From: will.dockery@gmail.com   
      
   On Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 12:28:13 PM UTC-4, K. Hematite wrote:   
   > On Wednesday, 12 October 2022 at 18:09:16 UTC-4, Willie wrote:    
   >   
   > > I've always associated Mr. Tambourine Man with Bruce Langhorne. Heylin's   
   "Double Life" has this, though, about Dylan's trip in 1964 with Victor   
   Maymudes, Paul Clayton, and "scribe" Pete Karman that stopped in New Orlans   
   for Mardis Gras:    
   > > "Sure enough, he rolled into his room in the wee small hours with the germ   
   of an idea for a song about a musical muse, a Pied Piper figure wielding a   
   tambourine and offering the singer a trip on his 'magic swirlin' ship'   
   (Dylan's version of Rimbaud's    
   le bateau ivre - perhaps Arthur's most fabled illumination), a genesis he   
   finally acknowledged in the 1985 Biograph notes."    
   > >    
   > > I went to my copy of Biograph, but it has no notes. Each of the three CDs   
   has a two-page insert in the CD case that has the album cover on the first   
   page, and the CD track listing on the last page, but the middle two pages are   
   blank. Does any one of    
   you have Biograph? If so, could you check and see if your copy has notes, not   
   just blank pages? (And if your copy has notes, do they say anything about that   
   line and Rimbaud?)    
   > >    
   > > I'm curious about Heylin's claim. I'd thought about the "magic swirling   
   ship" being a reference to Drunken Boat, but I hadn't considered that the   
   snippet is "your magic swirling ship," meaning that the song is addressing   
   Rimbaud, and that one could    
   argue that Rimbaud is the tambourine man (even if Langhorne did play on the   
   song and was famous for playing a tambourine).   
   > I think one has to take Heylin's parenthetical reference as just his   
   personal thought about where Dylan's "magic swirlin' ship" might have come   
   from--not really a claim that Dylan himself necessarily made such a   
   connection. I think all Heylin meant to    
   say is that in his Biograph interview with Cameron Crowe, Dylan confirmed that   
   the genesis of the song involved "a Pied Piper figure wielding a tambourine"   
   (i.e., Bruce Langhorne)."    
   >    
   > Crowe's interview with Dylan was actually turned into a 36-page booklet,   
   with dimensions that allowed it to nestle comfortably in a vinyl box set.   
   That's the version I bought in 1985. The CD version of Biograph that I also   
   have has the identical box,    
   presumably so that the original booklet could still be included with the CDs.   
   In any event, that's not where Dylan's comment about "Mr. Tambourine Man"   
   appears. Rather, in the vinyl version, each of the five vinyl records   
   constituting the set has an    
   individual sleeve that prints Dylan's comments to Crowe, song-by-song, for   
   each album side. Here's, in its entirety is Dylan's comment on "Mr. Tambourine   
   Man":    
   >    
   > “‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ I think, was inspired by Bruce Langhorne. Bruce   
   was playing guitar with me on a bunch of the early records. On one session,   
   (producer) Tom Wilson had asked him to play tambourine. And he had this   
   gigantic tambourine. It was    
   like, really big. It was as big as a wagon wheel. He was playing, and this   
   vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind. He was one of   
   those characters…he was like that. I don’t know if I’ve ever told him   
   that. I haven’t seen him    
   in a long time. I wrote some of the song in New Orleans too. I don’t,   
   different things inspired me…that Fellini movie? What was it? La Strada. It   
   was all sort of like the same thing, you know. Drugs never played a part in   
   that song...'disappearing in    
   the smoke rings in my mind', that's not drugs, drugs were never that biga   
   thing with me. I could take 'm or leave 'm, never hung me up.”    
   >    
   > So all that Dylan confirmed was that he thinks that Langhore inspired the   
   song. Nothing on Rimbaud--except in Heylin's parenthetical interpolation. I   
   think this might be the kind of thing that for many years used to generate a   
   lot of Heylin-hatred    
   within Dylan fandom. And probably still does.    
   >    
   > https://newrepublic.com/article/162533/whats-wrong-bob-dylans-   
   iographers-clinton-heylin-review   
      
   Good find, K.H.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)