Bob Dylan was determined to stand, indeed. And to prove it to himself, only five weeks after the last show of his fall 1987 tour with the Heartbreakers and the Queens of Rhythm (and seven weeks after that line came into his head in Locarno), he was auditioning a new band for his next tour. The big one. The one that he would describe in a 1989 interview as "The Never Ending Tour." The one that is still ongoing as I write these words (it's June 22, 2001; he starts a seven-day stand in Norway, Sweden and Denmark in two nights, and I have tickets to see him in Arizona and southern California in August). Since he told himself in October 1987 that he was "determined to stand," this performing artist has played 1322 shows. The tour not only has not ended, but during these fourteen years it has never paused for longer than seven months.

So among the "tapes" (recordings) in the collections and catalogues of the "serious" Dylan fans (aficionados), is one dated November 22, 1987 and labeled "Audition/Rehearsal with G. E. Smith and Others." It is not a particularly rewarding listen, although, inevitably, it has its unique and intriguing and even entertaining moments.

But in order to stay on the tack of what this book is really about, I need to step out of time and chronology for a moment and advance to June 13, 1988 in Park City, Utah, and a performance of "Gates of Eden" by Bob Dylan, G. E. Smith, Kenny Aaronson and Christopher Parker that—similar to "Visions of Madonna" on July 26, 1999 and "Like a Rolling Stone" (second run-through) on June 15, 1965—cuts to the heart of who Bob Dylan is and what his songs mean (that riddle he'd had such a hard time grasping a year before) and what he lives and performs for.

It was the fifth show of the Never Ending Tour and the third time Dylan and his '88 band played this song onstage. The first time (at the opening show of the N.E. T., in Concord, California, June 7, 1988) was in fact the first time Dylan had ever performed "Gates of Eden" onstage in an electric version (i.e., with an amplified band rather than solo acoustic). It was also the first time he'd performed the song publicly since 1978.

I'm going to go on for a while about this one performance (and for good reason), and first I'd like to share with you what the six-thousand-year-old Chinese oracle the I Ching just told me about Bob Dylan's 6/13/88 performance of "Gates of Eden":

     A crane calling in the shade.
     Its young answers it.
     I have a good goblet.
     I will share it with you.
     This refers to the involuntary influence of a man's inner being upon persons of kindred spirit. The crane need      not show itself on a high hill. It may be quite hidden when it sounds its call; yet its young will hear its note,      will recognize it and give answer. Where there is a joyous mood, there a comrade will appear to share a      glass of wine.

     This is the echo awakened in men through spiritual attraction. Whenever a feeling is voiced with truth and      frankness, whenever a deed is the clear expresssion of sentiment, a mysterious and far-reaching influence      is exerted. ...The root of all influence lies in one's own inner being; given true and vigorous expression in      word and deed, its effect is great. The effect is but the reflection of something that emanates from one's own      heart. Any deliberate intention of an effect would only destroy the possibility of producing it. [Richard      Wilhelm/Cary Baynes translation, 1967 edition, page 237, "Inner Truth"]

Spiritual attraction. Bob Dylan's reputation rests, in my way of looking at it, not only on his songwriting but on individual performances of songs like "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Desolation Row" and "Gates of Eden" and "It's Alright, Ma" and "Like a Rolling Stone," live performances in a recording studio that were released on records and that delivered the "meaning"s of these songs with such conviction and impact (such "true and vigorous expression") that multitudes of listeners then and since have recognized and celebrated these works as the uncanny, brilliant reflection of something that emanates from their own hearts as well as his. The genius of the man, I argue, is not so much located in his writing as in his performing—at certain remarkable and memorable moments—of those writings. I believe that neither Jerry Garcia nor anyone else could have "grasped the meaning" of Dylan's songs nor "understood the spirit of them" without having been exposed to recordings of Dylan performing them at moments when the singer/author was able to be completely present within and at one with these musical and verbal creations.

Such a moment is captured in the June 13, 1988 performance of "Gates of Eden." Believe it or not, Dylan actually seems to sing it with more authority, as much or more conviction and clarity of understanding, than he put into the original album version of the song. The lamppost that stands with folded arms at the start of verse two has never stood with such dignity before. This is a function both of Dylan's vocal and of the instrumental passage/band performance that leads up to this image. Indeed, the beauty and power of this "Gates" are as much a product of the band's playing as of Dylan's singing, which is not surprising, because at moments like this the two are inseparable.

Evidence that the mysterious and far-reaching influence of a performance like this is not the result of deliberate intention can be found by listening to the two 1988 performances of "Gates of Eden" that precede this Park City version and the two that closely follow it. All are good, and were certainly rewarding experiences for the people at those shows, but all pale in comparison to what Dylan and his band happen to be doing with this song at this particular moment. So it's not so much a matter of a good arrangement worked out in rehearsals. As the I Ching said, it's a matter of a feeling being "voiced with truth and frankness." I was fascinated, when previously unheard takes of "Like a Rolling Stone" were released on the 1995 CD-ROM Highway 61 Interactive, by the fact that, to my ears, the take of "Rolling Stone" performed a few minutes after the officially released version is lacking most of the power of that great performance. Yeah, they (including the singer; in fact, singer and musicians were inseparable) got it that once; but that didn't guarantee that they could get there again. How fortunate we are, I tell myself, that the "right" take did make it onto the record and the radio and into our lives. Bob Dylan, as much as any artist of his era, has exerted a mysterious and far-reaching influence. But he has not produced this effect through deliberate intention. Maybe that's why so many of us collect and study his "accidental art" as well as his official releases.

The Park City '88 "Gates of Eden" is six minutes long—20 seconds longer than the original album version, although three of the original nine verses are omitted. It starts like a great rock and roll single, with a series of assertive, expressive drum hits, tastefully and effectively reinforced by loud bass guitar/lead guitar grunts. "Something's coming!!" is the unmistakable message, and right away the singer justifies this buildup by singing the opening verse with a vigor and spirit appropriate to Henry V working up his troops before the Battle of Agincourt. Right away his diction and phrasing are irresistible, with the result that the cowboy angel riding four-legged forest clouds becomes quite visible. Dylan's remarkable presence in the vocal throughout the song dramatically underlines its powerful visual imagery and the skillful/playful language and theatricality of its lyrics. This is most striking in the "savage soldier" verse, when we see (and identify with) the savage soul (djer) as he sticks his head in sand like an ostrich—and because we also see the shoeless hunter, we realize he's probably "gone deaf" because of the soldier's complaining. The cinematic movement in this verse's lines becomes evident and very pleasing. We see that the shoeless hunter "still remains" beside the soldier despite the complaining, and the next words, "upon the beach" suddenly give us a new, more specific picture of where this action is occurring. This is immediately trumped when the phrase "upon the beach" is modified by the dependent clause "where hound dogs bay at ships with tattoed sails, heading for the Gates of Eden." It's as though I never really saw this movie until I heard this performance. Dylan's phrasing in "heading for" sounds very meaningful, and the band's rhythmic break right after "Eden" underlines this quite convincingly, and suddenly I'm amazed at how cleverly the presence of the cowboy angel astride clouds in the first verse directed our listening minds to an image of Eden as Heaven, mythical place in the sky where angels are found. And then how wonderful when the camera keeps pulling back during the "savage" verse, and we see that the soldier and hunter are walking on a beach, and then we see these ominous, thrilling ships with tattoed sails moving across the set in the distance, and with the next line we are not surprised to hear that they're "heading for the Gates of Eden." If this causes us to picture those Gates as just ahead of the ships, stage right somewhere, we get a semiconscious adrenalin rush as we experience Dylan, who often violates and challenges the listener's sense of time, challenging our sense of space, as suddenly Heaven or Eden is felt as being on the same plane as this human world with its beach and soldier-hunter conversation. Wow...as in Greek and Roman myths, Gods and mortals interact, coexist on the same plane, while the narrator keeps reminding us that the important distinction is not high and low but horizontal: inside or outside the Gates of Eden. Psychedelic indeed.

And what is really remarkable is that Bob Dylan the singer is so totally at one with this song this night, as though he were reliving its moment of creation, as though it were a vision that came to him irrepressibly as he wrote it, and this night on stage, thanks particularly to the stimulus of Christopher Parker's inspired drumming, he is evidently seeing and smelling and hearing that vision, reliving it, and sharing it with us. The Park City '88 "Gates of Eden" is the sound of "I've got to go out and play these songs—that's just what I must do!" And it is the precise opposite of "I can't remember what it means...is it just a bunch of surrealistic nonsense?" If any Bob Dylan song were to be impenetrable to its author decades later, "Gates" seems a likely candidate; but here it is, seemingly more lucid than ever before. How did he get there? It has to do with his relationship with his band...and it's not something that happens in rehearsals. It's something that only happens for this kind of artist onstage, in front of an audience. And that, I insist, is the reason for his neverending touring. He lives his life onstage because he lives his life primarily for moments like this, and onstage, "nowhere" or just anywhere in the world, unplanned and unexpected, with a band, is where they happen. "Sometimes I think there are no words but these to tell what's true!" See why a committed artist would have to keep touring, keep working with a band? Listen to the texture of Bob Dylan's voice as he sings, "It doesn't matter inside the Gates of Eden" in Park City— you have the opportunity to encounter a truth (share a lover's dream) not available anywhere else.

At Park City, Dylan sings the first two verses of the original "Gates of Eden," followed by the "motorcycle black madonna" verse, which in turn is followed by the "savage soldier" verse. Then the song is completed with the "kingdoms of Experience" verse ("what's real and what is not") and the usual final verse ("At dawn my lover comes to me..."). There is a slight lyric change in the first verse (the cowboy angel rides "with his candle burning in the sun" instead of "lit into the sun"), and an even subtler change at the end of the second verse: "No sound at all ever comes from the Gates of Eden" instead of "No sound ever comes from..."

These line changes are the same in all of the first five 1988 performances of "Gates of Eden," so they may have been pre-planned. In Berkeley, June 10th, Dylan sang the same six verses of the song, but not in the same sequence. "Savage soldier" is third, "kingdoms of Experience" fourth, and "motorcycle black madonna" fifth. In Concord, he only sang five verses, dropping "savage soldier" (probably accidentally; we hear the band vamping for a while before he starts singing the last verse, suggesting he knows he forgot something and he's thinking about what to do). The next "Gates" after Park City, in East Troy, Wisconsin, June 18, features seven verses; "motorcyle" is dropped and "With a time-rusted compass blade" and "The foreign sun, it squints upon" are added, perhaps spontaneously. A week later, in Holmdel, New Jersey, "motorcycle" is back, "time-rusted compass" is retained, but "foreign sun" and "savage soldier" are dropped.

Dylan made an important and revealing statement about his aesthetic as a performing artist sometime in 1988 when he wrote a 500-word essay about Jimi Hendrix for use in a traveling exhibition celebrating Hendrix's work. In the course of this piece, he said, "my songs were not written with the idea in mind that anyone else would sing them, they were written for me to play live & that is the sort of end of it." After discussing how easy it is to "get into" and sing a Chuck Berry song or a Beatles song, he said:

     my songs are different & i don't expect others to make attempts to sing them because you have to get      somewhat inside & behind them & it's hard enough for me to do it sometimes & then obviously you have to      be in the right frame of mind. but even then there would be a vague value to it because nobody breathes      like me so they couldn't be expected to portray the meaning of a certain phrase in the correct way without      bumping into other phrases & altering the mood, changing the understanding & just giving up so that they      hen become only verses strung together for no apparent reason, patter for a performer to kill time, take up      space, giving a heartless rendition of what was it to begin with. jimi knew my songs were not like that. he      sang them exactly the way they were intended to be sung & he played them the same way. he played them      he way i would have done them if i was him. never thought too much about it at the time but now that years      have gone by, i see that the message must have been his message thru & thru. not that i could ever      articulate the message that well myself, but in hearing jimi cover it, i realize he mustve felt it pretty deeply      inside & out & that somewhere back there his soul & my soul were on the same desert.

Bob Dylan "obviously" was in the right frame of mind while singing "Gates of Eden" in Utah 6/13/88, and because of the way he breathes during this performance I find myself with a new and satisfying (to me) idea of the meaning of a certain phrase which had puzzled me until now. The phrase as printed in Dylan's book Lyrics is "it shadows metal badge" but in this wonderfully articulated version I realize he's actually saying (in reference to the lamppost), its shadow's metal badge. Going back to the 1965 album version, I find the word has always been "its" in spite of what Lyrics says. This opens the door to me hearing the possibility and likelihood of an apostrophe before the final "s" in "shadows"...and this and the particular breath of this performance allow me to recognize that the subject of the next phrase, "all in all can only fall with a crashing but meaningless blow" must be the metal badge of the lamppost's shadow. I also find myself easily hearing "holes" (in "to curbs 'neath holes where babies wail") as a clever substitution for "homes"—the sort of place from which one might occasionally hear babies wailing. Now, with the phrases not bumping into each other inappopriately, it's easy for me to hear the poet/performer as describing an old-fashioned urban lamppost with protrusions ("iron claws") attaching it to street curbs, casting shadows that may look ominous ("metal badge") to young persons in nearby homes, finally symbolizing a modern city-animus like Ginsberg's Moloch that "all in all [sooner or later] can only fall with a crashing but meaningless blow." See how helpful the right breathing (singer getting inside & behind the songs) can be?

Dylan spoke of how Hendrix played his songs as well as how he sang them, and said, "he played them the way I would have done them," acknowledging that the message of the songs depends on how the music is played, as well as on the singing. The Park City "Gates" is an example of Dylan's 1988 band at its best—very tuned in to him (and thus to his "message") and very expressive collectively.

But why are they less tuned in (and the resultant performances of the song less thrilling) three days earlier and five days later? This is where the I Ching's commentary is helpful. When it speaks of "the involuntary influence of a man's inner being upon persons of kindred spirit" and "the echo awakened in men through spiritual attraction," it casts light directly upon the mystery of Bob Dylan or John Coltrane and their accompanists and the works of art they've created together, always in moments of live performance. "A crane calling in the shade. Its young answers it." Everything depends on the musicians' and vocalist/bandleader's responses to each other. The part the drummer plays before and betweeen verses is similar in each of these "Gates" performances, but its execution this day is exceptional, and the singer's response to Parker's "clear expression of sentiment" and the drummer's and guitarists' responses to the "feeling voiced with truth and frankness" in the resultant vocal all work together to create a great effect, a "true and vigorous expression in word and deed" of these persons' and this song's message. A work of art. The triumph of this 1988 tour (originally called "Interstate '88") and of the Never Ending Tour that it evolved into is the creation of a creative environment (a "joyous mood") in which moments like this can and do happen. Not every night, of course. But often enough to greatly enrich and bring fulfillment to these performing artists and their [present and future] listeners.

Earlier in this series of books, in a discussion of Blood on the Tracks, I wrote, "I need to say again that Dylan performs a song not only with his voice but also through the musicians around him; the brilliant success of these recordings is proof again that the power of his presence as a performer can transform whoever is playing with him into a perfect extension of his instincts and his unconscious will. Dylan short-circuits any intellectual approach to music ["deliberate intention of an effect"] and conducts his bands from his gut, his solar plexus, invisibly, intuitively, trusting the music to find its way into existence if they (he and the band) will just lean into it enough, press through their own limits and surrender to the sound that's trying to happen." The I Ching explains that this occasional transformation of one's comrades into a perfect extension of one's aesthetic instincts and non-verbalized will is an influence that has its root in one's inner being, and describes it as "the reflection of something that emanates from one's own heart." "No words but these to tell what's true. Bam! bam! bam!"

Parker and the band's glorious intro to "Gates of Eden" on June 13, 1988 is played in some exotic time signature like 12/8, and when Dylan comes in with the start of the first verse ("War and peace, the truth just twists") the band shifts into 3/4 (waltz) time. It's a fabulous transition, and Dylan's extraordinary vocal performance seems an expression of his delight at the intuitive and bizarre rightness of the sound the four of them are creating. At the end of the verse, the word "Eden" is the cue for a brief return of the exotic time signature and an expressive drum-led instrumental break, which again transitions gracefully and thrillingly into the second verse and back to waltz time. This charming dance is repeated, with variations, every time Dylan says "Eden" and every time he returns to start another verse/episode. The variations are the increasing expressiveness of G.E. Smith's lead guitar playing as the breaks between verses get longer, climaxing in a particularly wonderful instrumental break between verses five and six (after Dylan sings, "what's real and what is not doesn't matter inside the Gates of Eden"). One can't help feeling that Smith is reading Dylan's mind at this moment, painting the pictures Dylan sees by skillfully and mysteriously producing the sounds Dylan hears in the back of his mind; it's a drum/guitar duet (punctuated and held together by very sparse and tasteful bass notes from Kenny Aaronson), similar to and full of the excitement of the drum/vocals duet the entire performance seems to be. The closing instrumental break after the last verse is as satisfying and fulfilling as the opening instrumental passage was provocative and inviting. Dylan's presence in the song is extraordinary throughout every verse of this unforgettable vocal performance, but is just as palpable in the instrumental breaks, when we hear him singing wordlessly through Smith and Parker and Aaronson (and his own barely audible rhythm guitar playing).

This is it. This is the message Dylan assembled this band and embarked on this tour to deliver. And as with the "Like a Rolling Stone" sessions, I'm baffled that they could perform the song so magnificently and not come close to this level the next times they played and sang it. But that's because I forget it's not a product of deliberate intention. It's more like a moment of grace, a lot of different factors working together to create the circumstances whereby a feeling (a "message") can be collectively voiced with truth and frankness and genuine joy.

Okay, time travelers. Let's go back to November 22, 1987, New York City, the G. E. Smith & friends audition/rehearsal tape. It's interesting to hear Bob Dylan improvising new lyrics to "You're a Big Girl Now." It's interesting to hear him sing Woody Guthrie's version of the traditional song that inspired Dylan's "Isis," "Trail of the Buffalo," with an accordion and a band. It's interesting to hear him sing an unknown song called "Carrying My Cross" and another that might be called "Much Too Easy." It's interesting to hear Bruce Springsteen's 1984 hit "Dancing in the Dark" played at a Bob Dylan rehearsal. And it's interesting to hear Dylan sing "All I Really Want to Do" for the first time since his rehearsals with the Grateful Dead in spring 1987 and for the second time since 1978 and for the last time for at least the next 14 years. But—

But he's not all that present in "Big Girl," and the improvised "dummy" lyrics don't quite jell and can't quite be heard. But he doesn't sing "Dancing in the Dark" (G.E. does, way in the background, trying to teach Bob the words at the latter's request, I think). Neither are "Carrying My Cross" nor "Much Too Easy" particularly striking performances (but the former song is a bit haunting, and I'd be glad to hear him try it again someday). "Trail of the Buffalo" is experimental, as could be expected at a rehearsal, but intriguing. "Dead Man" and "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" and "Joey," songs Dylan had sung a lot with the Heartbreakers in recent months, are attractive, likeable versions. "Heart of Mine" is quite lively and the vocal is spirited...possibly in response to the playing of one of the musicians Smith has invited to the session, guitarist Danny Kortchmar, who knows the song well, having played on the 1981 album version. There are moments in "Folsom Prison Blues" when the texture of Dylan's voice is quite engaging. Altogether, not a great tape but a good listen, enjoyable for its unique qualities and for Dylan's evident enthusiasm for performing—which comes through on one of the takes of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and on "Dead Man, Dead Man"—even at this odd between-bands moment in a rehearsal hall in New York City. You can feel his readiness to get back on stage. He's not only determined to stand, but raring to go.