Part 7.
And you picked "Blind Willie McTell." It's a fantastic song, but I don't think anybody outside the Dylan fan community has ever heard of it. Which period of his career is this from?
Dylan wrote and recorded the song sometime in the early eighties. It was originally meant to appear on Infidels, his first release after his religious phase. Unfortunately, he was not satisfied with either of the versions he did and decided not to have it on the album. So for years it was only available as a bootleg until it was officially released by Columbia on The Bootleg Series. He's even performed it live a couple of times during the past years so I guess he made his peace with the song. I thought a lot about which Dylan song to record for Another Man Done Gone. I tried "One Too Many Mornings," "I Am A Lonesome Hobo" and "One More Cup Of Coffee." All of those would have worked, but "Blind Willie McTell" seemed to fit best the general mood of the album. It sort of provides the framework for all the stories told in the other songs. It evokes the landscape the song characters are traveling back and forth in, haunted and cursed, it's peopled by martyrs, chain gangs, bootleggers, charcoal gypsy
maidens. "I heard that hoot owl singing/ as they were takin' down the tents./ The stars above, the barren trees/ were his only audience." I tried to capture that atmosphere with the cover photograph. That and the hanging imagery.
The album ends on a more optimistic note, though. I think "When I'm Gone" might actually be my favorite.
Yes, it's a really catchy tune, isn't it? It was written by Phil Ochs, a leftist songwriter and political activist of the sixties. Actually kind of a rival of Dylan's. His motto was "All the news that's fit to sing." In many ways a tragic figure of the folk revival. He was often seen as this political radical, especially by the FBI, although his character was much more complex. He was able to admire both John Wayne and Che Guevera, to go to Santiago to support Salvador Allende and play "I'm an Okie from Muskogee" in front of a bunch of leftist intellectuals there. Unfortunately he never had the success he hoped for and was very upset by Dylan's sudden electrified mass appeal. He became depressed and started drinking until, after somebody had attacked him with a knife and seriously damaged his voice box, he hung himself in 1976. Another man done gone ... So there's a very sad note to the last song as well. Tom Paxton wrote a very moving song about Ochs' death, called "Phil." And Billy Bragg made up new words to "Joe Hill," the old Earl Robinson union song, calling it "I Dreamed I saw Phil Ochs Last Night." I do have a lot of respect for him. "When I'm Gone" was brought to me by a person I was very much in love with, but who decided a little later that there was no space for me in her life. So there's some personal sadness involved everytime I listen to it or perform it.
