Every Bob Dylan fan has a few songs they look forward hearing Bob perform live in concert or on a bootleg recording. Conversely, everyone has at least one song they don’t care for at all that has somehow become a concert regular. ‘Silvio’ was this for many fans in the 1990s (personally I quite like ‘Silvio’), while in 2017 I witnessed several people immediately get up and head for the bar/toilets as soon as Bob started playing ‘Spirit on the Water’.
I also have a song that I never look forward to hearing, but – unlike the two previous songs mentioned, both of which Dylan tended to coast through - this is a song that he has almost always performed well. The song is ‘John Brown’, written in 1962 and performed 170 times since then. But if Bob always performs it well, why do I never look forward to hearing it?
At first, I thought the lyrics might be the problem. The vast majority of Dylan songs contain a lot of room for different interpretations; even songs that tell straightforward narratives (like ‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown’ or ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’, dating from the same time period as ‘John Brown’) are somehow able to mean vastly different things depending on how they are performed. A song like ‘Masters of War’ can be confrontational and in-your-face (Berkley ‘88) or quiet and seething, overflowing with barely-supressed rage (Woodstock ‘94). ‘John Brown’, the story of a soldier who goes off to war only to return horribly wounded to the horror of his mother, does not possess this this malleability. No matter how much it is rearranged, it can never grow beyond what it is.
It’s possible that Dylan wasn’t quite happy with the song when he wrote it: it was not recorded for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and only turned up on an obscure ‘various artists’ album on the Folkways label called Broadside Ballads Vol 1, where Bob was credited as ‘Blind Boy Grunt’. Onstage, meanwhile, the song received just two outings – once at the Gaslight Café on 15th October 1962, and then once again at New York’s Town Hall on 12th April 1963 (plus a performance on a Chicago radio show on 26th April) – before being retired, seemingly for good.
At first, I thought the lyrics might be the problem. The vast majority of Dylan songs contain a lot of room for different interpretations; even songs that tell straightforward narratives (like ‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown’ or ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’, dating from the same time period as ‘John Brown’) are somehow able to mean vastly different things depending on how they are performed. A song like ‘Masters of War’ can be confrontational and in-your-face (Berkley ‘88) or quiet and seething, overflowing with barely-supressed rage (Woodstock ‘94). ‘John Brown’, the story of a soldier who goes off to war only to return horribly wounded to the horror of his mother, does not possess this this malleability. No matter how much it is rearranged, it can never grow beyond what it is.
It’s possible that Dylan wasn’t quite happy with the song when he wrote it: it was not recorded for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and only turned up on an obscure ‘various artists’ album on the Folkways label called Broadside Ballads Vol 1, where Bob was credited as ‘Blind Boy Grunt’. Onstage, meanwhile, the song received just two outings – once at the Gaslight Café on 15th October 1962, and then once again at New York’s Town Hall on 12th April 1963 (plus a performance on a Chicago radio show on 26th April) – before being retired, seemingly for good.
Bob did, however, record the song as a Witmark demo in August 1963, but The Staple Singers were the only major act to cover the song during that decade, for their album Pray On in 1967 . Aside from covers by British folk band Heron in 1971, and future Time Out of Mind alumnus Jim Dickinson in 1972, no one appears to have recorded a cover of ‘John Brown’ for the remainder of the 20th Century. For all intents and purposes, the song had been forgotten.
It’s possible that Dylan had forgotten about ‘John Brown’ too, when, in the summer of 1987, it unexpectedly re-entered his life. He was rehearsing for his tour with The Grateful Dead, and they wanted to play old songs; the “seldom seen ones”, as Dylan calls them in Chronicles. One of them was ‘John Brown’, and, sure enough, Bob performed it for the first time in over 24 years at the first Dylan & The Dead show on 4th July in Foxboro, Massachusetts, with the song making two other appearances on the six-show tour.
It’s here that the life of ‘John Brown’ truly begins. The song made regular appearances on Dylan’s ‘Temples in Flames’ tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers later in 1987, and went on to become a recurring feature of the Never Ending Tour. Whilst never becoming a setlist mainstay, it was performed in every year of the NET from 1988 to 2012, with the exception of the years 1993 and 2003.
There are many performances of ‘John Brown’ that I love. The intense performance with the Heartbreakers from Jerusalem in 1987; the even more intense performance with G.E Smith from Berkley 1989; the great acoustic version from Bob’s Unplugged album, which for my money is the best thing on the disc. Recently, I found an amazing ‘John Brown’ from Tokyo on 4th March 2001, which finds Dylan starting the song alone on acoustic guitar, the band gradually slipping in behind him as the story builds to its crescendo.
So, what is it with the weird disconnect between my feelings for these performances and my feelings for the song itself? I stumbled upon a possible answer to that question while reading Paul Williams’ book about Neil Young, Love to Burn. Taking a moment to draw a comparison between Young and Dylan, Williams writes on page 88:
“Neil Young and Bob Dylan are performing artists, and it is incomplete to consider their song creations as pieces of writing that express the intentions of the songwriter. They also express the intention of the performer, at the moment of performance.”
And on the next page:
“Which is to say, don’t take the performer’s art for granted. The songwriter may have been inspired (or not). But the most important thing now is whether the performer is inspired (in relation to this, song, this performance) tonight.”
So, Bob Dylan the songwriter might not been especially inspired when wrote ‘John Brown’, but Bob Dylan the performing artist is nearly always inspired when he sings ‘John Brown'. Bob usually sings very clearly when he performs this song, and the arrangements tend to be sparse – he wants make sure the words are heard and the message gets across.
I’m not sure that I’ve really solved the mystery of my mixed feelings for this song. However, the next time I see ‘John Brown’ on the tracklisting of a bootleg recording, maybe I'll be more inclined to give it a chance.
There are many performances of ‘John Brown’ that I love. The intense performance with the Heartbreakers from Jerusalem in 1987; the even more intense performance with G.E Smith from Berkley 1989; the great acoustic version from Bob’s Unplugged album, which for my money is the best thing on the disc. Recently, I found an amazing ‘John Brown’ from Tokyo on 4th March 2001, which finds Dylan starting the song alone on acoustic guitar, the band gradually slipping in behind him as the story builds to its crescendo.
So, what is it with the weird disconnect between my feelings for these performances and my feelings for the song itself? I stumbled upon a possible answer to that question while reading Paul Williams’ book about Neil Young, Love to Burn. Taking a moment to draw a comparison between Young and Dylan, Williams writes on page 88:
“Neil Young and Bob Dylan are performing artists, and it is incomplete to consider their song creations as pieces of writing that express the intentions of the songwriter. They also express the intention of the performer, at the moment of performance.”
And on the next page:
“Which is to say, don’t take the performer’s art for granted. The songwriter may have been inspired (or not). But the most important thing now is whether the performer is inspired (in relation to this, song, this performance) tonight.”
So, Bob Dylan the songwriter might not been especially inspired when wrote ‘John Brown’, but Bob Dylan the performing artist is nearly always inspired when he sings ‘John Brown'. Bob usually sings very clearly when he performs this song, and the arrangements tend to be sparse – he wants make sure the words are heard and the message gets across.
I’m not sure that I’ve really solved the mystery of my mixed feelings for this song. However, the next time I see ‘John Brown’ on the tracklisting of a bootleg recording, maybe I'll be more inclined to give it a chance.
Concert/recording dates from bjorner.com and bobdylan.com
