Master Blueprints # 39: "Well God Is in Heaven, and We All Want What’s His”

(Personal reflections inspired by Bob Dylan songs)

Song: “Blind Willie McTell”
Album: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) 1961 - 1991
Release Date: March 1991

Count me in among a growing list of Bob Dylan fans who are in various stages of acceptance/denial regarding the distinct probability that The Bard (as many call him) most likely determined quite some time ago that his 2012 album Tempest would be his last record of originally-penned songs (Dylan has since released 3 albums of covers).  I could very easily be putting foot in mouth here but listening now gives me a compelling sense that Tempest was his ‘swan song’.  Yes, I’m beginning to accept that Bob Dylan is not going to try and crank em’ out all the way to his dying days, like Leonard Cohen did.

If Tempest is indeed Dylan’s final cut, it would be a truly apropos (and, at least for the time being, vastly underrated) stamp and seal on an exquisite, voluminous song-writing career. To explain why I feel this way, I’m going to take a different tact than I usually do with these blog entries.  I’m going dive into the deep end out of the gate, rather than attempt to wade in and build things up, like I am usually wont to do.  There’s simply too much here to ease my way in.

Ok, so I’d like to think of myself as a peace-loving, optimistic, upbeat kinda guy, but I can’t deny that I love listening to this dark and dire album, Tempest, which is loaded with songs of carnage, culminating with the second-to-last track on the album, the title track, a 14-minute epic which tackles the sinking of the Titanic.  Tucked among the 45 verses of blood, sweat and tears are these three:

“The captain, barely breathing
Kneeling at the wheel
Above him and beneath him
Fifty thousand tons of steel

He looked over at his compass
And he gazed into its face
Needle pointing downward
He knew he lost the race

In the dark illumination
He remembered bygone years
He read the Book of Revelation
And he filled his cup with tears”

Alright then, as you can see above in the 3^rd of 3 snipped-out stanzas there is a reference to the Bible’s final book (Revelation), and this being on, what could very possibly be Bob Dylan’s final album of original recordings.  The Tempest also happens to be the title of Shakespeare’s final play, albeit with the leading article “The” in the title, as has been noted by others (namely Dylan himself when the Shakespeare title was pointed out to him).  Is this song an analogy to the Bible’s Apocalypse, the central theme in Revelation? After listening over the last 3 weeks, it would not take much more to convince me.  This notion could also factor with other songs that precede “Tempest” on the album, including the equally morbid/fascinating “Tin Angel”, “Scarlet Town”, and “Early Roman Kings”.

I had not come anywhere near such a conclusion until I delved deeper into the last song on the album, “Roll on John”.  Most lyrics in this song are unmistakable ties to one Mr. John Winston Ono Lennon, including references to the Quarrymen (Lennon’s first band), cheap seats (high above the jewelry rattlers), “A Day in the Life”, “Come Together”, and …. his brutal murder.  Aside from Bob Dylan’s reflections on that sad, tragic December New York night in 1980, one could easily conclude that this song is an anomaly on the album:  An ode to a lost comrade in arms, and nothing more. 

However, there are a handful of verses that clearly do not fit the concept of a tribute to John Lennon…. most notably this one:

“Sailin’ through the trade winds bound for the south
 Rags on your back just like any other slave
 They tied your hands and they clamped your mouth
 Wasn’t no way out of that deep dark cave”

This had me doing a bit of research on the web, where I came upon a mind-boggling, 16-page (pdf) synopsis of the song on an equally impressive website hosted by one Kees de Graaf:  ( https://www.keesdegraaf.com/media/Misc/1882p17psou9fm1e1d41g5m9gfs11p81.pdf ).  The document makes a strong case for yet another John – Saint John the Apostle – as the human reference to not just these lyrics, but also to many other lyrics in “Roll on John”.  Saint John, of course, is the author of The Book of Revelation (if not the direct author, then at the very least one of two central figures for a holy ghostwriter – the other being God).  According to de Graaf (and I tend to agree) the lyrics above are about Saint John’s imprisonment and slavery on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, near the end of his life, when the Book of Revelation was written.  Many other great points are made by Kees de Graaf on his website, including another unavoidable one I tap below, but I’ll try not steal his thunder here.  I only suggest for you Bob Dylan lovers out there, that you listen to the song again and that you read the de Graaf synopsis while you are doing so.

Ok, so “Roll on John” caps off an album with numerous references to The Book of Revelation, primarily in that song. In and of itself, very cool.  However, why is John Lennon in the mix?  De Graaf also gets into this angle.  I’ll get into that myself in a bit from my own perspective.  First, I’d like to go where my mind took me from here earlier this week.  In fact, things were already playing out coincidentally on the sidelines.  For, as I was listening to songs off Tempest, such as the title track and “Roll on John”, I was also listening to the astonishing “Blind Willie McTell” ( https://vimeo.com/179637318 ), a song Bob Dylan had recorded in the early 80s, but which would not see the light of day until a decade later, on his The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-2 (Rare and Unreleased) 1961 – 1991.

“Blind Willie McTell” is an ode to a blues guitarist/singer who performed in the 20s, 30s and 40s.  As be the case with “Roll on John” though, there is also ambiguity and seeming dissociation in this song:  Martyrs in East Texas, slave ships, plantations burning, cracking of whips, the rebel yell.  All leading up to the final verse:

“Well, God is in heaven
 And we all want what’s his
 But power and greed and corruptible seed
 Seem to be all that there is
 I’m gazing out the window
 Of the St. James Hotel
 And I know no one can sing the blues
 Like Blind Willie McTell”

What is it that has Bob Dylan thinking that no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell? Well let’s see… if an alien were to land on Earth tomorrow and ask me to define the meaning of the Blues in a nutshell, I’d say that it’s having suffered and then being able to rise above that suffering and then finally being able to express that struggle musically from a position of strength and defiance.  I believe what Dylan is saying here in this song is that Blind Willie McTell was able to express not only his own struggles, but those of a people, particularly enslaved Africans from generations prior.  McTell had the grace to tap into that well of despair. 

“Roll on John” and “Blind Willie McTell” together had me thinking…. what other songs in Bob Dylan’s vast catalog (over 350 songs) has he written with fellow musicians in the title and in mind?  The only one I could think of was “Song to Woody”, which was one of 2 original songs on Bob Dylan’s eponymous first album in 1961 (can anyone name any others?  Again, I can’t, other than the likelihood that Dylan’s brilliant ways rubbed off on Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson in their penning of “Bessie Smith”).  “Woody” of course refers to Woody Guthrie, arguably the most influential musician (and man) in Dylan’s life and career. 

Here’s where I became truly moved this week.  Most of the lyrics in “Song to Woody” are relatively straightforward:  An ode to a musical and cultural icon.  It’s in the closing verse where things get heavier, and absolutely fascinating in relation to both “Blind Willie McTell”, and “Roll on John”.  For this verse includes the lines… “The very last thing that I’d want to do, is to say I’ve been hittin’ some hard travelin’ too”.  I reflected on those words for a while, transfixed, as I recalled Kees de Graaf’s great writeup.  I was now truly appreciating his appreciation for the last verse in “Roll on John” (what is it about last verses in these 3 songs?), which goes:

“Tyger, tyger burning bright
 I pray the Lord my soul to keep
 In the forests of the night
 Cover ‘em over and let him sleep”

Here’s part of what Kees de Graaf states about this verse: “‘cover him over and let him sleep’.  Just what John the Apostle said in his Book of Revelation Chapter 14 verse 13. ‘And I heard a voice from heaven saying “Write this down: Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on.  Yes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from their hard work; for their good deeds follow them!” “.  In those closing lines of that closing song on that likely closing album, de Graaf is pointing out that the focus has shifted, from John Lennon, through Saint John to the song’s author, Mr. Bob Dylan himself.  That young singer-songwriter’s wish to be “hittin’ some hard travelin’ too” has come true, has it not?  What I take here in the last verse of both Dylan’s first album song and his last is that he seeks salvation and has been seeking it his entire public life.  Now, he’s run the gamut and has been aware of his goals all along.  The closing verse on “Roll on John” kinda puts a lid on it all.

As for “Blind Willie McTell” and its ties to “Song to Woody”, it comes down to that definition I gave of the Blues.  The best musicians – the best artists for that matter – are the ones who bare their soul.  By doing this, they open their minds and hearts to other struggles, be they in the present or in the distant past.  Bob Dylan made a declaration early in his career right there in the lyrics to “Song to Woody”.  He has stuck with it.  He has followed his light.  If no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell, then it must too be said that no one can wax poetic in musical form like Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.  There’s a reason for this.  If you don’t stray from your muse, amazing things will happen.

And this goes for John Lennon too.  Bob Dylan was not all that close with Lennon, but he was with George Harrison.  My thinking is that Beatle George shed some light to Dylan on John Lennon’s character.  There’s a George quote in The Beatles Anthology book that struck me when I first read it:

"John and I had a very interesting relationship.  That I was younger, or I was smaller was no longer any embarrassment with John (by the mid-60s).  Paul still says, 'I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger', That is an illusion people are under.  It's nothing to do with how many years old you are or how big your body is.  It's down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what's going on in creation.  John and I spent a lot of time together from then on and I felt closer to him than all the others, right through until his death.  As Yoko came into the picture, I lost a lot of personal contact with John, but on the odd occasion I did see him, just by the look in his eyes I felt we were connected."

This tells me that John Lennon worked hard at his artistic craft from a greater consciousness perspective.  Regardless, it’s all there in the music.  So too for Woody Guthrie. And Blind Willie McTell.  And of course, for Bob Dylan.  If salvation can be measured by the quality of your output, and in turn the number souls you have touched, then I’m of the belief that all these musicians have a significant leg up on that ultimate quest.

- Pete