozen or so intoxicated Dylan fans attempting this normally simple manoeuvre must have been something to behold. At one stage, I was adamant that my jacket only had one armhole and demanded what the Canadian thought he was doing stealing the sleeve in question. After some assistance from Karl and the French lady, whose name I sadly cannot recall, I was successfully inside the troublesome garment and, after assisting those who were experiencing similar problems, ambled out into the Frankfurt night. Norm was in a spot of trouble so he was carried through the streets by a German called Jack; the rest of us that could walk were not looking too clever but on the whole, I thought at least we were in a reasonable state and not too unwell.

At that point, however, things took a poor turn. As if from nowhere a minibus-type van with flashing lights pulled up next to us. Despite poor general focus, it was fairly easy to ascertain that we had attracted some police attention. I was busy mentally rehearsing my apologies for being out so late, Officer and having too much to drink, Officer, I’m from out of town, Officer and all that sort of game when to everyone’s astonishment, three German members of the fan club (including the one that was carrying our Norm) instinctively fled the scene at pace. A load of serious looking German policemen gave chase around the corner and out of sight. Norm got dropped on the floor after a few paces so I went to pick him up. When I got him to his feet, I turned round only to find that yet more cars had arrived and that the rest of our innocent party were seemingly under some sort of arrest. There was almost one policeman per civilian, which meant, I suppose, that whatever those sprinting Germans were wanted for, it must have been fairly serious. Incredibly, Norm and I were not approached or quizzed by any of them and the chaos and shouting went all around us as though we weren’t there. I suppose the sight of me struggling to attend to Norm on the floor with his hearing aid and his bruises made us look like some sort of victims. The Canadian was handcuffed and bustled into the bus a few seconds before my hazy eyes caught up with the action. Normally, good sense and a clear head can take over, but when the head is full of drink, the logic gets a tad fuzzy. All I could think of doing from my position in the road was to shout out some sound advice to the Canadian. The gist of it was that as Dylan’s next country stop is Italy then the Canadian should claim to be Italian. That way, if deported, he will be conveniently sent to Italy. At the time, it seemed a first class plan. In fairness to the boy, he gave them a good, if slightly unwise, amount of lip and swearing as they took him away.