Tour the World via the Hotel Stationery Bob Dylan Wrote Songs On — Continued
Part 2: The Rest of the World
Today, the second part of our World Tour of all the locations where Bob Dylan wrote songs on hotel stationery. This part travels outside North America, to songs written in hotels in the UK, Europe, and beyond.
(If you missed part one, I would definitely start there, at least the intro. It explains the premise—which probably does require some explanation.)
Onward in our journey…
Stop 6: London, England
Hotel: The May Fair
Song: “It Ain’t Me, Babe”
When was he there?
We leave North America for our first visit overseas, and the second-earliest lyrics we will see, after last entry’s “Chimes of Freedom.” Unlike many of these hotels, the May Fair looms large in Dylan lore. He most famously stayed there in 1966, giving a press conference and doing a photoshoot in one of its rooms. Many well-known Dylan photos come from that May Fair stay. How well-known? I can think of six Dylan books that use May Fair 1966 photos on the cover:
But that May Fair Hotel stay won’t come until 1966, a few years after “It Ain’t Me Babe.” He first stayed at the May Fair in 1962, when he was put up there by the BBC while in town to film Madhouse on Castle St. He wasn’t there long though—the hotel kicked him out. From The Guardian:
[Albert] Grossman was already in London, along with the singer Odetta, and saw Dylan put up in the raffish Mayfair Hotel near Berkeley Square.… Dylan moved from the Mayfair after complaints about his strumming his guitar in the lobby and according to Phillip Saville, “he was also having problems with his smoking habit and the management of the hotel sort of lent on his manager, Grossman, and indeed Bob, and asked if he would refrain from that kind of smoking.”
Bob didn’t hold it against them, apparently. This “It Ain’t Me Babe” draft comes from a visit in between those two, in Spring 1964, when he was in town for his performance at the Royal Festival Hall (a show I wrote about here). In fact, he first performed “It Ain’t Me, Babe” live at that very show—right after he’d been writing it at the hotel!
Hotel history:
The May Fair Hotel opened in 1927 with King George V and Queen Mary (she’s my friend…) in attendance. So, you know: Fancy.
And it’s remained so in the almost-a-century since. Just Luxe calls it “the London home for show business royalty.” Lady Gaga “lives there” when in town, one article notes. Another that Whitney Houston “favoured the Azure Suite, which has gold-leaf tiles on the bathroom walls and its own kitchen, while the penthouse has an 80ft roof terrace.” A Daily Mail article titled “Paris Hilton's favourite hideaway” notes that the May Fair is so well known for hosting celebrities that a couple dozen paparazzi typically hang out outside. I suspect that’s not a selling point for Bob.
Alternate lyrics:
Jackpot! We’ve got full unused verses here. Four of ‘em, no less. And I can make out at least most of the words.
Oh you say that you are looking
For a heart to be so true
One you can count on not to leave
And to love nothing else but youYour eyes they tell your fortune [“they tell” crossed out and replaced with “they run”]
Your words like water they’re flowing
Your whispering(?) tell your wishes
but I’m afraid I’ve got to be goingI won’t let you have a diamond ring
I won’t let you have a nun that sings
I won’t let you buy a dress brand new
But oh babe I’ll let you be youI can’t give you the morning sun
If you don’t [want?] it now you better run
I can’t let you apologize when it’s through
But oh babe I can let you be you
It’s possible those latter two verses, on the reverse of the page, were for a different song. The cadence doesn’t quite seem to fit the melody of “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (if you try singing it, it’s awkward). Unless there was a different bridge or something he was considering.
I love the scrawled line below all that:
How many times
do I have to
repeat that
I am not a folksinger
Before people
stop saying
“He’s not a folksinger”
Reads like an unused—and very off-topic—verse from “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Stationery review:
A coat of arms = fancy. I rate it two mints on the pillow.
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Stop 7: Bilbao, Spain
Hotel: Hotel Lopez de Haro
Song: “Long and Wasted Years”
When was he there?
This seems straightforward at first. Bob played Bilbao, Spain, in summer 2012, at a venue right near this hotel. Tempest came out in fall 2012. Easy enough, right?
Not so fast. Dylan reportedly recorded Tempest from January to March. That Bilbao show was July. So what’s he doing working on the lyrics to “Long and Wasted Years” four months after the album is supposedly done? My guess: The album wasn’t done. Mostly done, maybe, but he could have snuck in a final quick session between July and September to (re-)record this track. He hasn’t played Bilbao much; the timing seems too much of a coincidence for this sheet to have come from any other time than July 2012.
Bob kept busy on that stop in Bilbao. He also traveled to a private club, the Sociedad Bilbaina, five minutes from the hotel. It’s described as “a gentlemen's club in the purest British style, founded in 1839. A place out of time, a fascinating and decadent relic that should appear in every tourist guide to the city...if entry were allowed. But, as I say, this is a Bilbao recreation of a sanctum sanctorum of English privacy. So members, members' families on special occasions, and a very few others have the privilege of stepping into its halls.”
Why was he at this private gentlemen’s club? For a photoshoot that would run Rolling Stone to promote Tempest:
Alas, he doesn’t seem to be using the hotel stationery in that shot. The notebook does seems to have real writing on it though, rather than just being a photo prop. Wonder if it’s in the archives.
Another shot from the gentlemen’s club shoot. At the time, this was a men’s-only establishment, but they apparently made an exception for Bob.
You can see where he was sitting in this lobby photo posted on TripAdvisor. It’s the long couch on the right. They should put up a plaque.
Hotel history:
We leave the gentlemen’s club and return to the hotel. Hotel Lopez de Haro opened in 1990, in the former offices of the local Hierro newspaper, which ran between 1937 and the early '80s. It was started as the official mouthpiece of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (who is still dead) and did not survive the arrival of democracy. The hotel displays some of the old newsprint on the walls:
In 1997, Frank Gehry stayed there while he was designing the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao—which is where Bob Dylan was performing on this visit 15 years later. It went out of business during Covid.
Alternate lyrics:
This is only a fraction of a piece of paper, and also a bit hard to read—sharpen your pencil, Bob!—but I make out the following drafted for the opening verse:
It’s been such a long time
Since you loved me and I loved you
One time oh how
We were many. Now we’re few
Stationery review:
Cool logo. Looks snazzy on a keychain too:
Stop 8: Basel, Switzerland
Hotel: Hotel Drei Könige Am Rhein Basel
Song: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” & “Simple Twist of Fate”
When was he there?
I was at a loss on this one until I found a short section about it in the Mixing Up the Medicine book from the Dylan Archives (though this full image comes from a facsimile that was apparently included when you bought some type of Heaven’s Door whiskey). Their caption dates it 1974. Which, if you know your chronology, is after he recorded the song. The authors write, “Although he’d recorded the song in February, by late 1973, Dylan revisited ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,’ most likely in advance of his forthcoming tour with The Band. These particular lyrics were not used.”
So he was at this hotel in either later 1973 or early 1974 (the text says one thing, the caption another). Given he kicked off the Band tour on January 3rd, 1974, my guess is late 1973. Why was he in Switzerland at that time? A mystery. Family ski trip for the holidays?
Hotel history:
One of Switzerland’s oldest hotels—which, if you are based in the relatively young U.S. like me, means old. There was a guest house at this location as early as 1255. The hotel under this name began more recently though: 1681.
Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth, and Pablo Picasso all stayed there. It’s the sort of hotel where the official history has a subcategory of famous guests labeled “Members of the aristocracy.” These days it more often goes by the French version of its name, Hotel Les Trois Rois. Pick a language, Switzerland!
Update: Bob stayed there several other times as well. This photo seen in the “Jokerman” music video was taken on the hotel’s terrace during his 1981 tour. Thanks Philipp Dubach for the tip!
Alternate lyrics:
Yes, but nothing I find that exciting. Mostly small tweaks on the album lyrics. They are:
Mama take this badge off me
I cant use it anymore
Mama Mama cant you see I'm
Knocking, knocking on Heaven's door
Mama take these guns off me
Bury them inside the ground
Mama Mama cant you see
Six white horses on the hill
Bury my guns in the ground
Mama take these boots from my feet
More interesting, to me, is everything else written on this piece of paper. It appears to be a hodgepodge of poetry and free verse. And, best of all, most of it is fairly legible! At the top is part of a short story (which I assume runs onto other sheets of paper, as it both starts and ends abruptly):
spring open and jumped inside, smiled at the rest of the passengers. “You got something for the Beatles?” said a heavy set man with a gun. “Yeah but I gotta deliver it myself.” “Give it to [me] and leave,” he said, and just then a voice came out of an open door. “What is it chaps, why the fuss?”
Then, a bit on the right that certainly jumps out, partially because of all the capital letters, partially from the fire-and-brimstone preacher tone:
The world’s on FIRE! *
We’re gonna wipe out SICKNESS!
DRAIN IT FROM
The Bowels of the Earth
And sin too!
NO NEED TO
WEAR A MASK!
* If you read this line without immediately having Smash Mouth’s “All Star” run through your head, you’re a better person than I.
I can’t read everything in the chunk below that, but I can make out this: “Leonard Cohen’s pretty good too.”
Fact-check: True!
Stationery review:
The three-kings logo is nice, but way too much text. A too-long hotel name to begin with, and then you gotta write the whole thing out in three different languages? Typical Switzerland.
Update: Reader Andreas Schmal directed me to a second song written on this same stationary: “Simple Twist of Fate”!
Some lost verses in this one too!:
He wakes up and is feeling sick
He hears a clock on the courthouse tick
And bootheels in the hallway click
Pushed the window open wide
Vomits up outside
All the heartache that he ate
Brought about by a simple twist of fate
He walks along in the city streets
Quoting Shelly, quoting Keats
Stares into the eyes of those he meets
Like a neon sign gone mad
I can hear him ?
Update 2: Reader Philipp Dubach notes this may have been a draft not of the original version, but for the new lyrics for the 1984 tour.
Stop 9: Milan, Italy
Hotel: Hotel Principe Di Savoia
Song: “Workingman’s Blues #2”
When was he there?
Another presumably obvious one: November 12, 2005. He played a show at Milan’s FilaForum, and had a day off before so he likely stayed a couple nights at the hotel. He’d record “Workingman’s Blues #2” three months later.
Hotel history:
Another hotel that could have a “Members of the aristocracy” subsection. Some of the exact same aristocrats as in Basel too! Funny how half the time he’s staying in these five-star luxury hotels, and half the time it’s the Holiday Inn outside of town. We’ll overlook the irony of writing a song called “Workingman’s Blues” in a hotel whose top room goes for $18,000 a night.
Milan’s Hotel Principe Di Savoia was founded in 1927 (same year as the May Fair), and, as Wikipedia notes, “during World War II, it became a headquarters for the Germans, and later served as the American headquarters.” An equal-opportunity headquarters. To be fair, I doubt they had much say in the matter.
More recent guests include Madonna, the Beckhams, and George Clooney, though the latter is more recently leading a boycott of the hotel due to current owner the Sultan of Brunei making homosexuality a crime punishable by death in his country. (This is years after Dylan stayed there, if you’re wondering.)
Alternate lyrics:
The first verse is the same, but the second is totally new! Our best “lost verse” yet I think.
Cutthroat capitalists in the collars will
Grind you into the earth
You can hear them growling from deep down in [?]
They know what everything’s worth
My pretty rockin’ mama so doggone hot
Eye’s like the burning sun
I’ll marry her in the fall like it or not
They say two can live as cheaply as one
Stationery review:
Most of these are full 8.5x11 sheets of paper, but this is clearly smaller, the sort of notepad you’d find next to a phone for jotting down a number in the pre-cellphone days. It’s fine.
Stop 10: Skopje, Macedonia
Hotel: Holiday Inn Skopje
Song: “Tempest”
When was he there?
This has to be the easiest one of all, right? How many times has Bob been in Skopje, Macedonia? As far as I know, just one: June 4, 2010, two years before Tempest. It was a tour where he played all sorts of Eastern European countries he never has before or since: Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, the Slovak Republic. I wrote about it here.
Two years is farther in advance than most of these lyric drafts. Then again, “Tempest” is a very long song. No surprise it took awhile.
Hotel history:
Here we are, back at another Holiday Inn. Judging by TripAdvisor reviews, this seems like the crummiest hotel of the bunch. “Do not be misleaded [sic] by the brand,” a typical review begins, adding “Given the quality of service, food and rooms, this is ridiculously over priced option… Breakfast is at two star level. Service is archaic type of public-servant ignorance. Rooms have not seen decorator for a good decade or more. Not worth longer comment.”
That review was written October 20, 2012—one month after Tempest came out. Wonder how the hotel celebrated the big day.
It was built in the 1950s as the Grand Hotel, and pops up on various webpages about Brutalist architecture. Here’s what it looked like back then:
The only bit of history I can find from back in the day is that one of the hotel bars had a striptease show that was popular with the locals. Here’s a piece Danilo Kocevski wrote remembering his visit to the Grand Hotel striptease show (blame the clunky language on Google Translate, I’m sure it flows better in the original Macedonian):
When we reached the age where we could be allowed into the night bar, the excitement was great. The program started late and ended around three-thirty in the morning. The striptease act was in the middle of the program.
First, we heard soft, soulful music from the orchestra, followed by a kind of cabaret-entertainment program, and then came the main performance of the young stripper. At the end was the performance of one or several famous singers of our entertainment music. The circular podium was in the middle of the hall, around it were the tables for the guests, and part of the space was occupied by the orchestra. We watched the stripper's performance with our mouths hanging open, and everything that that kind of erotic performance implied.
The main part, the discovery and showing of breasts, took place so quickly and lightning fast that it ended before we were even ready for it. And that was it. No more, no more. But the rumor that we had watched a striptease in a Skopje bar was big. Famous artists, visitors from various professions, Skopje's bohemians came to the bar.
“The discovery and showing of breasts” sounds like a phrase the Festrunk Brothers would use.
Alternate lyrics:
A ton! I have trouble making out much of the first two verses—though the second seems to be about Edith Piaf, even mentioning her age (47) when she died—but can get quite a bit of the rest.
The next three verses are almost entirely unused, other than a few stray phrases here and there. This version of the Leo (as in, Leonardo DiCaprio) verse shouts out Rose too. A little extra content about Titanic-the-movie rather than just Titanic-the-ship. Also Dracula is apparently sinking on the Titanic now too?
Count Dracula was sleeping / in a chamber dead inside
His bloodness heart was beating / His bed began to slide
He put up his armor / And sharpened all his knives
Wild eyed boys and farmers / Went fleeing for their lives
…
The watchman was a drinking / Violence in the breeze
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking / Dropping to her knees
The priest he took a notion / Acted with great speed
Leaped into the ocean / Said “The poor are yours to feed”
Calvin Blake and William / Were arguing in the dark
They’d won their ticket in a card game / In a London city park
Leo took his pencils -
He closed his eyes and painted / The scenery in his mind
Cupid struck his bosom and caught him in a trap
Rose came close up to him / He flung his heart into her lap
Closet full of clutter / Whiskey in the jars
He took his eyes out of the gutter / And looked up at the stars
Great final line right? Shame he discarded that.
Stationery review:
Denver’s Holiday Inn stationery (from part one) smokes Skopje’s Holiday Inn stationery. Get it together, Skopje.
Stop 11: Wellington, New Zealand
Hotel: The Wellington Park Royal
Song: “Band of the Hand (It’s Hell Time Man!)”
When was he there?
Opening night of the 1986 True Confessions tour with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers! A show that, by all accounts, was a train wreck (that’s the exact phrase Benmont Tench used). Maybe Bob should have spent less time scrawling lyrics and more time rehearsing.
Hotel history:
This five-star hotel opened in late 1982, only a couple years before Dylan stayed there. Several commenters in a local-history Facebook group remember Elton John and David Bowie staying there too. The hotel’s main claim to fame there, though, is Dylan. Not just that he stayed there. Not even that he wrote lyrics to one of his least-remembered songs there. Rather, it comes from a late-night jam session he and the band (and Stevie Nicks, along for the tour but lacking a local work permit to go onstage) held at the hotel bar piano. They played and sang old chestnuts like “Chapel of Love,” “Save the last Dance for Me,” and various Buddy Holly tunes.
Amazingly, there’s a recording. Less amazingly, the quality is near-unlistenable.
Alternate lyrics:
They’d record this song only a few days later, but nevertheless it was clearly in the early stages. Only a couple stray phrases made the transition from this notebook to the recorded version.
You’ll never get away, you will never survive
It’s ? ? ? too late to stay alive
You are on your way out and we’re Heaven sent
We’re giving the orders now, we’re the new governmentThe time is at hand and you have had your fun
We gonna destroy you man, like the law shoulda done
You been getting away with murder for much too long
You've been judged and now you'll pay [crossed out]Down these streets, the fools rule
And it’s been a long depression and we’re ready for war
Stationery review:
TMI, WPR! (Too Much Information, Wellington Park Royal). All that text crammed in up top takes up like half the sheet of paper. Too bad he didn’t have room to scrawl a fourth barely legible verse.
Alright, get ready for our final stop. It’s a big one.
We’re about to see the beginnings of what most Dylan scholars consider his greatest-ever lyric. More than that, it’s one of the greatest combinations of words ever put to paper. I’m sure this lyric was top of mind for the Nobel Prize committee. This piece of paper should be displayed in Washington right next to the Constitution. After this, everything in culture changed.
You’ve probably picked up by now that I’m being sarcastic…
Stop 12: Sydney, Australia
Hotel: The Sebel Town House
Song: “Band of the Hand (It’s Hell Time Man!)”
When was he there?
Right after the previous entry in New Zealand! And, this time, he focused on the important part of “Band of the Hand.” Honestly, he could have dumped every other lyric in the song. This is the only line anyone remembers. He even underlined it, to make sure you know: It’s hell time, man!
Hotel history:
“In the '70s and '80s it seemed like there was only one hotel in Sydney,” wrote the Sydney Morning Herald. “Everybody who's anybody would use the Sebel Town House.” The article includes photos of, among others, ABBA, Sting, Linda Ronstadt, Lauren Bacall, and Malcolm McLaren at the hotel. About two seconds of Googling turns up more photos of David Bowie, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Talking Heads, the Bee Gees, Miles Davis, and many more staying there. Elton John even held a surprise wedding reception there in 1984, two years before Bob’s stay. A page from a book about the hotel’s history:
An ABC Radio story notes that “Its tiny late night bar was a favourite haunt of musicians, and stars of stage and screen, whose autographed photos lined the walls.” I imagine that’s where the jam session happened.
Alternate lyrics:
I’m not sure this one requires a close read. Sometimes you strike gold on the first try.
Stationery review:
Is this our first corporate-sponsored stationery? Wonder if the hotel made Budget foot the bill for these pads. I do like the border, though the hotel logo is trying too hard. But, in this one case, the stationery doesn’t matter. The key information is right there in the center:
It’s hell time, man!
And that’s it for our tour—for now. Hopefully more of these in-progress lyric drafts surface soon. I expect they will, as the Dylan Archives has been doing great work finding ways to share these things. I’ve already cited it a bunch, but special closing shoutout to their excellent book Mixing Up the Medicine, where many of these images were first revealed.
Bob Dylan via hotel stationery. I live for this content.
All of this is brilliant…thanks a million, Ray. I love reading it all. The detective work, wow!