Johanna
Visions of Johanna / Blonde On Blonde / 1966
Louise, she's all right, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
Johanna Gezina van Gogh
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 13:26:01 GMT
From: eddie@edlis.org (Ed Ricardo)
Subject: Re: Dylan meeting Lenny Bruce?
BabyDodds (babydodds@aol.com) wrote:
: Lenny and Lennon have the first four letters in common. Lenn.
: Bob has always cryptically transformed names : Joan to Johanna, Sara
: Lownes(I don't know her exact maiden name) to Sad Eyed Lady of the
: Lowlands. etc. Noznisky
Who is Joan?
The only Johanna I see is in the song Bob Dylan wrote for
Johanna Gezina van Gogh (Bonger), sister-in-law of
Vincent van Gogh who moved Dylan greatly by her single-
handed transformation of the reputation of an obscure
suicide into that of a major artist...
[For those readers brand new to Dylan and unfamiliar with
the song, the visions of Johanna are the paintings of
Johanna's brother-in-law, the literal visions which her
brother-in-law had, the visions which kept Mr Dylan up past
the dawn, and -- perhaps most importantly -- her vision of
what his art could be to a wider public.]
And when is Stephen Scobie (uh749@freenet.victoria.bc.ca) going to
honour us with his "consider the implications of Gehenna..." speech?
Now would be a good time?
Joan Baez does believe she is the subject of that song, though. Lots
said on that long ago in rec.music.dylan and Anthony Scaduto pp. 201-202.
A "Joan" Johanna" search should get you there in the digest.
http://www.netspace.org/cgi-bin/lwgate/HWY61-L
is the URL for World Wide Web searches of the digest's archives, which
in effect is the rec.music.dylan archives
If you need older things or lost things you could ask
bptaylor@laguna.demon.co.uk
The lady we agree is Shirley
Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
SA A LOW NDS
SAd eyed lAdy of the LOWlaNDS
SA [R] A LOW NDS
For: Sara Lownds aka: Shirley Noznisky
Some say they can hear him sing SAd eaRed lAdy of the LOWlaNDS,
but so far no one has sent us the tapes? :-)
EDLIS badly needs an art historian, present day student, academic,
past student, anything. Mr Dylan's work is crawling with allusions
to fine art which I know I largely miss. EDLIS envisages something
like our Christianity and Judaism agencies but making use of an
enthusiastic art historian, rather than a religious informant, to
cover for our lamentable ignorance...
Craig
--
I can still hear the sounds of those Methodist bells,
I'd taken the cure and had just gotten through,
Stayin' up for days in the Chelsea Hotel,
Writin' "Sad-Eared Lady of the Lowlands" for you...
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 13:17:56 GMT
From: eddie@edlis.org (Ed Ricardo)
Subject: Re: Who is Johanna?
Tim Hilliard (hilliard@wln.com) wrote:
: (44f0oo$g97@news.fsu.edu>, atstone@law.fsu.edu said...
: >Can anybody enlighten me on the identity of the woman in Dylan's "Visions
: >of Johanna"?
: Legend has it that she was Suze Rotolo's sister. Suze was Dylan's
: girl friend in about '62. He thought Johanna broke them up and so he
: skewered her in a couple of songs.
Fascinating! :-)
Do people like repostings of old news or should stuff like that
below be sent in e-mail?
Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan
From: michel@netcom.com (Steve Michel)
Subject: Homer: Visions of Johanna Radio Show
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1993 21:37:25 GMT
Re: Visions of Johanna Radio Show
Hits of the 60s BBC Radio 3
Broadcast - 25th May 1993 10.00am
Loudon Wainwright III talks about Bob Dylan's Visions Of Johanna from the
album Blonde On Blonde, interspersed with clips from the record
I heard Dylan maybe in 1961 or 2. I had heard his records, Freewheelin',
which was his second record, first, and I kind of didn't like it that much.
I remember a friend of mine was very excited about it and I was not
enthralled. It sounded like an old, black blues singer. It was somebody
impersonating those early records to me. But then I went to the Newport
Folk Festival at some point in the early sixties, '62 or '63 and I saw him
play and that was a kind of a shattering experience because he was so
charismatic and just this kind of scruffy, skinny guy.
But Blonde on Blonde was a magical record. The songs are great, the lyrics
are amazing. It's still kind of painful to listen to, it's just so good,
even though it's a young man probably on drugs and the imagery is sometimes
a little silly but its just the power of the performance, the harmonica
playing, the singing and the production.
Ain't it just like the night
To play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin'you to defy it
Lightsflicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off:....
We had just finished our first year at University, we were attending a
drama school called Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh. We'd stayed
over that summer to work in a repertory company that went around doing
mystery and passion plays, when this record came out and we were staying in
the director's basement. I just have an image of my friend George
Gerties(?) and I hunched near some speakers, under the influence of some
substance or other and trying to figure out what Bob was saying,
particularly one sentence - 'The country music station plays soft' or is it
Sartre, that's a bad French accent. But we kept going back and forth we
couldn't figure which 'No, man, it's soft', 'No, man, it isn't - it's
Sartre what's the matter with you, man, listen to it again'. 'Here! [
Sounds of inhalation of the aforementioned substances!!] 'It's soft, I know
it's soft', 'No it's Sartre'
In this room the heat plpes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there 's nothing, really nothing to tun off ...
The heat pipe coughs - I think that's the word that rhymes with soft or
Sartre cough - and heat pipes really do cough in New York.
George and I never tried to come up with 'What is this song about?' We
revelled in it's mystery, really. The big overall meaning didn't matter
that much. I mean he used to goof on people, if you look at Don't Look
Back, that great documentary of his tour, actually, here in England in the
mid-sixties probably before this record and people would say - 'What do the
songs mean?', 'They mean whatever you want them to mean, man, you know.'
[Wainwright impersonates Dylan.] He enjoyed the fact that people didn't
know what the hell they meant and I don't think that he really did either.
I mean obviously he was inspired by - there probably was somebody that was
called Johanna but maybe not, you know.
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place...
He was nasty and cool and rebellious and everything a young man aspires to,
sarcastic, snotty, mean - not in the stingy sense, he was unpleasant to all
authority figures and anybody who had short hair.
In the third verse he says - 'Now, little boy lost he takes himself so
seriously' I mean that's, again if you're a young man of 19, that's you.
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at wall while I'm in the hall
The album's a real speedy feel to it. Has a cocaine feel to it, to be
honest. It feels that kind of brittle - it's not flowers and strawberry
fields and yellow submarines and diamonds in the sky it's, you know, gritty
and dirty streets and clanking heat pipes and up for five days. I mean
whether you drag drugs into it or not, I mean again I think it doesn't have
to have any meaning it is just truckloads of images and atmosphere.
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation might be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can see by the way she smiles...
'But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues, you can tell the way she
smiles.' It's just a great observation. He's commenting on it in a way that
nobody had done and yet was very contemporary - the highway blues, you
know. He came out of that tradition of Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac - the
road, hitch-hiking, that long line of male guitar slingers, hitch-hiking
with guitars over their back and that was related to the hobo tradition.
You knew what the highway blues were but your parents didn't because you'd
read 'On The Road' and they were reading James Michener's 'Hawaii.'
The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for
him..............
He was a middle class white guy like me and yet he was poetic and
mysterious and charismatic and exciting to watch that it seemed like a
pretty interesting idea to try to be a songwriter.
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads while my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.
Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan
Subject: Re: Thin Wild Mercury Music CD (???)
Date: 16 Aug 1994 07:26:37 -0500
X-Sender: nobody@cs.utexas.edu
Re: Thin Wild Mercury Music CD (???)
>In the same way SPANK have listed the 'nightengales code'
>version of 'Just Like a Women' as 'Freeze Out' this is
>almost certainly the *correct* title for this version. I
>say WELL DONE SPANK. Maybe the bootleggers behind SPANK are
>really DYLAN fans?
Oh.
This is new to me, my copy has Freeze Out in two versions as
the expected Freeze Out/Visions of Johanna/Mother Revisited
(Co. 88581) ["he examines the nightingale's code, still left
on the fish truck that loads..."] (7:33) [2/122.1]; [faster
version: he examines the nightingale's code, still written
on the fish truck that loads, my conscience explodes...]
(8:28) [2/124]. I am thinking of the song Bob Dylan wrote
for Johanna Gezina van Gogh (Bonger), sister-in-law of
Vincent van Gogh who moved Dylan greatly by her single-
handed transformation of the reputation of an obscure
suicide into that of a major artist...
[For those readers brand new to Dylan and unfamiliar with
the song, the visions of Johanna are the paintings of
Johanna's brother-in-law, the literal visions which her
brother-in-law had, the visions which kept Mr Dylan up past
the dawn, and -- perhaps most importantly -- her vision of
what his art could be to a wider public. (Johanna would have
told Vincent to go to Woodstock, indeed to go to both
Woodstocks, and she would have told him also to ask Bob
Dylan to recommend a good firm of accountants... :-)) ]
Just Like A Woman is the song for Edie Sedgwick, no?
Telegraph #5 in 1992?
If Les wishes we be more pedantic Mr Dylan specifically
requested we call the song Mother Revisited at the Festival
Hall, Melbourne, Australia, on 19 April 1966. So it only had
the title Visions Of Johanna for a few months...
"She's delicate and seems like the mirror..." in Co. 88581
is "She's steady seems like Vermeer, but she just makes it
all too clear, that Johanna's not here, the ghost of
'lectricity Howells in the bones of her face..." That's what
I hear anyway. :-)
--
Then he picked up his paints and his easel
And he went out to paint some crows
They found him face down in a corn field
Shot right between two rows
Now, where did Vincent Van Gogh...?
Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan
From: uh749@freenet.Victoria.BC.CA (Stephen Scobie)
Subject: Re: dylan
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 17:22:47 GMT
In a previous article, lilcor@mathstat.ms.runet.edu (guest) says:
> Anyway, here is my question: Has our Mr. Dylan ever made any
>remarks about Joan Baez being the subject for any of his songs?
>Obviously she is( to my romantic nature only, perhaps?), but I was just
>wondering. Someone posted something implying that "Visions of Johanna"
>was not, but I always rather secretly hoped it was. Also, on her
>Diamonds and Rust album in the song "Winds of the Old Days", she sings"So
>get you down to the harbor now/most of the sour grapes are gone from the
>bow/Ghost of Johanna will visit you there/And the winds of the old days
>will blow through your hair". Any info is appreciated.
Our Mr Dylan very seldom makes remarks of that kind. However, our
Ms Baez does sometimes talk about it. In the interview she gave to
Anthony Scaduto for his 1971 biography of Dylan, she recalls:
"He'd just written 'Visions of Johanna' which sounded very suspicious to
me, as though it had images of me in it. I mean, I can't ever say that
publicly [ho ho ho; what does she think she's doing as she says this??].
But he'd been talking to [Allen] Ginsberg about it. First of all he had
never performed it before, and Neuwirth told him I was there that night
and he performed it. And that was very odd. I was listening to the song
and sort of inwardly wanting to feel flattered, but wondering whether --
you know, I mean, everybody in the world think Bobby's written songs about
them, and I consider myself in the same bag. But I would never claim a
song. But certain images in there did sound very strange. Then Ginsberg
came up at one point and said, 'What do you think "Visions of Johanna" is
about?' And I said, 'I don't know, Ginsberg, your guess is as good as
mine.' He said, 'No, no, what do you think it's about? Bobby says... '
and then he reeled off this pile of crap that had nothing to do with
anything. And I said, 'Did Bobby say that or did you make that up,
Allen?' I had the feeling the two of them were in sort of cahoots to make
sure I never thought the song had anything to do with me. I had that
feeling a lot. And I wouldn't give any.... I mean Ginsberg was trying to
get me to say I thought the song was written about me, and I would never
say that about any of Bobby's songs."
(Scaduto, pp. 201-202.)
Now, this strikes me as both funny and pathetic. The more Baez claims
*not* to think the song is about her, the more it is clear that that's
exactly what she does think. The more she tells Scaduto that she doesn't
want to claim it, the more she in fact claims it. (Personally, I would
much rather hear the "pile of crap that had nothing to do with anything" which
Ginsberg advanced as his interpretation of the song!)
The affair between Dylan and Baez was basically over some six months
before the song was written (which could of course explain why "Johanna's
not here"!). But the time of writing and first performing it were also
the time of the marriage to Sara: indeed, the first public performance of
"Visions of Johanna" was in the same week as the wedding. Even for
someone with Mr Dylan's notorious insensitivity to other people's
feelings, it is perhaps stretching it a little to suppose that he would
commemorate his marriage to Sara by writing a major song about Baez....
But, over and above all these considerations, the basic question is: what
does it add to your understanding of the song to suppose that Johanna "is"
Joan Baez? I can see no way in which the resonances of the actual Joan
Baez add to or illuminate the portrayal of Johanna. (Indeed, for me they
just distract.)
On the other hand, given the heavily aspirated H in Dylan's pronunciation
of Johanna, consider the implications of Gehenna.... But that's another
story.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Scobie "It was either her or the straight man
uh749@freenet.victoria.bc.ca who introduced me..."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The story Stephen never tells on the net, buy another 100 copies of
his book and maybe he'll give us a precis? :-)
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 1995 20:33:18 GMT
From: Stephen Scobie/Maureen Scobie (sscobie1@SOL.UVIC.CA)
Subject: Re: Who is Johanna?
fred@kaos.stanford.edu (Fred Vachss) wrote:
> "Johanna" is Joan Baez (mentioned in Scaduto's bio of Dylan).
Well, not quite. Scaduto's biography includes an interview with Baez, in
which Baez makes it perfectly clear that *she* thinks Joanna is her.
Scaduto seems to go along with this. But that still isn't
incontrovertible evidence.
I discuss this point at length in my pamphlet on "Visions of Johanna"
(still, I think, available through Rolling Tomes). To summarise:
(1) All available evidence suggests that "Visions of Johanna" was written,
and first performed, at least 6 months after Bob and Joan had split up
(even if it took a bit longer for Joan to accept that), and almost exactly
at the time of Bob's marriage to Sara. Even given Bob's notorious
insensitivity to other people's feelings, is it likely that he celebrated
his marriage to Sara by writing a song to Joan?
(2) Even if Joanna "is" Joan Baez, what does this add to the song? In my
view, nothing at all.
(3) It is much more interesting to hear in the name the echo of the name
"Gehenna," meaning Hell, Prison, Torture. In fact, no matter how often I
hear the song, and no matter how often I read the printed lyrics as
"Johanna," what I *hear* is still "Gehenna."
Stephen
--
Stephen Scobie Maureen Scobie
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 11:40:31 -0500
From: "Mark L. Kelly" (mlk@LOYOLA.EDU)
Subject: johanna
I've been following the Johanna thread with some interest, because it is
among the most interesting of Dylan's songs, and I wanted to throw in a
couple of comments.
First, I think the "shocking" painting of a pregnant bride was Jan Van
Eyck's "Arnolfini Wedding" (1434), not anything by Vermeer, who tended to
paint scenes from everyday life. Also, art historians believe that
Arnolfini's bride was not actually pregnant, but that her dress bustle was
the fashion in the 15th century. If you haven't seen this painting, check
it out-the Arnolfinis were one ugly couple, but there are details in Van
Eyck's painting that foreshadow MC Escher and other Dutch realists.
Second, I have heard that Johanna is about Van Gogh's sister-in-law, but
I've yet to get a confirmation about it. I think the person who said
something about Rimbaud's sister could help out by throwing a little more
detail our way.
Personally, I think that the key to the song is figuring out the
relationship between Johanna and Louise. Once that's done, the exquisite
imagery and almost hypnotic effect of this tonal poem will become clear. I
myself have little interest in reaching a quick answer to its mysteries;
like most of Dylan's work, I find the rewards come from the slow unfolding
of meaning over time.
From: tricia.j@AARDVARK.APANA.ORG.AU (Patricia Jungwirth)
Date: 97-07-15 23:34:30 EDT
"go down Ol' Hanna, don't you rise no more,
no more risin' till the Judgement Day"
(No More Cane On The Brazos)
any connection between Ol' Hanna and Johanna?
just a stray thought which keeps recurring when I hear that song
Tricia
Subject: Re: Who is Ol' Hanna?
From: Peter Stone Brown (peterb@erols.com)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 13:58:15 -0400
Patricia Jungwirth wrote:
>
> "go down Ol' Hanna, don't you rise no more,
> no more risin' till the Judgement Day"
> (No More Cane On The Brazos)
>
> any connection between Ol' Hanna and Johanna?
>
> just a stray thought which keeps recurring when I hear that song
>
> Tricia
No connection. Ol Hanna is the sun. There's another traditional field
holler called "Go Down Ol Hanna."
--PSB
Subject: Re: Who is Ol' Hanna?
From: SLOTH9318 (sloth9318@aol.com)
Date: 17 Jul 1997 16:56:36 GMT
Well, maybe....BUT: I recall reading somewhere that Ol Hanna was the sun.
The prisoners worked (as did sharecroppers) from what Mance Lipscomb
called "cain't to cain't"---from the time you can't see just before dawn
to the time you can't see just after sunset. So, if the sun didn't rise,
no one would have had to work.
Subject: Re: Who is Ol' Hanna?
From: catherine yronwode (cat@luckymojo.com)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 01:34:31 -0800
Harvey Bojarsky wrote:
> While we're here anyway, it's interesting to compare gender
> personification of things in different cultures. In Native
> American philosophy, the sun is generally Father, and the moon is
> Mother. In Black work songs the sun is female (as are many
> things, including a whip (Black Betty). Anyone have any
> thoughts about this? Examples from other cultures?
In Hebrew, the sun is female, the moon, male, and ditto in Japan. In
most European cultures, the opposite applies. In ancient Sumer, Inanna
(Johanna, ol' Hannah?) was Venus, a female, but in ancient Israel, the
Morning Star, Venus, was Lucifer, a male.
catherine yronwode
http://www.luckymojo.com
Subject: Re: Who is Ol' Hanna?
From: Malandra
Date: 24 Jul 1997 00:34:44 GMT
Patricia Jungwirth wrote:
> The three most common 'theories' concerning the word 'Johanna' in the
Dylan
> song seem to be:
> a) It refers to Joan Baez
> b) It relates to 'Gehenna', the Hebrew word for the 'afterworld'
> c) Van Gogh's sister (or was it sister-in-law?)
> d) it refers to someone or something that only Dylan knows
It would appear that Joan Baez thought that 'Johanna' referred to her. In
her song 'Winds of the Old Days', which (in my opinion, anyway...) is about
her somewhat uncertain relationship towards Dylan in the 1970s, she
includes the lyrics:
'And get you down to the harbour now,
Most of the sour grapes have gone from the bough.
Ghosts of Johanna will visit you there,
And the winds of the old days will blow through your hair'.
Love,
Avis
