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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Art Thieme Date: 17 Jun 02 - 04:14 PM I always thought that Bob Dylan was a luckier person than was Stan Rogers. I say the because when Stan did his songs, the presentation was so "good" that it could never be topped. Stan Rogers NAILED IT every time he sang a song pretty much. Dylan, on the other hand, as we all know, had a less easy-to-listen-to voice. Like strong single malt scotch, he is an acquired taste. His renditions were often wonderful and emotional. But they were very rarely "pretty". Such is life. But I'd bet this is one reason why more folks try to sing, and have recorded/covered, Dylan's songs than Rogers songs. Hell, anyone can do 'em better'n Bob ! Art Thieme |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Little Hawk Date: 17 Jun 02 - 03:19 PM Thanks, people. I think I did explain Desolation Row once on here at some point way back when...? Hey, Amos, actually your Dairy Queen analogy is a good one. I didn't read it thoughtfully enough the first around. I'll go along with the whole thing... - LH |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: GUEST,The Jester Date: 17 Jun 02 - 12:24 PM Oo ee prity scary. |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Big Tim Date: 17 Jun 02 - 11:06 AM LH strikes again. Well done wee man and thanks. ljc: re Desolation Row - don't encourage him! |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: GUEST,vixen @ work Date: 17 Jun 02 - 10:49 AM Anybody heard Tim O'Brien's version on Red on Blond? I fell in love with the song all over again. V |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Little Hawk Date: 17 Jun 02 - 10:38 AM Amos - Yeah, well it means most of that too, except from where you used the word "nutritional"... :-) Allan - I know exactly what you mean. :-) (again) - LH |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: allanwill Date: 17 Jun 02 - 10:20 AM Little Hawk I feel like I've just read a long lost Immanuel Velikovsky theory. Allan |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Amos Date: 17 Jun 02 - 09:50 AM Geez, Hawk, that's not what I think it means at all. I think it reflects the relationship between certain eternal verities, the starts and ends of all cycles in life and time, and the strange kind of angst that modern Americans arrive at when they start contemplating nutritional values and the nature of food chains while standing in line holding on to two eight-year-olds at the Dairy Queen. But I guess I am adding more interpretation into it than you did. A |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: little john cameron Date: 17 Jun 02 - 09:07 AM Well done LH.How aboot a run doon oan "Desolation Row" next?ljc |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Pied Piper Date: 17 Jun 02 - 07:58 AM Mr Hawk; spot on. I wish I could have explained it so well. The great thing about this and other Dylan songs is that he can get all this and more into a few lines. As with a lot of his songs there is a resonance with traditional folk song. Come to think of it the other apocalyptic song you mention "Hard Rain" is very influenced by "Lord Randel" and its variants. All the best PP. |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: KingBrilliant Date: 17 Jun 02 - 06:15 AM Its all image and flavour isn't it? For some reason I always get the impression of a cowardly exit - or maybe a withdrawal from reality - just get on with it, I'm off. Certainly its a song that means many different things, depends who's listening. Little Hawk - thanks for giving us that stupendous interpretation. I kind of feel I've been missing out on most of it until reading that..... KRis |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Hrothgar Date: 17 Jun 02 - 05:25 AM Somewhere in the depths I have a memory that relates it to the Spanish Civil War. Can't document that, though. Can somebody in America ask Dylan? |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: GUEST,hippie Date: 17 Jun 02 - 12:52 AM i love it regardless of it's meaning. I love the way it sounds. But T-Tone I feel you should always try to understand a song before you learn so that you can do it justice. And if I hadn't asked the question none of you would've gotten in to a discussion about it. Thanks everyone for your input. Peace! |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Little Hawk Date: 17 Jun 02 - 12:27 AM Now Spaw will log on and say "What have ya been smokin', Hawk?!?" or something like that... Yeah, sure, Spaw. You know more than you let on, and I know it. Either that, or you're a total dumbass! :-) - LH |
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Subject: Lyr Add: FAREWELL ANGELINA (Bob Dylan) From: Little Hawk Date: 17 Jun 02 - 12:10 AM They sound absolutely great when Baez sings them...and absolutely great when Bob does...but completely different. That's what is so cool about it. I love 'em both ways. This song became one of Baez' anthems, and deservedly so. No recording of Bob doing it surfaced (officially, that is) until the Bootleg Series in the 90's as far as I recall. It's a truly great piece of poetry.
Farewell Angelina
There's no need for anger
The jacks and queens
See the cross-eyed pirates sitting
King Kong, little elves
The machine guns are roaring
Absolutely gorgeous poetry, with a few unforgettable phrases... What does it mean. Well, a whole lot of things, and none of them exclusively. Dylan often writes using what I call universal images...and this song is full of them. Such images do not have one literal meaning, but link symbolically to many different levels of meaning, and take the listener to whichever level is relevant to that listener. If the listener is incapable of understanding anything other than literal meanings, they don't take him very far...
This song is about the end of something..or of many things. The complete and final end...of a dream, a relationship, a fantasy, a personal or national philosophy, an expectation, a cultural or political or economic age...you name it. It has the feeling (as do so many of Dylan's songs...of a final catastrophic collapse, an apocalypse...whether on a personal or on a larger level.
Throughout the song there are images of the sacred and the profane, in stark contrast to one another...the "bells of the crown" (sacred) are "being stolen by bandits". Does that not say something to you about society or even religion or politics? No? Okay let's try something else.
He follows the sound of what is sacred. The sound is now all that's left, but he follows it. "The sky is on fire" Sounds like an apocalypse to me...
"There's no need for anger, no need for blame" Correct. That is a great spiritual truth, and a great statement. All that was sacred and certain has fallen, and the table is now empty, and the sky is trembling (great fear in people's hearts)...but to cast anger and blame would be of absolutely no avail under such conditions.
The 3rd verse uses playing card images in a very interesting way as symbols, but it is not about playing cards in any literal sense. It is about the departure or demise of the old authority figures and the privileged few, as gypsies (the homeless, the wanderers, the castoffs of society) march through the empty courtyards where the royalty once held sway. And "the sky is folding"...the old hand has been played, found wanting, and is folding...in other words, it's over and done.
There is a lot of allusion to war and chaos in this song, and the "cross-eyed pirates" in the 4rth verse are those who thoughtlessly resort to violence and destruction, because they are too primitive to know what else to do when an old order collapses around them. The neighbours (Joe Ordinary Public?) are equally primitive...they clap and cheer as the shots are fired. (those shots could just as well be nuclear missiles as shotguns). There is much the same feeling in this song as in "Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall" although the style of delivery is gentler by far. The sky's changing colour...yeah, nuclear war can have that effect on the sky all right.
The next verse offers up a truly devastating image. King Kong and the little elves dance madly on the rooftops (open insanity in the midst of disaster), "while the makeup man's hands close the eyes of the dead, not to embarrass anyone"!!! Does that not sound like the ultimate exposure of social hypocrisy? People can die, they can die by the millions...but let's make sure no one is embarrassed...we'll put makeup on the corpses and carefully shut their eyes. Think about the 6 O'Clock News, and how it sanitizes reality for you every day, and reports what is "saleable" (for a brief time) while ignoring what is not.
But...the sky IS embarrassed. The sky is God, the sky is the eye of Truth, and the sky is not fooled.
The last scene returns to scenes of warfare, rock throwing, time bombs...(it's happening like that right now in the Middle East).
A messenger brought you all this. He did it instinctively, not be calculation. Poetry like this is not preplanned, it just happens. He gave voice to what what was not publicly spoken.
Call him any name you like, he will never deny it (cos it makes no difference what you call him anyway...). The sky is erupting, and it's time for him to leave, to go "where it's quiet".
And where is that? Maybe beyond this life. Maybe into Spirit. Maybe just to a peaceful place on this Earth...if one can be found.
And Angelina...she is Bob's eternal muse, she is the Queen of Heaven, she is every man's beloved, and every child's mother, she is whatever female archetype you could care to name. Or she is Bob's last girlfriend at the time, but to say that she is that alone would be trivial.
That's part of what the song is about, and it's about other things too. You could say it's about the end of a relationship if you want to. Do with it what you will. It works for me.
- LH |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: GUEST,T-Tone Date: 16 Jun 02 - 11:33 PM Right on Amos! The song is full of enigmatic analogies that reflect the tenor of the times when it was written - the turbulant sixties. The query from guest hippie misses the point. Every work of art does not have to have a linear kind of narrative. The best pieces allow the listener, reader, or viewer to engage their own imaginations. The tone of this song is kind of an admission that some situations are helpless to certain resolutions. That sometimes the best answer is to say "I can't do anything about this" so instead I'll write a song. And in this case a song that captures complexities that the medium can allow for and maybe shine some light on. Beautiful song. One of his best. |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: hobbitwoman Date: 16 Jun 02 - 10:08 PM I've always loved the song, even if I never could figure out what it meant. But that's the way it is for me with most of Mr. Dylan's songs. And at the risk of inciting a riot, I've always thought they sound a lot better when Joan Baez is singing them. But that's just my personal opinion. Annie |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Amos Date: 16 Jun 02 - 08:39 PM It is possible the reason he used such colorful images is he thought they would communicate better than trying to reduce them to semantic propositions; so it is pretty much up to you to impose meaning wherever you feel its needed in them, but I would hesitate to say he put any in there to dig around trying to excavate it. None that would sound good in ordinary English, anyway. A |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Susanne (skw) Date: 16 Jun 02 - 08:30 PM I've always suspected it was his way of letting a former girlfriend know she was no longer wanted, in suitably dramatic fashion. I like the song, though. There is a chance it is indeed full of profound meaning ... |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: toadfrog Date: 16 Jun 02 - 07:29 PM Deep meanings are the ones no one ever understands. Profundity and comprehensibility shall never be reconciled! |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: GUEST,hippie Date: 16 Jun 02 - 07:22 PM either that or it has some really deep meaning |
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Subject: RE: Farewell Angelina From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 16 Jun 02 - 07:21 PM Don't worry about it. Sounds like he overdosed. |
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Subject: Farewell Angelina From: GUEST,hippie Date: 16 Jun 02 - 06:29 PM Could someone please explain the meaning of this Bob Dylan song to me? There are references to cards but i'm a little lost. |
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