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My thoughts exactly, lem. There is no more brilliant piece of lyrical writing on the face of the planet.
OK nice, you've answered part of the question.
So if it's 'hands down' SFTD, how does that stack against Dylan or Lennon's best work?
What is considered their best lyrical work?
probably all along the watchtower and i am the walrus though i'm sure there are dylan and beatles fans here who would disagree.
i'm one who thinks mick and keith are better songwriters than dylan or lennon /mccartney so to me there is question about it-
sympathy followed by about 100 other songs,gimme shelter,moonlight mile,you could go on all day..
having said that, reading the lyric sheet without the music doesnt do justice to dylan,the beatles or the stones.
He said "we wrote" in the 20 Feet From Stardom"-film. But I didn't interpret that statement as having anything to do with the lyrics..
Do neither of you see the the link to the audio version of the interview with Melissa Block?
From the audio of the NPR interview -
Melissa Block: "Who did what"
Jagger's: "I wrote the lyrics - Keith wrote the tune"
Separately, what is Hari Chrishna??
Here is the transcript of the interview
Copyright ©2012 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
MICK JAGGER: Hi, Melissa. This is Mick Jagger here. Nice to be on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BLOCK: What a way to end the week. Mick Jagger is the last in our series of chats with The Rolling Stones. The band is marking 50 years together. They have a new collection of greatest hits and are getting ready for a handful of shows. We asked each of The Stones to pick one song to talk about. So far this week, we've heard from Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood and now Mick.
JAGGER: You want to talk about "Gimme Shelter"?
BLOCK: Do you want to talk about "Gimme Shelter"?
JAGGER: Not really, but I can. I'm very open to talking about "Gimme Shelter."
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: It was released in 1969, and we did follow-up versions of it, and it was very exciting.
BLOCK: Well, do me a favor. We have it cued up here. So let's play it.
JAGGER: Go on.
BLOCK: If you don't mind, talk over it as we're listening to it if that's OK.
JAGGER: Talk over it.
BLOCK: Yeah.
JAGGER: Sacrilegious.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: I could rap over it if you'd like.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Just tell us what we hear. So here's the opening.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: (Unintelligible) two versions of Keith over the top.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: Layered - two layers of Keith.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: And Jimmy Miller playing the scraper, and Charlie playing the drums.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
BLOCK: And that high vocal there?
JAGGER: That's me. Oh, that's Mick Jagger singing a high falsetto vocal.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: Yeah. I was doing that the other day in rehearsal.
BLOCK: Yeah?
JAGGER: Yeah.
BLOCK: You could still get there?
JAGGER: Yeah, probably.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: I've got much higher ones than that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: And then we - we leave the Latin groove behind, and then the sort of rock thing starts.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
THE ROLLING STONES: (Singing) Oh, a storm is threatening my very life today.
JAGGER: There's old me and (unintelligible) me and me and me singing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
STONES: (Singing) If I don't get some shelter, oh, yeah, I'm going to fade away. War, children, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away. War...
JAGGER: When we got to Los Angeles and we were mixing it, we thought, well, it'd be great to have a woman come and do the rape-murder verse or chorus or whatever you want to call it. And so we randomly phoned up this poor lady in the middle of the night, and she arrived in her curlers.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: No kidding?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
MERRY CLAYTON: (Singing) Rape, murder, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away.
BLOCK: This is the singer Merry Clayton.
JAGGER: It's Merry Clayton, yeah. And Merry came in pink curlers. I think Merry - Merry, I'm sorry, but - for so telling you on this. It wasn't a dressing gown. I think she got a dress by then. And she came in and knocked this off this rather odd lyric. It's not sort of the lyric you give everyone, you know, rape, murder, it's just a shot away, but she proceeded to do that in like one or two takes, and she's pretty amazing. And she really got into it, as you can hear on the record, and she, you know, she joins the chorus, and it's been a great live song ever since.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
CLAYTON: (Singing) It's just a shot away. It's just a shot away. Rape, murder, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away.
BLOCK: Her voice really, really cracks at the high point of the song.
JAGGER: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, she does a great job on this.
BLOCK: Who did what in writing this song?
JAGGER: Keith wrote the tune, and I wrote a lot of the words.
BLOCK: What were you thinking when you were coming up with the words for "Gimme Shelter"?
JAGGER: I can't remember really anymore, to be honest, but, you know, it was a very moody piece about the world closing in on you a bit. When it was recorded, like, early '69 or something, you know, it was a time of war and tension, and so that's reflected in this tune.
BLOCK: Kind of apocalyptic, really.
JAGGER: Yeah. Kind of, yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: And, you know, it's still wheeled out when big storms happen, as they did the other week, you know? And it's been used a lot to evoke natural disaster.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: Oh, that's my harmonica part there. Only two notes, but it shows what you can do with two notes.
BLOCK: Let's hear it. Let's crank that up right now.
JAGGER: Go.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
BLOCK: It is just two notes.
JAGGER: It is just two notes.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: That's because of a crummy keyed harmonica...
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: ...anyways, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: You shouldn't have told me about it. It just spoiled the whole illusion of (unintelligible).
JAGGER: I didn't spoil it. It just shows you what you can do with two notes.
BLOCK: There you go.
JAGGER: You didn't have to put - it is economy of style.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Well, you're getting ready to go out for a few shows, a couple in England and a few here. What do you do to get ready? It's such a physical thing that you do, and you're how old now?
JAGGER: I don't know.
BLOCK: Aha.
JAGGER: That's Charlie's line.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: But...
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: How old are you, Melissa?
BLOCK: I'm 50.
JAGGER: Oh, it's a nice age.
BLOCK: It's a round number.
JAGGER: It's a very nice age. What do I do to get ready? Well, I do what I've always done for the last, oh, forever years. You know, I have to get up the fitness level, sing a lot, practice, get in the mood and generally - and do lots of rehearsal. Get your body and mind ready.
BLOCK: How do you get your mind ready?
JAGGER: Well, you get in the idea that you're going to be out there on stage and crank up the ego a bit.
BLOCK: I bet that's the key part of it. You have to crank up the ego to do what you do.
JAGGER: Yeah. You kind of do, but you can't really - that's something that I don't actually really do, if you know what I mean. I mean, you do it, but you don't sort of - it's not part of the training. And there's the clothes, of course.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: I'm not forgetting the clothes. That's a very important...
BLOCK: It's key.
JAGGER: ...part of the prep, totally key because, to be honest, you do have to because it makes you feel good. And you've got to have, you know, fresh wardrobe. And you can't just go out there looking like you did last time. And then you - that helps your transformation. You know, being in a rock band, you can't kind of overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that's not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: That's not rock. Rock is about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that's not really my approach.
BLOCK: You know, none of the members of The Rolling Stones chose the song that I kind of hoped one of you would.
JAGGER: Which was what?
BLOCK: "Wild Horses."
JAGGER: Oh, lovely.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILD HORSES")
JAGGER: It's quite a favorite of mine to do as the ballad as we don't do that many. Being a rock band, we do - we've got lots of ballads, but we don't do many. And we could do a whole show of ballads (unintelligible) and everyone would brought to tears, probably. But, you know, we do only a couple per show, so we have to select them, and I quite often select that one.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILD HORSES")
STONES: (Singing) Childhood living is easy to do.
BLOCK: Well, Mick Jagger, it's been great to talk to you. Thank you so much.
JAGGER: Nice to talk to you, Melissa, and I hope it all comes out for you well.
BLOCK: Thank you and likewise.
JAGGER: Bye-bye.
BLOCK: The new Rolling Stones collection is called "GRRR!". You can hear my interviews with the other three Stones at nprmusic.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILD HORSES")
STONES: (Singing) You know who I am. You know I can't let you slide through my hands. Wild horses couldn't drag me away.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Until now, I hadn't seen the transcript and had only heard the audio. When you hear the audio, actually Jagger swallows the "a lot of" part. It sounds more like "I wrote the words".
I find his delivery of this statement intriguing - perhaps Keith did contribute more lyrically than I could imagine
Here's a very interesting article on Dylan as a poet
Bob Dylan: “I’m a poet, and I know it”
In 2004, a Newsweek magazine article called Bob Dylan “the most influential cultural figure now alive," and with good reason. He has released more than forty albums in the last four decades, and created some of the most memorable anthems of the twentieth century, classics such as “The Times They Are A-Changin," “Like a Rolling Stone," and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
While Dylan’s place in the pantheon of American musicians is cemented, there is one question that has confounded music and literary critics for the entirety of Dylan’s career: Should Bob Dylan be considered a songwriter or a poet? Dylan was asked that very question at a press conference in 1965, when he famously said, “I think of myself more as a song-and-dance man.”
The debate has raged on ever since, and even intensified in 2004, when Internet rumors swirled about Dylan’s nomination for a Nobel Prize in Literature, and five well-hyped books were released almost simultaneously: Dylan’s Visions of Sin, by Oxford professor of poetry Christopher Ricks, who makes the case for Dylan as a poet; Lyrics: 1962-2001, a collection of Dylan’s songs presented in printed form; Chronicles, the first volume of Dylan’s memoir; Keys to the Rain, a 724-page Bob Dylan encyclopedia; and Studio A, an anthology about Dylan by such esteemed writers as Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Moody, and Barry Hannah.
Christopher Ricks, who has also penned books about T. S. Eliot and John Keats, argues that Dylan’s lyrics not only qualify as poetry, but that Dylan is among the finest poets of all time, on the same level as Milton, Keats, and Tennyson. He points to Dylan’s mastery of rhymes that are often startling and perfectly judged. For example, this pairing from “Idiot Wind," released in 1975:
Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
The metaphorical relation between the head and the head of state, both of them two big domes, and the “idiot wind” blowing out of Washington, D.C., from the mouths of politicians, made this particular lyric the “great disillusioned national rhyme," according to Allen Ginsberg.
“The case for denying Dylan the title of poet could not summarily, if at all, be made good by any open-minded close attention to the words and his ways with them," Ricks wrote in Dylan’s Visions of Sin. “The case would need to begin with his medium.”
The problem many critics have with calling song lyrics poetry is that songs are only fully realized in performance. It takes the lyrics, music, and voice working in tandem to unpack the power of a song, whereas a poem ideally stands up by itself, on the page, controlling its own timing and internal music. Dylan’s lyrics, and most especially his creative rhyme-making, may only work, as critic Ian Hamilton has written, with “Bob’s barbed-wire tonsils in support.”
It is indisputable, though, that Dylan has been influenced a great deal by poetry. He counts Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine alongside Woody Guthrie as his most important forebears. He took his stage name, Bob Dylan, from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (his real name is Robert Allen Zimmerman). He described himself once as a “sixties troubadour," and when he talks about songwriting, he can sometimes sound like a professor of literature: “I can create several orbits that travel and intersect each other and are set up in a metaphysical way.”
His work has also veered purposefully into poetry. In 1966, he wrote a book of poems and prose called Tarantula. Many of the liner notes from his 1960s albums were written as epitaphs. And his songwriting is peppered with literary references. Consider, for example, these lyrics from “Desolation Row," released on 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited:
Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Professor Ricks is not the only scholar who considers Dylan a great American poet. Dylan has been nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature every year since 1996, and the lyrics to his song “Mr. Tambourine Man” appeared in the Norton Introduction to Literature.
So do his song lyrics qualify as poetry? Even Dylan gets the two genres confused sometimes. He once called Smokey Robinson his favorite poet, then later backpedaled and said it was Rimbaud. He has alternatingly avoided this question and mocked it, as in his song “I Shall Be Free No. 10”:
Yippee! I’m a poet, and I know it
Hope I don’t blow it
However, the best, most straightforward answer may have appeared in the liner notes of his second album, 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, where Dylan said, simply: “Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem.”
You said it, Bliss. That is one of the criticisms I have read of Dylan. He is a brilliant lyricist, but tries too hard to be clever to the point of obscurity. In other words, what the hell is he talking about?
From what KR wrote in 'Life' about the creation of the song, it sounds like he means that he wrote the chords, the melody, and the opening line. The rest of the lyrics Jagger wrote. That's not surprising, considering he says same about 'Satisfaction,' coming up with riff, melody and chorus line "I can't get no...Satisfaction and similarly the rest of the lyrics by Jagger.
Is it not probable that the bult of the songs up to about 1968 were written in this manner?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 22:03 by nightskyman.
I guess by that measure, Dylan is strictly a poet nowadays, because he is completely unable to sing anymore.
I love Dylan, but the Blonde on Blonde era speed influenced stuff is the least interesting to me. Like you say, clever for clever's sake. For me, though, something like Blood on the Tracks, probably in my top 5 favorite albums from anybody, shows how he can write in just the opposite style beautifully.
I agree here, and I, as a Dylan fan, have also a brief beef here. Even though Dylan's lyrics do have that rare feature for a song lyrics that many of them can be actually read as 'poems', that is, without the musical context, that shouldn't hide the fact that he is incredibly talented in composing songs. Funnily, Dylan himself seems to belittle the musical side of his songs. Probably that is something with his folk background, a tradition that didn't see melodies nothing but a vehicle to carry a message, not very important per se (Dylan's habit of 'borrowing' melodies seem to derive from this source as well). When Dylan describes his creative process - like in CHRONICLES - it is almost always just the lyrics he seem to care about, or seem to sound creativily interested in - the music just comes 'easily', without much effort.
Personally, if I may use latebloomer's (very important) distinction between poetry and lyrics, I would foremost see Dylan as a lyricist, a song-writer. Even though he starts with writing words, I think he even there sees the text in a form of a song - hears the rhythm of the words to be expressed by the means of music. Like in the article wanderingspirit66 posted - thank you! - I wholeheartidly agree that one should not actually separate the three components: the lyrics, the music and the voice (delivery). The meaning of lyrics is only totally manifested or realized when all of those three components are 'in'. Actually I think Jagger and his songs are pretty similar in this sense. Jagger's witty remark that probably Dylan could have written "Satisfaction" (which, by the way, is largely inspired by "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"), but could he sing it, is a spot on. In both cases, it is the singer not just the song, that is needed to really get the point. To my ears, Jagger's technically okay delivery of "Like A Rolling Stone" never catches the core of the song, or its lyrics. The lyrics just don't 'fit' to Jagger's mouth convincingly me thinks.
Funnily, even though the musical circles seem to over-emphasize the importance of Dylan's lyrics by the very cost of the music in his songs, it is different when we are heading to literature circles. Those seem to notice the crucial importance of music, of the whole context. For them Dylan primarily is a song maker, and not a poet. That seems to be the 'trouble' with those Nobel Prize speculations. (I think there are two obstacles there: (1) can Dylan be treated 'solely' as a poet; (2) if so, are his 'poems' good enough.)
- Doxa
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Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
latebloomer
()
Date: August 21, 2014 02:00
Quote
lem motlowQuote
treaclefingersQuote
latebloomerQuote
DandelionPowderman
<Maybe it's just that he's not known mainly as a lyricist as say Dylan or Lennon, even though he's every bit as good I think.>
He is not at Dylan's level, so that's rightfully so, imo.
Lennon has a few gems and lots of clunkers, imo.
Dylan has written a lot of crappy lyrics as well. It's just that his most famous songs are, generally, his most eloquent and more universal in subject matter. I think Mick is every bit as good as Dylan and Lennon.
That's a fairly bold observation...and not that I disagree, but I think what would be interesting is to take MJ's most profound lyrical venture, and hold them up to something profound by Dylan and Lennon.
How would it hold up?
What is lyrically, MJ's best song?
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL-game over.
My thoughts exactly, lem. There is no more brilliant piece of lyrical writing on the face of the planet.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
treaclefingers
()
Date: August 21, 2014 02:09
Quote
latebloomerQuote
lem motlowQuote
treaclefingersQuote
latebloomerQuote
DandelionPowderman
<Maybe it's just that he's not known mainly as a lyricist as say Dylan or Lennon, even though he's every bit as good I think.>
He is not at Dylan's level, so that's rightfully so, imo.
Lennon has a few gems and lots of clunkers, imo.
Dylan has written a lot of crappy lyrics as well. It's just that his most famous songs are, generally, his most eloquent and more universal in subject matter. I think Mick is every bit as good as Dylan and Lennon.
That's a fairly bold observation...and not that I disagree, but I think what would be interesting is to take MJ's most profound lyrical venture, and hold them up to something profound by Dylan and Lennon.
How would it hold up?
What is lyrically, MJ's best song?
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL-game over.
My thoughts exactly, lem. There is no more brilliant piece of lyrical writing on the face of the planet.
OK nice, you've answered part of the question.
So if it's 'hands down' SFTD, how does that stack against Dylan or Lennon's best work?
What is considered their best lyrical work?
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
lem motlow
()
Date: August 21, 2014 02:39
Quote
treaclefingers
OK nice, you've answered part of the question.
So if it's 'hands down' SFTD, how does that stack against Dylan or Lennon's best work?
What is considered their best lyrical work?
probably all along the watchtower and i am the walrus though i'm sure there are dylan and beatles fans here who would disagree.
i'm one who thinks mick and keith are better songwriters than dylan or lennon /mccartney so to me there is question about it-
sympathy followed by about 100 other songs,gimme shelter,moonlight mile,you could go on all day..
having said that, reading the lyric sheet without the music doesnt do justice to dylan,the beatles or the stones.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
alieb
()
Date: August 21, 2014 02:46
I think (or at least I hope) that most would agree that all have had lyrical moments of genius, but when it comes to who one likes more it's more about one's musical taste.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
stonehearted
()
Date: August 21, 2014 03:51
One of Jagger's best lyrics? That's easy: "Ah, take it easy babe". "Oh yeah!" is pretty killer as well. Also, a thumbs up for "I say, it's alright".
Mind you, it's not the words themselves. Take any sheet of lyrics to a poetry reading and with few exceptions you'll fall flatter than an Armenian pizza.
It's the phrasing--especially the stress on the eeeeeeasy....
because....
Mind you, it's not the words themselves. Take any sheet of lyrics to a poetry reading and with few exceptions you'll fall flatter than an Armenian pizza.
It's the phrasing--especially the stress on the eeeeeeasy....
because....
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
stupidguy2
()
Date: August 21, 2014 04:23
This is why Jagger is on par with Dylan and Lennon. And this came out when those guys were getting stale.
Pride and Joy and Dirty Dreams: The beautiful skank of "Some Girls"
April 26, 2010 By Peter Ames Carlin Leave a Comment
Some girls are so pure, some girls so corrupt….
(Updated to include the afore-forgotten “Before They Make Me Run.”)
If you love the Stones — and you really should, if you’re listening to the right albums — this is what you’re thinking about. The wicked songs. The unreptentant portraits of killers, rogues and devils. Scarred old slavers who know they’re doin’ alright. (Hear ‘im whip the wimmin, just around midnight!) Which isn’t to say that Mick, Keith and co. are personally misogynistic, let alone racist. But they do know a thing about sin, and about sinners. And they know where power comes from. And also who killed the Kennedys. That would be you and me, friends. And you haven’t figured that out yet, well, in 1978 the Stones had another portrait of laughter, joy and loneliness and sex and sex and sex and sex to offer. And 32 years later it still rocks: A testament to the whole idea of moral and artistic transgression.
Start with the album cover: the front is a faux-wig display, only the products are extremely cheap and ugly, and the models are mostly the Stones in drag, (e.g., classic headshots tarted up with lurid red lipstick and other creep-showtinting), with famous female sex symbols (Farrah F. Majors; Lucille Ball, Liz Taylor) tossed in, mostly to piss off FFM, LB, LT and their assorted handlers, legal reps, etc. etc. If not for the wigs, then for the even-more-lurid bra ads on the back, or (jeezus!) the pocket profiles of the bandmembers, whose bios are actually old fan mag profiles of mid-century film stars, only with the relevant Stone’s name subbed in. To wit:
CHARLIE WATTS: This beautiful and talented showgirl, model and actress hasn’t found a man who fits her rigorous specifications for a husband. Says the cautious Watts: ”I have no regrets…I would rather be lonely than sorry….”
Get the idea that Miss Watts may not be all that into guys in the first place? Hmm. The point being (I think), that lies, hype, beauty and shame have always existed near the surface of glam showbiz. So take a deep breath, turn on the hi-fi and lay the needle into the groove. And Oh. My. God.
Transgression the first: “Miss You” is a freakin’ disco song, maaaaan. The album’s lead single dropped at the height of the “Saturday Night Fever” craze, and your serious rock fans were beside themselves: The Stones were praying at the altar of Andy Gibb! And Lipps, Inc.! They had, in other words,gone disco! (e.g., black; slick; possibly gay) The outrage was as palpable as it was stupid. And not just because all that death-to-disco jive was such thinly-veiled racism/homophobia, but also because no song with Charlie Watts playing drums could fail to swing, even if it’s straight foot dance music. And then you’ve got Keith and Ron Wood goosing the guitars, and the afore-unknown street musician Sugar Blue on harmonica, all of them working from a five-note riff that feels as old and angry as the blues itself,well, it ain’t exactly “Blame it On the Boogie.” Particularly considering that the whole affair brows around another classic tale of Jagger-centric heartbreak and urban decadence. Here he is, a grown man (with a necktie to pull on) sulking in his CPW apartment over love gone wrong, only to be interrupted by a call from drunk friends promising to come round with a case of wine, a handful of super-friendly Puerto Rican girls, and a promse to “make some fool-around, you know, like we used to!” What could that entail? I don’t think we want to know, considering what we’ve already learned about those girls who are “just dyyyyyin’ to meeetchoo!“) . Instead, focus on how raw the groove feels, and how desperate Mick’s yelps and wails sound: ”Ooh, baby why’d you wait so long/Won’t you….COME HOME! COME HOME!” Does he really feel that sad without about-to-be-ex-wife Bianca? Umm, well, no. As we’re soon to discover…
“When the Whip Comes Down“: But first, the tale of a gay street hustler, set to two chainsaw chords (and a brief modulation for the guitar solo) “Yeah, mama papa told me I was crazy to stay/I’d be gay in New York, but just a fag in L.A. . . .” And onward to the streets of Gotham, where our hero gets spit on, called garbage and (unstated but obvious) made to endure the whips and slaps of kinky closeted patrons. He is, nevertheless, unashamed and unbowed. And, strangely, uncorrupted: ”Yeah, some called me garbage when I was sleepin’ on the street/But I never roll, and I never cheat/I’m fillin’ a need/Yeah, pluggin’ a hole/My mama’s so glad I ain’t on the dole….” Some vibrant double-entredes there. But the real point is that even street hustler has ethics, which is more than you can say for the people whose garbage is lwashing down the East River, and the hypocritical moralism that then (and, let’s face it) still governs life in NYC and everywhere else in our family values-centric (ahem) nation. Live performances heard at some stops on the ’78 tour included a bonus verse that name-checked the then-governors of the man’s home states: ”Mr. Rockefeller, he won’t give me a loan/Mr. Brown, he don’t want me back home/Well, I love my mother and she love her son/It’s so goddamn hard to get back where you started from/When the whip comes down….“
“Just My Imagination”: The Temptations at their sweetest, shoved into the dirt and kicked around by a bunch of coked-up Stones. The album track is nearly perfect, spare, swinging and full of fire. But the seven-mintue live version from Detroit’s Masonic Hall (listen to it here) may be one of their greatest live moments. Consider the rolling groove Watts and Wyman create, a perfect foundation for the interwoven guitars and the threaded, hotwire solos; the vocal that edges from sweetness to a seething intensity, when Jagger bites down hard on the tune’s climactic line: .“In reaaaaallllity…SHE DOESN’T @#$%& KNOW ME!!!/Awwwww! @#$%& it!”
He’s kind of kidding. But also kind of not, which feeling he explores to even more absurd and offensive lengths in “Some Girls,” the title track, which kicks off next with a stuttering guitar riff that, in an instant, establishes a swaggering two-chord blues riff set off by Sugar Blue’s nasty-assed harmonica. The topic is women, their various quirks, delights and (mostly) complications. Imagine a Dr. Seuss book gone horribly wrong: ”Some girls give me diamonds/Some girls buy me clothes/Some girls give me children I never asked ‘em for….” And it gets worse: “Some girls take the shirt off my back/And leave me with a lethal dose!“ More and more, and all of it performed and sung with the sort of leer that the Mick we always knew — the public Mick, the staggering stud, the king of what some hysterics called Cock Rock — would employ when discussing the women in his life. And he knows this is what you’re thinking, which is what he must be thinking when he edges toward the tune’s shameful climax, a kind of off-hand reduction of the female species, from the point of view of a sleek, cheerful devil. “French girls, they want Cartier/Italian girls want cars/American girls they want everything in the world you can possibly imagine!“ Well, maybe that’s not so bad. But hang onto your wig hat. “White girls, they’re pretty funny/sometimes they drive me mad.” Then, the entire album’s serio/comic/screw all y’all defining moment: ”Black girls just wanna get @#$%& all night (actual gasp from Keith)/I just don’t
have that much jam…” Yes, it’s the worst possible thing a person could say. Racist, misogynistic, purposefully provocative. It’s that last part that matters the most: Everyone already knew, or thought they knew, how wicked young Mick had been for so long. It’s hateful, and also (to that point) the secret of his success. Who dissed the women of the world? Well, after all, it was you and me.
Which understanding probably inspired the next full-throttle asskicker, “Lies.” They’re rocketing so fast, Mick is screaming with such fervor, you can barely make out a word of it. “LIes! whispered sweetly in my ear/Lies! How do I get out of here!?” My favorite part comes near the end, when the singer’s fervent scream breaks into a yelp. “Lies, lies you dirty Jezebel/Why, why, why, why don’t you go to Hellll?!?“
At which point we oldsters had to get up and flip the record. Good timing, actually, since you needed a moment of silence to get over that last one. But then everything changes: A slack rhythm guitar, the gentle cry of a steel guitar, and country Mick shuffling around in slack-jawed yokel mode, in search of a “Far Away Eyes.” Straight-up country, it seems. Only Mick is talk-singing in a kind of Cockney-cracker accent that underscores how quietly, yet blisteringly sarcastic the whole affair is. He’s going up the country, rumbling down the dusty Californian highway. Ah, the modern American frontier! God’s country! Full of promise! And also idiots who not only take comfort in radio preachers, but also send them their hard-earned cash money! ”And the preacher said, ‘you know, you’ve awwwwlways got the Lord on your side!’/And I was so pleased to be informed of this/That I ran 20 red lights in his honor/…” The chorus, performed by an entire chorale of rough-hewn Stones, appeals to the down on their luck, the downright disgusted, a whole Tea Party of them, saluted by a drunken mob of Brit millionaires who are too wasted to even harmonize right. No matter, our cheerful, rock-headed driver (so pleased to be listening to the “colored radio station”) knows hel has Jesus on his side. All this thanks to the Church of the Sacred Bleeding Heart of Jesus, to which he gladly sends ten of his crumpled dollars, and is soon rewarded by a prayer especially for him and ”…the girl with…well, you know what kind of eyes she got!“
Vacation over. Because now we’re back at Stones central, digging the myth from the inside out, distinctly circa 1978 and at the height of their jet-setting/high society notoreity. Remember when Bianca was gamboling with Canadian president Pierre Trudeau? Remember when sex with Mick was de rigeur for every 5th avenue debutante worth her diamond-crusted coke spoon? And none of it seemed to affect their growing authority among the professionally powerful and buttoned down? Oh, they were so “Respectable.“ Only it sounds so different set to warp-speed drums and fuzzed-up guitars and Mick bellowing at the top of his lungs. “So respectaaaaable!-huh. So Respectable-huh! So delectable-huh…..“ Oh, and Bianca? This one’s for you, and apparently President Trudeau, too: ”You’re a rag-trade girl, you’re the queen of porn/You’re the easiest lay on the White House lawn/Get out of my life! Don’t come back.”
Keith, on the other hand, expects no easy benedictions. He’s chosen a whole other path, through the roller coaster of booze, pills, powders and scheming narcotics officers. I think “Before They Make Me Run” is Keith’s most distinctive song of all, given how rhythmically and musically unexpected the cheery central chord progression is, and how magically the bluesy plaint he offers fits on top, and how unblinkingly forthright (if at times oddly self-pitying) he is about his louche lifeways. “It’s another good bust/another good frame” he grumbles, though it’s hard to imagine why anyone so enthusiastic about his recreational medications would require cop-generated evidence to bust. Whether Keith’s internal chemistry is any law enforcement’s agency is a whole other issue. “Wasn’t looking real good but I was feelin’ real well!” Keith proclaims at one point, apparently describing those years in the early ’70s when he was nodding out, losing his teeth, looking like death not-quite-warmed-over as a result of his habits. “I’ll find my way to heaven/’Cause I done my time in hell,” he says. So no regrets? Thirty-two years later I think he’s right. He’s still alive, he’s still doing a lot of what he was doing then (it appears). Keith wins. And so do we, if you really focus on how wonderful his guitar sounds here. Was it the smack that gave him that opening riff? An absence of smack? Whatever. It’s fantastic.
Next up another hit single, and deservedly so, the swingin’ “Beast of Burden,” which finds Mick alternately flirting, seducing, strutting and shaking his head. “Ain’t I rough enough?/Ain’t I tough enough?/Ain’t I rich enough, in love enough?/Please, please, please...” Circa 1978 the answers were: Yes, yes, yes, yes and okay.
Finaly, another sui generis masterwork: The thrumming street poetry satire tour of New York City itself, described in tones of civic and moral disaster. Welcome to “Shattered.” And really, go ahead: ”Bite the Big Apple/Don’t mind the maggots!“ Mick and Keith are here, at home in the funky, broken apart world of Abe Beame’s New York. “Look at me — I’m in tatters!” You could spend hours marveling at the interplay between Wyman’s bass and Watts’s drums. It’s all in the groove, and all indelible, even though the tune itself has no melody to speak of, and the lyrics veer in and out of meter, and the only thing holding it together is this mood of loving contempt and the backup chant of “Shadoobee, shattered. Shadoobee, shattered.” . New York is a living hell, and they couldn’t be happier, or more comfortable: ”Don’t you know the crime rate’s going up, up, up, up UP!/To live in this town, you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!“ And at this point in the game, Mick and Keith were exactly that. Tougher than the devil. Certainly tougher than your lame-ass moral dudgeon. Work and love and greed and sex, that’s what made those boys the best. Pride and joy and dirty dreams, still surviving on the street. And look at yourself, yo.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 04:24 by stupidguy2.
Pride and Joy and Dirty Dreams: The beautiful skank of "Some Girls"
April 26, 2010 By Peter Ames Carlin Leave a Comment
Some girls are so pure, some girls so corrupt….
(Updated to include the afore-forgotten “Before They Make Me Run.”)
If you love the Stones — and you really should, if you’re listening to the right albums — this is what you’re thinking about. The wicked songs. The unreptentant portraits of killers, rogues and devils. Scarred old slavers who know they’re doin’ alright. (Hear ‘im whip the wimmin, just around midnight!) Which isn’t to say that Mick, Keith and co. are personally misogynistic, let alone racist. But they do know a thing about sin, and about sinners. And they know where power comes from. And also who killed the Kennedys. That would be you and me, friends. And you haven’t figured that out yet, well, in 1978 the Stones had another portrait of laughter, joy and loneliness and sex and sex and sex and sex to offer. And 32 years later it still rocks: A testament to the whole idea of moral and artistic transgression.
Start with the album cover: the front is a faux-wig display, only the products are extremely cheap and ugly, and the models are mostly the Stones in drag, (e.g., classic headshots tarted up with lurid red lipstick and other creep-showtinting), with famous female sex symbols (Farrah F. Majors; Lucille Ball, Liz Taylor) tossed in, mostly to piss off FFM, LB, LT and their assorted handlers, legal reps, etc. etc. If not for the wigs, then for the even-more-lurid bra ads on the back, or (jeezus!) the pocket profiles of the bandmembers, whose bios are actually old fan mag profiles of mid-century film stars, only with the relevant Stone’s name subbed in. To wit:
CHARLIE WATTS: This beautiful and talented showgirl, model and actress hasn’t found a man who fits her rigorous specifications for a husband. Says the cautious Watts: ”I have no regrets…I would rather be lonely than sorry….”
Get the idea that Miss Watts may not be all that into guys in the first place? Hmm. The point being (I think), that lies, hype, beauty and shame have always existed near the surface of glam showbiz. So take a deep breath, turn on the hi-fi and lay the needle into the groove. And Oh. My. God.
Transgression the first: “Miss You” is a freakin’ disco song, maaaaan. The album’s lead single dropped at the height of the “Saturday Night Fever” craze, and your serious rock fans were beside themselves: The Stones were praying at the altar of Andy Gibb! And Lipps, Inc.! They had, in other words,gone disco! (e.g., black; slick; possibly gay) The outrage was as palpable as it was stupid. And not just because all that death-to-disco jive was such thinly-veiled racism/homophobia, but also because no song with Charlie Watts playing drums could fail to swing, even if it’s straight foot dance music. And then you’ve got Keith and Ron Wood goosing the guitars, and the afore-unknown street musician Sugar Blue on harmonica, all of them working from a five-note riff that feels as old and angry as the blues itself,well, it ain’t exactly “Blame it On the Boogie.” Particularly considering that the whole affair brows around another classic tale of Jagger-centric heartbreak and urban decadence. Here he is, a grown man (with a necktie to pull on) sulking in his CPW apartment over love gone wrong, only to be interrupted by a call from drunk friends promising to come round with a case of wine, a handful of super-friendly Puerto Rican girls, and a promse to “make some fool-around, you know, like we used to!” What could that entail? I don’t think we want to know, considering what we’ve already learned about those girls who are “just dyyyyyin’ to meeetchoo!“) . Instead, focus on how raw the groove feels, and how desperate Mick’s yelps and wails sound: ”Ooh, baby why’d you wait so long/Won’t you….COME HOME! COME HOME!” Does he really feel that sad without about-to-be-ex-wife Bianca? Umm, well, no. As we’re soon to discover…
“When the Whip Comes Down“: But first, the tale of a gay street hustler, set to two chainsaw chords (and a brief modulation for the guitar solo) “Yeah, mama papa told me I was crazy to stay/I’d be gay in New York, but just a fag in L.A. . . .” And onward to the streets of Gotham, where our hero gets spit on, called garbage and (unstated but obvious) made to endure the whips and slaps of kinky closeted patrons. He is, nevertheless, unashamed and unbowed. And, strangely, uncorrupted: ”Yeah, some called me garbage when I was sleepin’ on the street/But I never roll, and I never cheat/I’m fillin’ a need/Yeah, pluggin’ a hole/My mama’s so glad I ain’t on the dole….” Some vibrant double-entredes there. But the real point is that even street hustler has ethics, which is more than you can say for the people whose garbage is lwashing down the East River, and the hypocritical moralism that then (and, let’s face it) still governs life in NYC and everywhere else in our family values-centric (ahem) nation. Live performances heard at some stops on the ’78 tour included a bonus verse that name-checked the then-governors of the man’s home states: ”Mr. Rockefeller, he won’t give me a loan/Mr. Brown, he don’t want me back home/Well, I love my mother and she love her son/It’s so goddamn hard to get back where you started from/When the whip comes down….“
“Just My Imagination”: The Temptations at their sweetest, shoved into the dirt and kicked around by a bunch of coked-up Stones. The album track is nearly perfect, spare, swinging and full of fire. But the seven-mintue live version from Detroit’s Masonic Hall (listen to it here) may be one of their greatest live moments. Consider the rolling groove Watts and Wyman create, a perfect foundation for the interwoven guitars and the threaded, hotwire solos; the vocal that edges from sweetness to a seething intensity, when Jagger bites down hard on the tune’s climactic line: .“In reaaaaallllity…SHE DOESN’T @#$%& KNOW ME!!!/Awwwww! @#$%& it!”
He’s kind of kidding. But also kind of not, which feeling he explores to even more absurd and offensive lengths in “Some Girls,” the title track, which kicks off next with a stuttering guitar riff that, in an instant, establishes a swaggering two-chord blues riff set off by Sugar Blue’s nasty-assed harmonica. The topic is women, their various quirks, delights and (mostly) complications. Imagine a Dr. Seuss book gone horribly wrong: ”Some girls give me diamonds/Some girls buy me clothes/Some girls give me children I never asked ‘em for….” And it gets worse: “Some girls take the shirt off my back/And leave me with a lethal dose!“ More and more, and all of it performed and sung with the sort of leer that the Mick we always knew — the public Mick, the staggering stud, the king of what some hysterics called Cock Rock — would employ when discussing the women in his life. And he knows this is what you’re thinking, which is what he must be thinking when he edges toward the tune’s shameful climax, a kind of off-hand reduction of the female species, from the point of view of a sleek, cheerful devil. “French girls, they want Cartier/Italian girls want cars/American girls they want everything in the world you can possibly imagine!“ Well, maybe that’s not so bad. But hang onto your wig hat. “White girls, they’re pretty funny/sometimes they drive me mad.” Then, the entire album’s serio/comic/screw all y’all defining moment: ”Black girls just wanna get @#$%& all night (actual gasp from Keith)/I just don’t
have that much jam…” Yes, it’s the worst possible thing a person could say. Racist, misogynistic, purposefully provocative. It’s that last part that matters the most: Everyone already knew, or thought they knew, how wicked young Mick had been for so long. It’s hateful, and also (to that point) the secret of his success. Who dissed the women of the world? Well, after all, it was you and me.
Which understanding probably inspired the next full-throttle asskicker, “Lies.” They’re rocketing so fast, Mick is screaming with such fervor, you can barely make out a word of it. “LIes! whispered sweetly in my ear/Lies! How do I get out of here!?” My favorite part comes near the end, when the singer’s fervent scream breaks into a yelp. “Lies, lies you dirty Jezebel/Why, why, why, why don’t you go to Hellll?!?“
At which point we oldsters had to get up and flip the record. Good timing, actually, since you needed a moment of silence to get over that last one. But then everything changes: A slack rhythm guitar, the gentle cry of a steel guitar, and country Mick shuffling around in slack-jawed yokel mode, in search of a “Far Away Eyes.” Straight-up country, it seems. Only Mick is talk-singing in a kind of Cockney-cracker accent that underscores how quietly, yet blisteringly sarcastic the whole affair is. He’s going up the country, rumbling down the dusty Californian highway. Ah, the modern American frontier! God’s country! Full of promise! And also idiots who not only take comfort in radio preachers, but also send them their hard-earned cash money! ”And the preacher said, ‘you know, you’ve awwwwlways got the Lord on your side!’/And I was so pleased to be informed of this/That I ran 20 red lights in his honor/…” The chorus, performed by an entire chorale of rough-hewn Stones, appeals to the down on their luck, the downright disgusted, a whole Tea Party of them, saluted by a drunken mob of Brit millionaires who are too wasted to even harmonize right. No matter, our cheerful, rock-headed driver (so pleased to be listening to the “colored radio station”) knows hel has Jesus on his side. All this thanks to the Church of the Sacred Bleeding Heart of Jesus, to which he gladly sends ten of his crumpled dollars, and is soon rewarded by a prayer especially for him and ”…the girl with…well, you know what kind of eyes she got!“
Vacation over. Because now we’re back at Stones central, digging the myth from the inside out, distinctly circa 1978 and at the height of their jet-setting/high society notoreity. Remember when Bianca was gamboling with Canadian president Pierre Trudeau? Remember when sex with Mick was de rigeur for every 5th avenue debutante worth her diamond-crusted coke spoon? And none of it seemed to affect their growing authority among the professionally powerful and buttoned down? Oh, they were so “Respectable.“ Only it sounds so different set to warp-speed drums and fuzzed-up guitars and Mick bellowing at the top of his lungs. “So respectaaaaable!-huh. So Respectable-huh! So delectable-huh…..“ Oh, and Bianca? This one’s for you, and apparently President Trudeau, too: ”You’re a rag-trade girl, you’re the queen of porn/You’re the easiest lay on the White House lawn/Get out of my life! Don’t come back.”
Keith, on the other hand, expects no easy benedictions. He’s chosen a whole other path, through the roller coaster of booze, pills, powders and scheming narcotics officers. I think “Before They Make Me Run” is Keith’s most distinctive song of all, given how rhythmically and musically unexpected the cheery central chord progression is, and how magically the bluesy plaint he offers fits on top, and how unblinkingly forthright (if at times oddly self-pitying) he is about his louche lifeways. “It’s another good bust/another good frame” he grumbles, though it’s hard to imagine why anyone so enthusiastic about his recreational medications would require cop-generated evidence to bust. Whether Keith’s internal chemistry is any law enforcement’s agency is a whole other issue. “Wasn’t looking real good but I was feelin’ real well!” Keith proclaims at one point, apparently describing those years in the early ’70s when he was nodding out, losing his teeth, looking like death not-quite-warmed-over as a result of his habits. “I’ll find my way to heaven/’Cause I done my time in hell,” he says. So no regrets? Thirty-two years later I think he’s right. He’s still alive, he’s still doing a lot of what he was doing then (it appears). Keith wins. And so do we, if you really focus on how wonderful his guitar sounds here. Was it the smack that gave him that opening riff? An absence of smack? Whatever. It’s fantastic.
Next up another hit single, and deservedly so, the swingin’ “Beast of Burden,” which finds Mick alternately flirting, seducing, strutting and shaking his head. “Ain’t I rough enough?/Ain’t I tough enough?/Ain’t I rich enough, in love enough?/Please, please, please...” Circa 1978 the answers were: Yes, yes, yes, yes and okay.
Finaly, another sui generis masterwork: The thrumming street poetry satire tour of New York City itself, described in tones of civic and moral disaster. Welcome to “Shattered.” And really, go ahead: ”Bite the Big Apple/Don’t mind the maggots!“ Mick and Keith are here, at home in the funky, broken apart world of Abe Beame’s New York. “Look at me — I’m in tatters!” You could spend hours marveling at the interplay between Wyman’s bass and Watts’s drums. It’s all in the groove, and all indelible, even though the tune itself has no melody to speak of, and the lyrics veer in and out of meter, and the only thing holding it together is this mood of loving contempt and the backup chant of “Shadoobee, shattered. Shadoobee, shattered.” . New York is a living hell, and they couldn’t be happier, or more comfortable: ”Don’t you know the crime rate’s going up, up, up, up UP!/To live in this town, you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!“ And at this point in the game, Mick and Keith were exactly that. Tougher than the devil. Certainly tougher than your lame-ass moral dudgeon. Work and love and greed and sex, that’s what made those boys the best. Pride and joy and dirty dreams, still surviving on the street. And look at yourself, yo.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 04:24 by stupidguy2.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
Bliss
()
Date: August 21, 2014 09:55
So after so many years, we learn that Mick wrote the lyrics to GS? Wow. Who knew?
Here's something about GS you probably never heard - Keith said he got the insiration from the theme to The Twilight Zone.
The Twilight Zone
Here's something about GS you probably never heard - Keith said he got the insiration from the theme to The Twilight Zone.
The Twilight Zone
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
Deltics
()
Date: August 21, 2014 10:02
Mick's worst lyric!
"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"
"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
DandelionPowderman
()
Date: August 21, 2014 11:06
Well, let's compare...
"Desolation Row"
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.
Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get outa here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row.
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
They be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting
"Which side are you on ?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke ?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Dont send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
Sympathy For The Devil
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stolen many a man's soul and faith
And I was around when Jesus Christ
Had His moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed His fate
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game
I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Tzar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank, held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah what's puzzling you is the nature of my game, ah yes
I watched with glee while your kings and queens
Fought for 10 decades for the gods they made
I shouted out Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all it was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I lay traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reach Bombay
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, oh yes
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game, ah yeah
Get down, baby
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you is just the nature of my game, mmm yeah
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer
Cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me, have some courtesy
Have some sympathy and some taste
Use all your well learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, mmm yeah
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, mmm yeah
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game, mmm baby
Get down
Ah yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Ah yeah
Tell me, baby, what's my name?
Tell me, honey, can you guess my name?
Tell me, baby, what's my name?
I'll tell you one time, you're to blame
All right
Ah yeah
Ah yes, what's my name?
Tell me, baby, what's my name?
Tell me, sweetie, what's my name?
Ah yeah
"Desolation Row"
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.
Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get outa here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row.
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
They be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting
"Which side are you on ?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke ?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Dont send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
Sympathy For The Devil
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stolen many a man's soul and faith
And I was around when Jesus Christ
Had His moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed His fate
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game
I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Tzar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank, held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah what's puzzling you is the nature of my game, ah yes
I watched with glee while your kings and queens
Fought for 10 decades for the gods they made
I shouted out Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all it was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I lay traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reach Bombay
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, oh yes
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game, ah yeah
Get down, baby
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you is just the nature of my game, mmm yeah
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer
Cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me, have some courtesy
Have some sympathy and some taste
Use all your well learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, mmm yeah
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, mmm yeah
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game, mmm baby
Get down
Ah yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Ah yeah
Tell me, baby, what's my name?
Tell me, honey, can you guess my name?
Tell me, baby, what's my name?
I'll tell you one time, you're to blame
All right
Ah yeah
Ah yes, what's my name?
Tell me, baby, what's my name?
Tell me, sweetie, what's my name?
Ah yeah
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
OzHeavyThrobber
()
Date: August 21, 2014 11:38
Jagger is as good as Lennon and Dylan in my opinion. Just far more dismissive of being a participating character in the songs I think.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 11:41 by OzHeavyThrobber.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 11:41 by OzHeavyThrobber.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
DandelionPowderman
()
Date: August 21, 2014 11:47
IMO, Mick writes sparse and economically, but brilliant lyrics when he is at his best - just like when he plays and sings. That can be very effective indeed.
However, the comparison with the "best", more "profound" and explorative poets is a little bit like comparisons with other musicians (who's the best?). That's a bit pointless, imo, as Mick probably is among the best at what he does, but wouldn't stand a change in that other territory (Dylan etc.), and rightfully he won't go there.
Just my two cents.
However, the comparison with the "best", more "profound" and explorative poets is a little bit like comparisons with other musicians (who's the best?). That's a bit pointless, imo, as Mick probably is among the best at what he does, but wouldn't stand a change in that other territory (Dylan etc.), and rightfully he won't go there.
Just my two cents.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
OzHeavyThrobber
()
Date: August 21, 2014 11:54
Guys I'm lost and I even tried Hari Chrishna but I cannot see in the NPR interview or anywhere else where Jagger claims co-writing GS. Anyone able to copy and paste what I seem to be not seeing please?
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
DandelionPowderman
()
Date: August 21, 2014 12:14
Quote
OzHeavyThrobber
Guys I'm lost and I even tried Hari Chrishna but I cannot see in the NPR interview or anywhere else where Jagger claims co-writing GS. Anyone able to copy and paste what I seem to be not seeing please?
He said "we wrote" in the 20 Feet From Stardom"-film. But I didn't interpret that statement as having anything to do with the lyrics..
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
Green Lady
()
Date: August 21, 2014 12:23
Thanks for posting Desolation Row and SFTD, Dandie - that's apples and oranges, and I don't know why there has to be a competition. I think people hear Dylan lyrics like that and think "WOW - this is full of weird imagery and I don't understand half of it so it must be great and clever." Mick was clearly impressed too because he had a go at this kind of thing with Jigsaw Puzzle - but for me, Mick is at his best when you know exactly what he's saying without pretension or obscurity.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
Doxa
()
Date: August 21, 2014 14:15
As far as that cryptic Dylan/Jagger comparison goes, I think one difference between them is that whereas Dylan is more lyrics-oriented, Jagger is more music-oriented. That is, Dylan tends to write first lyrics, and then adds a suitable music into it, wheras Jagger starts with the musical idea first, and then adds suitable lyrics into it.
In his CHRONICLES Dylan gives us a description of the creation of OH MERCY, going along that pattern, and there are many well-known historical anecdotes and documents of his writing 'method' (one can see, for example, in DON'T LOOK BACK the man with his type-writer, or read from Marianne Faithful's first book how he tried to charm her once...). Jagger's way of writing lyrics derives from his co-work with Keith, which in the early days was more that of Keith offering a song sketch and perhaps a key phrase or something, which then Jagger 'finished' (partly melody and mostly lyrics). I suppose this kind of method has continued ever since, even when Jagger is writing everything by himself. What I have heard, many Stones lyrics are written after the backing track is finished, alongside when the vocal part is created.
I think one can hear the difference in their music (Jagger compared to Dylan). Jagger's forte is to use words and expressions that are sonically in a par with the music, reflecting the musical feeling of the song (Like he says,""Making it rhyme?" We don't need to worry about making it rhyme"... check also what Keith says of making lyrics in LIFE, that him and Mick use certain sounding words just to go with the music). Dylan more like forces the music act like a medium to channel his lyrical ideas. Both of these methods are equally great, and both are masters in what they do. The results are generally stunning.
But of course, if one does the thing never should be done: takes the lyrics out of their context - from a performed song, and one cannot under-rate the significance of the interpretation skills of either of them - Dylan's songs generally fair better. They have more poetic independence than Jagger's. I don't think the critics for the last 50 years or so have been totally wrong when rating Dylan as lyricist above not just Jagger but anyone else in rock music...
- Doxa
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 14:18 by Doxa.
In his CHRONICLES Dylan gives us a description of the creation of OH MERCY, going along that pattern, and there are many well-known historical anecdotes and documents of his writing 'method' (one can see, for example, in DON'T LOOK BACK the man with his type-writer, or read from Marianne Faithful's first book how he tried to charm her once...). Jagger's way of writing lyrics derives from his co-work with Keith, which in the early days was more that of Keith offering a song sketch and perhaps a key phrase or something, which then Jagger 'finished' (partly melody and mostly lyrics). I suppose this kind of method has continued ever since, even when Jagger is writing everything by himself. What I have heard, many Stones lyrics are written after the backing track is finished, alongside when the vocal part is created.
I think one can hear the difference in their music (Jagger compared to Dylan). Jagger's forte is to use words and expressions that are sonically in a par with the music, reflecting the musical feeling of the song (Like he says,""Making it rhyme?" We don't need to worry about making it rhyme"
... check also what Keith says of making lyrics in LIFE, that him and Mick use certain sounding words just to go with the music). Dylan more like forces the music act like a medium to channel his lyrical ideas. Both of these methods are equally great, and both are masters in what they do. The results are generally stunning.But of course, if one does the thing never should be done: takes the lyrics out of their context - from a performed song, and one cannot under-rate the significance of the interpretation skills of either of them - Dylan's songs generally fair better. They have more poetic independence than Jagger's. I don't think the critics for the last 50 years or so have been totally wrong when rating Dylan as lyricist above not just Jagger but anyone else in rock music...
- Doxa
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 14:18 by Doxa.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
DandelionPowderman
()
Date: August 21, 2014 14:24
That's right, Doxa. When reading my book of Dylan's lyrics, I'm reading true poetry - stand-alone beautiful pieces.
Mick's lyrics contain both poetic and percussive elements, so to speak. He might have some important points that he wants to get across, but the main thing: They have to sound good first.
People have been discussing for ages whether Dylan should get the Nobel Prize in litterature. Two different ball games, imo.
Mick's lyrics contain both poetic and percussive elements, so to speak. He might have some important points that he wants to get across, but the main thing: They have to sound good first.
People have been discussing for ages whether Dylan should get the Nobel Prize in litterature. Two different ball games, imo.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
wanderingspirit66
()
Date: August 21, 2014 14:34
Quote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
OzHeavyThrobber
Guys I'm lost and I even tried Hari Chrishna but I cannot see in the NPR interview or anywhere else where Jagger claims co-writing GS. Anyone able to copy and paste what I seem to be not seeing please?
He said "we wrote" in the 20 Feet From Stardom"-film. But I didn't interpret that statement as having anything to do with the lyrics..
Do neither of you see the the link to the audio version of the interview with Melissa Block?
From the audio of the NPR interview -
Melissa Block: "Who did what"
Jagger's: "I wrote the lyrics - Keith wrote the tune"
Separately, what is Hari Chrishna??
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
Doxa
()
Date: August 21, 2014 14:53
Yep, I think that poetic difference comes across rather well in the examples you posted above, Dandie. "Sympathy For The Devil" is one of the very best lyrics ever written for a rock song, damn clever and spot on, but if looked 'nakely' in the paper/screen front of you, it doesn't 'look' so good. But "Desolation Row" does. For "Sympathy" we need to have the rest (of the song) to see the greatness or even magic, but the lyrics of "Desolation Row" stand on their own. One can actually read the latter as a poem. It flows beautifully.
- Doxa
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 15:03 by Doxa.
- Doxa
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 15:03 by Doxa.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
latebloomer
()
Date: August 21, 2014 15:01
But we are talking about lyrics here, not poetry. Two different genres. As one writer put it, poetry is mainly for the eye whereas lyrics are mainly for the ear. In that context, Mick's lyrics are every bit as good as Dylan's.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
wanderingspirit66
()
Date: August 21, 2014 16:09
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Quote
wanderingspirit66Quote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
OzHeavyThrobber
Guys I'm lost and I even tried Hari Chrishna but I cannot see in the NPR interview or anywhere else where Jagger claims co-writing GS. Anyone able to copy and paste what I seem to be not seeing please?
He said "we wrote" in the 20 Feet From Stardom"-film. But I didn't interpret that statement as having anything to do with the lyrics..
Do neither of you see the the link to the audio version of the interview with Melissa Block?
From the audio of the NPR interview -
Melissa Block: "Who did what"
Jagger's: "I wrote the lyrics - Keith wrote the tune"
Separately, what is Hari Chrishna??
Here is the transcript of the interview
Copyright ©2012 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
MICK JAGGER: Hi, Melissa. This is Mick Jagger here. Nice to be on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BLOCK: What a way to end the week. Mick Jagger is the last in our series of chats with The Rolling Stones. The band is marking 50 years together. They have a new collection of greatest hits and are getting ready for a handful of shows. We asked each of The Stones to pick one song to talk about. So far this week, we've heard from Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood and now Mick.
JAGGER: You want to talk about "Gimme Shelter"?
BLOCK: Do you want to talk about "Gimme Shelter"?
JAGGER: Not really, but I can. I'm very open to talking about "Gimme Shelter."
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: It was released in 1969, and we did follow-up versions of it, and it was very exciting.
BLOCK: Well, do me a favor. We have it cued up here. So let's play it.
JAGGER: Go on.
BLOCK: If you don't mind, talk over it as we're listening to it if that's OK.
JAGGER: Talk over it.
BLOCK: Yeah.
JAGGER: Sacrilegious.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: I could rap over it if you'd like.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Just tell us what we hear. So here's the opening.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: (Unintelligible) two versions of Keith over the top.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: Layered - two layers of Keith.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: And Jimmy Miller playing the scraper, and Charlie playing the drums.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
BLOCK: And that high vocal there?
JAGGER: That's me. Oh, that's Mick Jagger singing a high falsetto vocal.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: Yeah. I was doing that the other day in rehearsal.
BLOCK: Yeah?
JAGGER: Yeah.
BLOCK: You could still get there?
JAGGER: Yeah, probably.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: I've got much higher ones than that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: And then we - we leave the Latin groove behind, and then the sort of rock thing starts.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
THE ROLLING STONES: (Singing) Oh, a storm is threatening my very life today.
JAGGER: There's old me and (unintelligible) me and me and me singing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
STONES: (Singing) If I don't get some shelter, oh, yeah, I'm going to fade away. War, children, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away. War...
JAGGER: When we got to Los Angeles and we were mixing it, we thought, well, it'd be great to have a woman come and do the rape-murder verse or chorus or whatever you want to call it. And so we randomly phoned up this poor lady in the middle of the night, and she arrived in her curlers.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: No kidding?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
MERRY CLAYTON: (Singing) Rape, murder, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away.
BLOCK: This is the singer Merry Clayton.
JAGGER: It's Merry Clayton, yeah. And Merry came in pink curlers. I think Merry - Merry, I'm sorry, but - for so telling you on this. It wasn't a dressing gown. I think she got a dress by then. And she came in and knocked this off this rather odd lyric. It's not sort of the lyric you give everyone, you know, rape, murder, it's just a shot away, but she proceeded to do that in like one or two takes, and she's pretty amazing. And she really got into it, as you can hear on the record, and she, you know, she joins the chorus, and it's been a great live song ever since.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
CLAYTON: (Singing) It's just a shot away. It's just a shot away. Rape, murder, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away.
BLOCK: Her voice really, really cracks at the high point of the song.
JAGGER: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, she does a great job on this.
BLOCK: Who did what in writing this song?
JAGGER: Keith wrote the tune, and I wrote a lot of the words.
BLOCK: What were you thinking when you were coming up with the words for "Gimme Shelter"?
JAGGER: I can't remember really anymore, to be honest, but, you know, it was a very moody piece about the world closing in on you a bit. When it was recorded, like, early '69 or something, you know, it was a time of war and tension, and so that's reflected in this tune.
BLOCK: Kind of apocalyptic, really.
JAGGER: Yeah. Kind of, yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: And, you know, it's still wheeled out when big storms happen, as they did the other week, you know? And it's been used a lot to evoke natural disaster.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: Oh, that's my harmonica part there. Only two notes, but it shows what you can do with two notes.
BLOCK: Let's hear it. Let's crank that up right now.
JAGGER: Go.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
BLOCK: It is just two notes.
JAGGER: It is just two notes.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: That's because of a crummy keyed harmonica...
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: ...anyways, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: You shouldn't have told me about it. It just spoiled the whole illusion of (unintelligible).
JAGGER: I didn't spoil it. It just shows you what you can do with two notes.
BLOCK: There you go.
JAGGER: You didn't have to put - it is economy of style.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Well, you're getting ready to go out for a few shows, a couple in England and a few here. What do you do to get ready? It's such a physical thing that you do, and you're how old now?
JAGGER: I don't know.
BLOCK: Aha.
JAGGER: That's Charlie's line.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: But...
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: How old are you, Melissa?
BLOCK: I'm 50.
JAGGER: Oh, it's a nice age.
BLOCK: It's a round number.
JAGGER: It's a very nice age. What do I do to get ready? Well, I do what I've always done for the last, oh, forever years. You know, I have to get up the fitness level, sing a lot, practice, get in the mood and generally - and do lots of rehearsal. Get your body and mind ready.
BLOCK: How do you get your mind ready?
JAGGER: Well, you get in the idea that you're going to be out there on stage and crank up the ego a bit.
BLOCK: I bet that's the key part of it. You have to crank up the ego to do what you do.
JAGGER: Yeah. You kind of do, but you can't really - that's something that I don't actually really do, if you know what I mean. I mean, you do it, but you don't sort of - it's not part of the training. And there's the clothes, of course.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: I'm not forgetting the clothes. That's a very important...
BLOCK: It's key.
JAGGER: ...part of the prep, totally key because, to be honest, you do have to because it makes you feel good. And you've got to have, you know, fresh wardrobe. And you can't just go out there looking like you did last time. And then you - that helps your transformation. You know, being in a rock band, you can't kind of overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that's not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: That's not rock. Rock is about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that's not really my approach.
BLOCK: You know, none of the members of The Rolling Stones chose the song that I kind of hoped one of you would.
JAGGER: Which was what?
BLOCK: "Wild Horses."
JAGGER: Oh, lovely.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILD HORSES")
JAGGER: It's quite a favorite of mine to do as the ballad as we don't do that many. Being a rock band, we do - we've got lots of ballads, but we don't do many. And we could do a whole show of ballads (unintelligible) and everyone would brought to tears, probably. But, you know, we do only a couple per show, so we have to select them, and I quite often select that one.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILD HORSES")
STONES: (Singing) Childhood living is easy to do.
BLOCK: Well, Mick Jagger, it's been great to talk to you. Thank you so much.
JAGGER: Nice to talk to you, Melissa, and I hope it all comes out for you well.
BLOCK: Thank you and likewise.
JAGGER: Bye-bye.
BLOCK: The new Rolling Stones collection is called "GRRR!". You can hear my interviews with the other three Stones at nprmusic.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILD HORSES")
STONES: (Singing) You know who I am. You know I can't let you slide through my hands. Wild horses couldn't drag me away.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Until now, I hadn't seen the transcript and had only heard the audio. When you hear the audio, actually Jagger swallows the "a lot of" part. It sounds more like "I wrote the words".
I find his delivery of this statement intriguing - perhaps Keith did contribute more lyrically than I could imagine
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
wanderingspirit66
()
Date: August 21, 2014 16:20
Quote
latebloomer
But we are talking about lyrics here, not poetry. Two different genres. As one writer put it, poetry is mainly for the eye whereas lyrics are mainly for the ear. In that context, Mick's lyrics are every bit as good as Dylan's.
Here's a very interesting article on Dylan as a poet
Bob Dylan: “I’m a poet, and I know it”
In 2004, a Newsweek magazine article called Bob Dylan “the most influential cultural figure now alive," and with good reason. He has released more than forty albums in the last four decades, and created some of the most memorable anthems of the twentieth century, classics such as “The Times They Are A-Changin," “Like a Rolling Stone," and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
While Dylan’s place in the pantheon of American musicians is cemented, there is one question that has confounded music and literary critics for the entirety of Dylan’s career: Should Bob Dylan be considered a songwriter or a poet? Dylan was asked that very question at a press conference in 1965, when he famously said, “I think of myself more as a song-and-dance man.”
The debate has raged on ever since, and even intensified in 2004, when Internet rumors swirled about Dylan’s nomination for a Nobel Prize in Literature, and five well-hyped books were released almost simultaneously: Dylan’s Visions of Sin, by Oxford professor of poetry Christopher Ricks, who makes the case for Dylan as a poet; Lyrics: 1962-2001, a collection of Dylan’s songs presented in printed form; Chronicles, the first volume of Dylan’s memoir; Keys to the Rain, a 724-page Bob Dylan encyclopedia; and Studio A, an anthology about Dylan by such esteemed writers as Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Moody, and Barry Hannah.
Christopher Ricks, who has also penned books about T. S. Eliot and John Keats, argues that Dylan’s lyrics not only qualify as poetry, but that Dylan is among the finest poets of all time, on the same level as Milton, Keats, and Tennyson. He points to Dylan’s mastery of rhymes that are often startling and perfectly judged. For example, this pairing from “Idiot Wind," released in 1975:
Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
The metaphorical relation between the head and the head of state, both of them two big domes, and the “idiot wind” blowing out of Washington, D.C., from the mouths of politicians, made this particular lyric the “great disillusioned national rhyme," according to Allen Ginsberg.
“The case for denying Dylan the title of poet could not summarily, if at all, be made good by any open-minded close attention to the words and his ways with them," Ricks wrote in Dylan’s Visions of Sin. “The case would need to begin with his medium.”
The problem many critics have with calling song lyrics poetry is that songs are only fully realized in performance. It takes the lyrics, music, and voice working in tandem to unpack the power of a song, whereas a poem ideally stands up by itself, on the page, controlling its own timing and internal music. Dylan’s lyrics, and most especially his creative rhyme-making, may only work, as critic Ian Hamilton has written, with “Bob’s barbed-wire tonsils in support.”
It is indisputable, though, that Dylan has been influenced a great deal by poetry. He counts Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine alongside Woody Guthrie as his most important forebears. He took his stage name, Bob Dylan, from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (his real name is Robert Allen Zimmerman). He described himself once as a “sixties troubadour," and when he talks about songwriting, he can sometimes sound like a professor of literature: “I can create several orbits that travel and intersect each other and are set up in a metaphysical way.”
His work has also veered purposefully into poetry. In 1966, he wrote a book of poems and prose called Tarantula. Many of the liner notes from his 1960s albums were written as epitaphs. And his songwriting is peppered with literary references. Consider, for example, these lyrics from “Desolation Row," released on 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited:
Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Professor Ricks is not the only scholar who considers Dylan a great American poet. Dylan has been nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature every year since 1996, and the lyrics to his song “Mr. Tambourine Man” appeared in the Norton Introduction to Literature.
So do his song lyrics qualify as poetry? Even Dylan gets the two genres confused sometimes. He once called Smokey Robinson his favorite poet, then later backpedaled and said it was Rimbaud. He has alternatingly avoided this question and mocked it, as in his song “I Shall Be Free No. 10”:
Yippee! I’m a poet, and I know it
Hope I don’t blow it
However, the best, most straightforward answer may have appeared in the liner notes of his second album, 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, where Dylan said, simply: “Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem.”
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
DandelionPowderman
()
Date: August 21, 2014 16:29
It's not new info that Keith wrote the music, had the theme and some of the most important words down, and that Mick structured and finished GS?
I can't see that he is saying anything that's basically different in this interview.
I can't see that he is saying anything that's basically different in this interview.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
Bliss
()
Date: August 21, 2014 19:33
Personally, I think SFTD is streets ahead of Desolation Row. Mick makes a strong point and illustrates it with powerful, related images. The music itself reinforces the message in the lyrics.
Desolation Row is full of unrelated imagery that somehow relates to the title, but much of it is obscure. If someone can explain this, please do:
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
Desolation Row is full of unrelated imagery that somehow relates to the title, but much of it is obscure. If someone can explain this, please do:
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
latebloomer
()
Date: August 21, 2014 20:47
Quote
Bliss
Personally, I think SFTD is streets ahead of Desolation Row. Mick makes a strong point and illustrates it with powerful, related images. The music itself reinforces the message in the lyrics.
Desolation Row is full of unrelated imagery that somehow relates to the title, but much of it is obscure. If someone can explain this, please do:
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
You said it, Bliss. That is one of the criticisms I have read of Dylan. He is a brilliant lyricist, but tries too hard to be clever to the point of obscurity. In other words, what the hell is he talking about?
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
nightskyman
()
Date: August 21, 2014 22:02
Quote
wanderingspirit66-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Quote
wanderingspirit66Quote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
OzHeavyThrobber
Guys I'm lost and I even tried Hari Chrishna but I cannot see in the NPR interview or anywhere else where Jagger claims co-writing GS. Anyone able to copy and paste what I seem to be not seeing please?
He said "we wrote" in the 20 Feet From Stardom"-film. But I didn't interpret that statement as having anything to do with the lyrics..
Do neither of you see the the link to the audio version of the interview with Melissa Block?
From the audio of the NPR interview -
Melissa Block: "Who did what"
Jagger's: "I wrote the lyrics - Keith wrote the tune"
Separately, what is Hari Chrishna??
Here is the transcript of the interview
Copyright ©2012 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
MICK JAGGER: Hi, Melissa. This is Mick Jagger here. Nice to be on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BLOCK: What a way to end the week. Mick Jagger is the last in our series of chats with The Rolling Stones. The band is marking 50 years together. They have a new collection of greatest hits and are getting ready for a handful of shows. We asked each of The Stones to pick one song to talk about. So far this week, we've heard from Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood and now Mick.
JAGGER: You want to talk about "Gimme Shelter"?
BLOCK: Do you want to talk about "Gimme Shelter"?
JAGGER: Not really, but I can. I'm very open to talking about "Gimme Shelter."
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: It was released in 1969, and we did follow-up versions of it, and it was very exciting.
BLOCK: Well, do me a favor. We have it cued up here. So let's play it.
JAGGER: Go on.
BLOCK: If you don't mind, talk over it as we're listening to it if that's OK.
JAGGER: Talk over it.
BLOCK: Yeah.
JAGGER: Sacrilegious.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: I could rap over it if you'd like.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Just tell us what we hear. So here's the opening.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: (Unintelligible) two versions of Keith over the top.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: Layered - two layers of Keith.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: And Jimmy Miller playing the scraper, and Charlie playing the drums.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
BLOCK: And that high vocal there?
JAGGER: That's me. Oh, that's Mick Jagger singing a high falsetto vocal.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: Yeah. I was doing that the other day in rehearsal.
BLOCK: Yeah?
JAGGER: Yeah.
BLOCK: You could still get there?
JAGGER: Yeah, probably.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: I've got much higher ones than that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: And then we - we leave the Latin groove behind, and then the sort of rock thing starts.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
THE ROLLING STONES: (Singing) Oh, a storm is threatening my very life today.
JAGGER: There's old me and (unintelligible) me and me and me singing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
STONES: (Singing) If I don't get some shelter, oh, yeah, I'm going to fade away. War, children, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away. War...
JAGGER: When we got to Los Angeles and we were mixing it, we thought, well, it'd be great to have a woman come and do the rape-murder verse or chorus or whatever you want to call it. And so we randomly phoned up this poor lady in the middle of the night, and she arrived in her curlers.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: No kidding?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
MERRY CLAYTON: (Singing) Rape, murder, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away.
BLOCK: This is the singer Merry Clayton.
JAGGER: It's Merry Clayton, yeah. And Merry came in pink curlers. I think Merry - Merry, I'm sorry, but - for so telling you on this. It wasn't a dressing gown. I think she got a dress by then. And she came in and knocked this off this rather odd lyric. It's not sort of the lyric you give everyone, you know, rape, murder, it's just a shot away, but she proceeded to do that in like one or two takes, and she's pretty amazing. And she really got into it, as you can hear on the record, and she, you know, she joins the chorus, and it's been a great live song ever since.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
CLAYTON: (Singing) It's just a shot away. It's just a shot away. Rape, murder, it's just a shot away. It's just a shot away.
BLOCK: Her voice really, really cracks at the high point of the song.
JAGGER: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, she does a great job on this.
BLOCK: Who did what in writing this song?
JAGGER: Keith wrote the tune, and I wrote a lot of the words.
BLOCK: What were you thinking when you were coming up with the words for "Gimme Shelter"?
JAGGER: I can't remember really anymore, to be honest, but, you know, it was a very moody piece about the world closing in on you a bit. When it was recorded, like, early '69 or something, you know, it was a time of war and tension, and so that's reflected in this tune.
BLOCK: Kind of apocalyptic, really.
JAGGER: Yeah. Kind of, yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: And, you know, it's still wheeled out when big storms happen, as they did the other week, you know? And it's been used a lot to evoke natural disaster.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
JAGGER: Oh, that's my harmonica part there. Only two notes, but it shows what you can do with two notes.
BLOCK: Let's hear it. Let's crank that up right now.
JAGGER: Go.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SHELTER")
BLOCK: It is just two notes.
JAGGER: It is just two notes.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: That's because of a crummy keyed harmonica...
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: ...anyways, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: You shouldn't have told me about it. It just spoiled the whole illusion of (unintelligible).
JAGGER: I didn't spoil it. It just shows you what you can do with two notes.
BLOCK: There you go.
JAGGER: You didn't have to put - it is economy of style.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Well, you're getting ready to go out for a few shows, a couple in England and a few here. What do you do to get ready? It's such a physical thing that you do, and you're how old now?
JAGGER: I don't know.
BLOCK: Aha.
JAGGER: That's Charlie's line.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: But...
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: How old are you, Melissa?
BLOCK: I'm 50.
JAGGER: Oh, it's a nice age.
BLOCK: It's a round number.
JAGGER: It's a very nice age. What do I do to get ready? Well, I do what I've always done for the last, oh, forever years. You know, I have to get up the fitness level, sing a lot, practice, get in the mood and generally - and do lots of rehearsal. Get your body and mind ready.
BLOCK: How do you get your mind ready?
JAGGER: Well, you get in the idea that you're going to be out there on stage and crank up the ego a bit.
BLOCK: I bet that's the key part of it. You have to crank up the ego to do what you do.
JAGGER: Yeah. You kind of do, but you can't really - that's something that I don't actually really do, if you know what I mean. I mean, you do it, but you don't sort of - it's not part of the training. And there's the clothes, of course.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: I'm not forgetting the clothes. That's a very important...
BLOCK: It's key.
JAGGER: ...part of the prep, totally key because, to be honest, you do have to because it makes you feel good. And you've got to have, you know, fresh wardrobe. And you can't just go out there looking like you did last time. And then you - that helps your transformation. You know, being in a rock band, you can't kind of overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that's not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes.
(LAUGHTER)
JAGGER: That's not rock. Rock is about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that's not really my approach.
BLOCK: You know, none of the members of The Rolling Stones chose the song that I kind of hoped one of you would.
JAGGER: Which was what?
BLOCK: "Wild Horses."
JAGGER: Oh, lovely.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILD HORSES")
JAGGER: It's quite a favorite of mine to do as the ballad as we don't do that many. Being a rock band, we do - we've got lots of ballads, but we don't do many. And we could do a whole show of ballads (unintelligible) and everyone would brought to tears, probably. But, you know, we do only a couple per show, so we have to select them, and I quite often select that one.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILD HORSES")
STONES: (Singing) Childhood living is easy to do.
BLOCK: Well, Mick Jagger, it's been great to talk to you. Thank you so much.
JAGGER: Nice to talk to you, Melissa, and I hope it all comes out for you well.
BLOCK: Thank you and likewise.
JAGGER: Bye-bye.
BLOCK: The new Rolling Stones collection is called "GRRR!". You can hear my interviews with the other three Stones at nprmusic.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILD HORSES")
STONES: (Singing) You know who I am. You know I can't let you slide through my hands. Wild horses couldn't drag me away.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Until now, I hadn't seen the transcript and had only heard the audio. When you hear the audio, actually Jagger swallows the "a lot of" part. It sounds more like "I wrote the words".
I find his delivery of this statement intriguing - perhaps Keith did contribute more lyrically than I could imagine
From what KR wrote in 'Life' about the creation of the song, it sounds like he means that he wrote the chords, the melody, and the opening line. The rest of the lyrics Jagger wrote. That's not surprising, considering he says same about 'Satisfaction,' coming up with riff, melody and chorus line "I can't get no...Satisfaction and similarly the rest of the lyrics by Jagger.
Is it not probable that the bult of the songs up to about 1968 were written in this manner?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-08-21 22:03 by nightskyman.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
treaclefingers
()
Date: August 21, 2014 22:05
Quote
wanderingspirit66Quote
latebloomer
But we are talking about lyrics here, not poetry. Two different genres. As one writer put it, poetry is mainly for the eye whereas lyrics are mainly for the ear. In that context, Mick's lyrics are every bit as good as Dylan's.
Here's a very interesting article on Dylan as a poet
However, the best, most straightforward answer may have appeared in the liner notes of his second album, 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, where Dylan said, simply: “Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem.”
I guess by that measure, Dylan is strictly a poet nowadays, because he is completely unable to sing anymore.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
StonesCat
()
Date: August 21, 2014 22:44
Quote
latebloomerQuote
Bliss
Personally, I think SFTD is streets ahead of Desolation Row. Mick makes a strong point and illustrates it with powerful, related images. The music itself reinforces the message in the lyrics.
Desolation Row is full of unrelated imagery that somehow relates to the title, but much of it is obscure. If someone can explain this, please do:
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
You said it, Bliss. That is one of the criticisms I have read of Dylan. He is a brilliant lyricist, but tries too hard to be clever to the point of obscurity. In other words, what the hell is he talking about?
I love Dylan, but the Blonde on Blonde era speed influenced stuff is the least interesting to me. Like you say, clever for clever's sake. For me, though, something like Blood on the Tracks, probably in my top 5 favorite albums from anybody, shows how he can write in just the opposite style beautifully.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
OzHeavyThrobber
()
Date: August 22, 2014 04:58
Thanks NightSkyMan the link to that interview never appeared for me. And what a great interview. Absolute gem. You can feel the great vibe of it just reading it. Ok I was wrong Jagger did have something to do with it's composition.
They're hard to make heads of tails of sometimes Keith and Mick. For example I once read (don't know where) Jagger stating he wrote all of the lyrics to 'Satisfaction' and even quoted nicking the title from a Chuck Berry song (that I can't say I knew or know even now) that says something like "from the judge I don't get no satisfaction...". This contradicts Keith in Life.
Keith in a youtube interview say "I wrote 'Midnight rambler' for Mick Jagger (to sing - as it's perfectly 'taylored' only for him) and yet I've read elsewhere Mick saying he and Keith spent a great deal of time planning a blues type opera and writing it together in Italy somewhere.
Plus in '89 (I think in RS mag) Jagger was asked about 'Wild horses' I recall and all he said was "It's ok. A bit weepy". Now he seems to like it
As for Dylan vs Jagger and so on I think Bob to some degree suffers similarly as a songwriter of note as does Jagger. Dylan is almost always quoted as a great songwriter I admit, but it's almost always about the lyrical content. The man has written some stunning music and so often goes off on a tangent that so few others would be capable of doing but again all that's noted is his gift of words. Annoys me a little too.
They're hard to make heads of tails of sometimes Keith and Mick. For example I once read (don't know where) Jagger stating he wrote all of the lyrics to 'Satisfaction' and even quoted nicking the title from a Chuck Berry song (that I can't say I knew or know even now) that says something like "from the judge I don't get no satisfaction...". This contradicts Keith in Life.
Keith in a youtube interview say "I wrote 'Midnight rambler' for Mick Jagger (to sing - as it's perfectly 'taylored' only for him) and yet I've read elsewhere Mick saying he and Keith spent a great deal of time planning a blues type opera and writing it together in Italy somewhere.
Plus in '89 (I think in RS mag) Jagger was asked about 'Wild horses' I recall and all he said was "It's ok. A bit weepy". Now he seems to like it
As for Dylan vs Jagger and so on I think Bob to some degree suffers similarly as a songwriter of note as does Jagger. Dylan is almost always quoted as a great songwriter I admit, but it's almost always about the lyrical content. The man has written some stunning music and so often goes off on a tangent that so few others would be capable of doing but again all that's noted is his gift of words. Annoys me a little too.
Re: Jagger's lyrics.
Posted by:
Doxa
()
Date: August 22, 2014 09:06
Quote
OzHeavyThrobber
As for Dylan vs Jagger and so on I think Bob to some degree suffers similarly as a songwriter of note as does Jagger. Dylan is almost always quoted as a great songwriter I admit, but it's almost always about the lyrical content. The man has written some stunning music and so often goes off on a tangent that so few others would be capable of doing but again all that's noted is his gift of words. Annoys me a little too.
I agree here, and I, as a Dylan fan, have also a brief beef here. Even though Dylan's lyrics do have that rare feature for a song lyrics that many of them can be actually read as 'poems', that is, without the musical context, that shouldn't hide the fact that he is incredibly talented in composing songs. Funnily, Dylan himself seems to belittle the musical side of his songs. Probably that is something with his folk background, a tradition that didn't see melodies nothing but a vehicle to carry a message, not very important per se (Dylan's habit of 'borrowing' melodies seem to derive from this source as well). When Dylan describes his creative process - like in CHRONICLES - it is almost always just the lyrics he seem to care about, or seem to sound creativily interested in - the music just comes 'easily', without much effort.
Personally, if I may use latebloomer's (very important) distinction between poetry and lyrics, I would foremost see Dylan as a lyricist, a song-writer. Even though he starts with writing words, I think he even there sees the text in a form of a song - hears the rhythm of the words to be expressed by the means of music. Like in the article wanderingspirit66 posted - thank you! - I wholeheartidly agree that one should not actually separate the three components: the lyrics, the music and the voice (delivery). The meaning of lyrics is only totally manifested or realized when all of those three components are 'in'. Actually I think Jagger and his songs are pretty similar in this sense. Jagger's witty remark that probably Dylan could have written "Satisfaction" (which, by the way, is largely inspired by "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"), but could he sing it, is a spot on. In both cases, it is the singer not just the song, that is needed to really get the point. To my ears, Jagger's technically okay delivery of "Like A Rolling Stone" never catches the core of the song, or its lyrics. The lyrics just don't 'fit' to Jagger's mouth convincingly me thinks.
Funnily, even though the musical circles seem to over-emphasize the importance of Dylan's lyrics by the very cost of the music in his songs, it is different when we are heading to literature circles. Those seem to notice the crucial importance of music, of the whole context. For them Dylan primarily is a song maker, and not a poet. That seems to be the 'trouble' with those Nobel Prize speculations. (I think there are two obstacles there: (1) can Dylan be treated 'solely' as a poet; (2) if so, are his 'poems' good enough.)
- Doxa
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