The Bob Dylan project: Album 7 – Blonde on Blonde

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Album cover reproduced for review purposes. Copyright: Columbia Records or the graphic artist.

Title: Blonde on Blonde (1966)

Length: 1hr 12 min and 37sec

Number of songs: 14

Best tracks: Visions of Johanna, One of Us Must Know, Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, I Want You, Mostly You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, Absolutely Sweet Marie, Temporary Like Achilles, 4th Time Around, Obviously 5 Believers, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

If I could choose just one track: Visions of Johanna

Freshlyworded rating: 9/10

By the sheer number of songs I have chosen as my “Best tracks”, it must be fairly obvious that I think Blonde on Blonde is another great album by the maestro. It’s also Dylan’s longest to date running for nearly 73 min with 14 tracks.

Blonde on Blonde was his seventh studio album, and it’s incredible to think that he was still just 25 years old when he recorded it. Saying that, when you listen to a lot of his songs, including my favourite track on the album, the haunting and beautiful “Visions of Johanna” it’s hard to believe you are listing to such a young man. I seem to always picture Dylan more as he looks now (he turned 85 last month). He sings from a place of wisdom and experience decades beyond his years.

The album begins with a raucous-sounding, honky-tonk track that bears absolutely no resemblance to its title “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” It’s a song I would expect to hear walking into a noisy saloon. There is hooting and laughter in the background with the lyrics returning to the theme of “getting stoned” perhaps an allusion to smoking pot and the emerging hippie movement. Dylan seems to have fun singing this song and it’s certainly a lot of fun to listen to as well.

There’s a lot of blues on this album, and Dylan really kicks into Blues-mode with the slow and soulful “Pledging My Time”. There’s some fantastic harmonica playing on this song as there is throughout the album. He is one of the best on the harmonica.

Then comes one of his masterpiece tracks, ‘Visions of Johanna”. I just love this song and have listened to it multiple times including out of sequence and on its own. It kicks off with Dylan on the harmonica and is filled with stunning and complex poetry, with verses like

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane

I also love the lines: But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues/ You can tell by the way she smiles

This is constant feature of Dylan’s songs, especially the long poetic ones, him drawing in elements from art, fiction, popular culture, current affairs. He has this ability to absorb and process so much going on around him and then translate it into song.

I can’t claim to know exactly what is going on in this song, it just works on so many levels, the words and the music are paired perfectly.

I also really loved “One of Us must Know which looks back at a relationship, and has an uplifting feel courtesy of the melody and backing band as well as being very moving with lines like:

When I saw you say “goodbye” to your friend and smile
I thought that it was well understood
That you’d be comin’ back in a little while
I didn’t know that you were sayin’ “goodbye” for good

‘I Want You” is a pretty famous Dylan track. It has a lighter, almost pop-like sound and some absolutely terrific lyrics. As with all Dylan songs, there’s a lot of dense imagery and deeper meaning buried behind the lustful lyrics.

I love the way the song starts, the writing has an effortless, flowing quality

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn, but it’s
Not that way, I wasn’t born to lose you

The undiscovered gem for me on this album is “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”. It’s a long track, running over nine verses, but is sung at a rollicking pace before slowing down with the plaintiff refrain:

Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Whilst trapped in Mobile (a town in Alabama in the American South), Dylan recounts strange and disturbing encounters with a cast of eclectic characters including a ragman who won’t talk, a senator showing off his guns, a preacher “with twenty pounds of headlines stapled to his chest” and Shakespeare “in the alley with his pointed shoes and his bells”

The one song I have a slight problem with on the album is “Just Like a Woman”. It’s a pretty famous track, but lines like:

She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl

are difficult to listen to and no doubt drew allegations of sexism and misogyny. Funnily enough, despite finding this song somewhat unpleasant and distasteful, I found myself humming it on a few occasions. It does have an underlying beauty to it, just a pity about the words (or am I reading too much into it?)

The album then switches direction entirely with “Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”, a real stomping bluesy track despite it being another tale of the end of a relationship. He certainly does mine his romantic relationships for musical and poetic inspiration. At the same time, he never resorts to cheesy line or is overly sentimental.

“Temporary Like Achilles” is a really great, slow-moving blues track about love spurned by a hard woman who Dylan questions may have a heart “made out of stone, or is it lime, or is it just solid rock?”

Dylan picks up the tempo with the almost pop-like “Absolutely Sweet Marie” which has some rather obvious sexual connotations with the singer “beating on his trumpet” and having “the fever down in his pockets”

My God, “4th Time Around” is a beautiful song that brings Dylan back to his folksy roots. The song is about the narrator’s twisted, sparring relationship with a tough, no-nonsense woman who tells him, “Don’t get cute” “, The song follows the duelling nature of their relationship The harmonic playing towards the end is sensational.

The penultimate song, “Obviously Five Believers” is a fast-paced roadhouse blues track about a lonely guy yearning for his lover to return, whilst trying to make it on his own.

Then the album slows way down “for Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”, another undiscovered gem. Dylan’s voice takes on a more gravely tone and the song is fill of highly poetic imagery relaying how he feels about the subject of the song, understood to be Dylan’s wife of the time, Sara Lownds. Running to over 11 minutes, it’s one of those Dylan tracks that just sucks you right in – in an almost hypnotic way.

With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold
And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul
Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you?

It’s a great end to a fantastic album, that really shows the depth of Dylan’s musical range (blues, pop, folk, honky tonk, fast and slow paced) and his songwriting abilities

The Bob Dylan Project: Album 6 – Highway 61 Revisited

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Album cover reproduced for review purposes. Copyright: Columbia Records or the graphic artist.

Title: Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

Length: 51min 26sec

Number of songs: 9

Best tracks: Like a Rolling Stone, Tombstone Blues, Ballad of a Thin Man, Queen Jane Approximately, Highway 61 Revisited, Desolation Row

If I could choose just one track: Ballad of a Thin Man

Freshlyworded rating: 9.5/10

If Album 5, Bringing it all Back Home, stunned and outraged Dylan’s traditional folk, acoustic fan base with his foray into the electric guitar, his next album, released the same year was his great full throttle embrace of not just the electric guitar, but a much bigger, bolder sound.

Highway 61 Revised showcased Bob Dylan the rockstar, a transformation that he appears to be communicating in the iconic album cover featuring Dylan siting on the steps of an apartment building in a white Triumph motorcycle t-shirt under a shiny, patterned dress shirt, his head cocked to the side looking directly at the camera. Behind him, the cut-off figure of a photographer, a symbol of Dylan’s growing celebrity status.

The album itself is an absolutely knockout, a powerhouse of rock and blues, sprinkled with elements of pop and even surf sounds. The album is Dylan’s great reinvention of himself and further evidence -if any was needed – of his status, even then at just 24 years of age as of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

I think I listened to this album more times than any of the previous five – I never seem to grow tired of it. Every one of the nine songs are great.

It begins with two absolute classics. “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Tombstone Blues”.

The former is one Dylan’s most famous and brilliant songs, a romping, rollicking song about arrogant people being cut down to size and then being lost and aimless “with no direction home/like a complete unknown/like a rolling stone”. This sentiment may have also expressed Dylan’s feelings about himself, perhaps being tossed about by the forces of celebrity and fame. “Like a Rolling Stone”.

You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal

‘Like a Rolling Stone’ just powers up the album from the very moment the melody of sound hits your ears. Despite its subject matter, it creates this real joyful feeling as you listen.

The second track, ‘Tombstone Blues’ is a fast-paced rock ‘n roll song filled with vivid imagery, black humour and references to famous historical figures like Jack the Ripper “who sits at the head of the chamber of commerce”, John the Baptist, Ma Rainey and Beethoven. Each verse ends with the catchy chorus (slightly altered each time):

Mama’s in the fact’ry
She ain’t got no shoes
Daddy’s in the alley
He’s lookin’ for the fuse
I’m in the streets
With the tombstone blues

I have to confess, that until I read the lyrics, I thought Dylan was singing “Daddy’s in the Alley, He’s looking for food” and that it was a reference to falling onto hard times.

After the opening two powerhouse tracks, Dylan slows it all down with the very bluesy “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”, another example of the sheer range of Dylan’s musical repertoire. There’s more blues sounds to come, but at a faster lick with “From a Buick 6” which has a real raucous quality to it. There’s a lot going on musically including an organ, which made me think of the music by The Doors.

The next track, “Ballad of a Thin Man”, is one of my favourite Dylan songs. Even though the album has classic tracks such as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Tombstone Blues”, for me this is the standout song, and another hidden gem I have discovered whilst making my way through Dylan’s studio albums in chronological order.

It’s a brooding, melancholic and haunting song which features Dylan on piano (do his talents ever end?) accompanied by a spooky organ. Each verse seems to taunt someone (perhaps the establishment or the mainstream media?) trying to understand the emerging counter-cultural movement, and ends with the refrain: “Because something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is Do you, Mr. Jones?

Mr Jones think he is very smart because he has read “every one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book” and understands the working class because “He has many contacts among the lumberjacks” but remains confused and alone.

The song has so many great lines and verses, but my favourite has to be:

But nobody has any respect, anyway they already expect you to all give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

The title track “Highway 61 Revisited” begins with a sharp whistle that sets up the high tempo song. It’s a great rock ‘n roll track with heaps of energy and vivid imagery. Each verse is a little problem that’s solved on Highway 61, the 1400 km legendary highway running from Minnesota to New Orleans with strong connections to Blues music culture.

Dylan slows down the pace and strikes a darker tone with the bluesy “Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and the album ends with a return to his acoustic, folksy roots with the 11-minute epic “Desolation Row”.

This a great song to listen to whilst strolling down a county road (as I did on many occasions). It’s gloomy and melancholic. It’s draws in all sorts of references, from fairy tales (Cinderella “sweeping up”), Hollywood (Better Davis), the bible (Cain & Abel), classic literature (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), famous poets (Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot “Fighting in the captain’s tower”) and science (the electric violin-playing Albert Einstein). I haven’t thought long and hard about the meaning of the surreal lyrics (that’s another project entirely) but just enjoyed the vivid imagery, poetic lyricism and moodiness of the song.

The last verse is particularly poignant and hints Dylan’s mistrust of insincere people and his ability to cut right down to the bone:

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

It’s a great end to an absolute knockout of an album. One of the all-time greats.

The confounding success of The Joe Rogan Experience

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Joe Rogan – (Source: Steven Crowder, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

As an avid consumer of podcasts, I like most of the world, more than occasionally listen to an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. Usually, it’s because I am interested in the guest or guests on his show.

Rogan, a former sitcom actor and stand-up comedian, is a highly influential voice in the world of entertainment and politics. Many credit his endorsement of Donald Trump as a contributing factor in Trump winning a second term presidency.

But how many people actually sit through his meandering interviews that sometimes clock up four hours of listening time?

It’s quite confounding to me that Rogan’s podcast is so popular and successful. Yes, he gets some of the biggest names in show entertainment, politics and business into his studio, but he is highly skilled at turning what should be a fascinating discussion into something often banal and boring (and very, very long).

A good example of this is Rogan’s interview with legendary film maker Quentin Tarantino and the man Tarantino wrote Pulp Fiction with Roger Avary. Both won an Academy Award for best original screenplay in 1994.

Avary has written and directed a few interesting, somewhat successful films including Killing Zoe and The Rules of Attraction, but his achievements pale in comparison to Tarantino, one of the greatest writer-directors of the last 50 years whose films include cinematic classics such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

But if you were hoping to hear from Tarantino about the making of these movies or his favourite films or anything about his career, you would have left the marathon interview (3hrs and 17min) very disappointed. It’s completely dominated by Avary. Tarantino hardly gets a word in and the whole interview is a massive letdown. Rogan, as he so often does, allows the discussion to go in whatever direction it does (rather than guide it back to an even keel) and Tarantino hardly gets a word in.

Similarly, interviews with interesting actors like Billy Bob Thornton (a long discussion about jeans and fashion), Russell Crowe (a long boring story about a trip to Vegas and explanations about the rules of cricket) and Matthew McConaughey (talking about poetry and his philosophy on life) were so boring and off topic that I soon gave up.

Boring interviews

Perhaps I am in the minority, but when I listen to a famous actor being interviewed, I like to hear them talk about their craft, their experiences being creative, their iconic roles and funny, interesting and insider stories about the people they worked alongside and how they came to be who they are. Yes, I want to hear about their struggles, addictions and daily habits and get to understand their psychology, but most just waffle on endlessly.

Rogan’s interview with Lionel Ritchie started off OK but then descended into incredibly boring anecdotes and I also gave up.

In his defense, Rogan is by no means the only successful podcaster prone to waffle and self-indulgence in the name of long-form podcasting. Legendary British documentary maker Louis Theroux’s chat with Sean Penn on his podcast is a trainwreck.

And while Adam Buxton does do a lot of interesting rambling interviews, they often veer off course and into very boring territory. And they are far too long.

This is not to say that Rogan does not discuss interesting things, and some of his interviews are fascinating.

Of the dozens of episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience I have listened to, there have been a handful where I have made it all the way to the end. Probably the one I have enjoyed the most is Rogan’s chat with Joe Pistone, a retired FBI agent who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family between 1976 and 1981 and inspired the great movie Donnie Brasco (starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino). It was a truly incredible insight into the life of an undercover agent and Rogan on this occasion did a great job steering the discussion.

I also enjoyed his interview with controversial British comedy writer Graham Linehan (creator of Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd) despite Rogan indefensibly having clearly never watched any episodes of these shows and being completely clueless about who Linehan was apart from his views on the transgender community.

I also enjoyed for a bit Rogan’s chat with independent US senator Bernie Sanders (where they surprisingly agreed on a lot of stuff) but even though it was short by JRE standards at just over an hour, I lost interest and didn’t finish it.

Wading through the waffle

It is probably the case that there is something interesting or thought-provoking in every episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, but you have to wade through so much irrelevant trivia and banter to get to these nuggets. That’s why I reckon a lot of people digest these episodes in the short soundbites that make their way onto social media. I’d love to know what proportion of listeners actually make it to the end.

It’s a shame Rogan that things aren’t more finely tuned and more tightly edited given the incredible calibre of guests he regularly has on his show. I know its long-form interviews but cutting these back to say 90 minutes maximum (still very long for an interview) would make for a much more enjoyable listening experience in my humble opinion.

Here are some of my other gripes with the show:

Lack of research

It appears to me that Rogan often does very little research about the guests he interviews, relying instead on his producer Jamie Vernon to do much of the research and have it at his fingertips when Rogan needs it during his chats. As mentioned above, I was astounded that Rogan had never watched an episode of The IT Crowd, Father Ted or Black Books before interviewing legendary British sitcom creator Graham Linehan.

Never introduces his guests

One of my pet peeves about the JRE is the lack of an even basic introduction. “Today my guest is…you may know him from such films as…He has been in the news of late for x, y and z” Instead, Rogan just begins chatting to his guest as if it’s just the two of them having coffee. Not a word of introduction. If he just took a minute or two to introduce his guest, what they have been up to most recently and set the scene it would make a world of difference. Not all of his guests are household names. I find this particularly annoying when he has a number of guests on his show, who are debating such as when he had the historian Douglas Murray debating the comedian, Dave Smith about Israel and Gaza. It would have been extremely helpful to know a bit about these guys who disagreed so vehemently.

Lack of structure

This leads into the overarching issue of a lack of structure. If you listen to really great interviewers like Fresh Air’s Terry Gross or the New Yorker Radio Hour host (and New Yorker editor) David Remnick there is sense of order and progression to their questions. They know everything they need to know about the person they are going to speak to. It feels like the interview is going somewhere, whereas with Rogan it often meanders into the most banal topics.

Very few female guests and people of colour

While he does interview women on his show, the overwhelming majority are white males. I haven’t done a count, but I wouldn’t be surprised if over 90% of his guests are from the latter category. For whatever reason, Rogan seems to find men, especially white men, the most interesting people in the world. While he can obviously interview who he likes, a bit more diversity wouldn’t go astray. And it would make for a better show, in my humble opinion.

And lastly, can we dispense with the nutty conspiracy theories that Rogan seems to squeeze into so many of his discussions?

The Bob Dylan Project: Album 5 – Bringing it all Back Home

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Title: Bringing it all Back Home (1965)

Length: 47min 21sec

Number of songs: 11

Best tracks: Subterranean Homesick Blues, Maggie’s Farm, Mr Tambourine Man, Gates of Eden, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, On the Road Again, Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream

If I could choose just one track: Mr Tambourine Man

Freshlyworded rating: 9/10

This album sparked a huge amount of controversy when it was released in March 1965, as it was the first time Dylan incorporated electronic instruments and a host of session musicians.

1965 was also the first time Dylan played an electric guitar at a live gig. This occurred at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in July of that year where he was both cheered and booed.

No doubt the booing was a result of Dylan being viewed as folk hero firmly embedded in the old ways of storytelling with just an acoustic guitar and his faithful harmonica.

But honestly, this confected outrage pails into insignificance when you listen to what is one of his best albums. And he was still just 24!

The album includes a number of classic Dylan tracks, most notably one of his most covered songs, ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. While The Byrds had a number one hit with their folk-rock/big band recording of the song, which is great in its own way, I prefer the Dylan version. It’s a very moving, poetic song with mesmerising lyrics and surrealist quality to it.

I mean has anyone written lyric as beautiful as this, the final stanza of the song:

And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

I think Dylan’s strained, expressive style of singing is a perfect companion for this song. Funnily enough, I was listening to a radio show recently where the hosts were discussing cover versions of classic songs that were better than the original, and one of the hosts joked: “Every cover of a Bob Dylan song.” I bristled at that as I love all his original versions of songs like ‘Blowin in the Wind’, ‘The Times They are a Changin’ as well as his version of the traditional folk ballad, ‘House of the Rising Sun’ (rather than the more famous version by The Animals).

Anyway, I would put ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ on my list of Top 10 Greatest Dylan songs any day of the week.

The album itself is full of gems. It kicks off with a famous track ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, a fast-paced, word-play song that’s unlike any other song he’d recorded at that time. It begins with those famous lines:

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government

And ends with one of my favourite Dylan rhymes:

The pump don’t work
’Cause the vandals took the handles

It was also one of the first songs to be promoted via a music video. It shows a very young, almost disinterested looking Dylan flipping through a series of cards featuring words from the song. In the background, you can see beat poet Allen Ginsberg in conversation with folk singer Bob Neuwirth.

The album features a great collection of Blues-style tracks including the classic “Maggie’s Farm” (the song that created all the controversy at the Newport Folk Festival) which is about worker exploitation and has lines like:

Well, he hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you’re havin’ a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door…

There are two great stomping, rip roaring blues tracks ‘On the Road Again’ and ‘Outlaw Blues’ and then a lengthy track titled ‘Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream’, one of his great, crazy narrative songs that as the title suggests has a very dream-like quality.

Dylan sings in the first person, a shipmate aboard the Mayflower (the ship that brought English pilgrims to America shores) captained by “Captain Arab” (a variation on Captain Ahab from Moby Dick) who gives up the hunt for the white whale when he spots land and “calls it America”. The song follows the narrator on this crazy, surreal adventure to the Bowery slums of New York, where he is “thrown in jail for carrying harpoons”, escapes a restaurant “exploding with boiling flat” and ends with Dylan back on a ship heading out of the bay where…

I saw three ships a-sailin’
they were all heading my way
I asked the captain what his name was
And how come he didn’t drive a truck
He said his name was Columbus
I just said, “Good luck”

It really entertaining song in the same vein as ‘Motorpsycho Nitemare’ featured on ‘his fourth album, ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan’.

The final three tracks are all classics. ‘Gates of Eden’ is one of those undiscovered gems I have unearthed in making my way through the albums in order. It’s a brooding and surreal song that showcases Dylan’s genius as a mystical poet. The rhythm and ebb and flow of the song combine powerfully with the lyrics, which create a sense of foreboding and gloom.

‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m only Bleeding)’ is an epic, depressing masterpiece about the corruption and materialism of society, and the many other things wrong with the world. Again, the word play turned into song is brilliantly executed with the emotional refrain of a son to his mother: “It’s alright ma”. It reminded me a fair bit of the songs of Rodriguez in the way the lyrics are almost read before the refrain (perhaps Rodriguez was influenced by this very song). It also shows Dylan’s nack for the eye-catching, though-provoking phrases such as “That he not busy being born is busy dying” and…

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

The album ends with the beautiful, melancholy song “It’s all over now, Baby Blue”, a song about the inevitability of having to move on. It’s filled with so many great lines. Not surprisingly, it’s been covered by many other artists.

It’s a song which like so many on this album showcases Dylan’s never properly acknowledged great, emotive and quite beautiful singing voice. It is also an album where his skills as a poet come to the fore.

It’s a real masterpiece.


The Bob Dylan project: Album 4: Another Side of Bob Dylan

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Title: Another Side of Bob Dylan (Augst 1964)

Length: 50min 37s

Number of songs: 11

Best tracks: All I Really Want to Do, Chimes of Freedom, To Ramona, My Back Pages, It Aint Me Babe

If I could choose just one track: My Back Pages

Freshlyworded rating: 8/10

Album cover, copyright Columbia Records. Low-res version used for review purposes under fair use

One of the great pleasures of listening to the Dylan albums in the order they were recorded is discovering new musical gems by the maestro, and seeing his talents and skills evolve.

On “Another Side of Bob Dylan”, there are a bunch of hidden gems, in addition to a number of classics I already knew well.

Among the new tracks I discovered on this great album and which I have listened to many times is the intriguing “My Back Pages” and its thought-provoking refrain: “Ah, but I was so much older then/I’m younger than that now.”

I’ve pondered a fair bit on that phrase, which seems to go against the conventional idea that we acquire knowledge and wisdom as we get older. For Dylan it may have meant he was reassessing his idealism and “ideas that life is black and white” and his naivety of “fearing not that I had become my enemy” It’s a beautiful song, the lyrics are full of dense poetic imagery.

This reminds of another pleasure I’ve discovered, that of taking the time to listen to each album and get to know the songs and lyrics. I am really delving into Dylan’s poetry and figuring out what he is saying. It reminds of reading poetry when I was studying English at university. “My Back Pages” may not appear on compilations or greatest hits, but it’s a song every Dylan fan should listen to.

Among the other well-known classics on this album are “Chimes of Freedom” in which lightning bolts on a stormy night are transformed into these pulsating symbols of freedom, an image that carries through the powerful song where Dylan praises the “warriors whose strength is not to fight”, the “refugees on the unarmed road of flight” and “ev’ry underdog soldier in the night”

“To Ramona” is an exquisite, melancholy love song which shows the depth and breadth of Dylan’s songwriting and the softness and emotional tone of his voice when he was at the start of his career.

In keeping with the title of the album, the collection of songs has a more eclectic feel by virtue of the very bluesy, “Black Crow Blues”, the humorous talking blues track “I Shall be Free No. 10″ where he takes on Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) and has some fun with rhyming phrases like: 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, gonna knock him clean right outinof his spleen”

I also loved the humorous “Motopsyscho Nitemare” in which Dylan finds himself at a farmhouse seeking a bed for the night and convincing the farmer that he is not a travelling salesman with designs on his daughter “who looked like she stepped out of La Dolce Vita”. There is also references to Anthony Perkins/Norman Bates and the shower scene showing Dylan was hip to the cultural scene at the time. As with most Dylan songs, there is a deeper resonance beyond the humour: the undercurrent of fear amid the Cold War at the time about communist and distrust in rural America.

The album ends with the plaintiff ‘It Aint Me Babe”, a song which has been covered many, many times and has become a folk rock standard.

The Bob Dylan project: Album 3: The Times They are a-Changin’

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Album cover, copyright Columbia Records. Low-res version reproduced under Fair Use for review purposes

Title: The Times They are a-Changin’

Length: 45min, 36s

Number of songs: 10

Best tracks: The Times They are a-Changin’, Ballad of Hollis Brown, With God on our Side, North Country Blues, Boots of Spanish Leather, When the Ship Comes in, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

If I had to choose just one track: The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

Freshlyworded rating: 9/10

Thoughts:

While the title track from this album is rightfully one of Bob Dylan’s most famous and revered songs, for me the hero track and an absolute masterpiece on this album (and surely among his best songs ever) is “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”.

Running just under six minutes, Dylan tells the story of the murder of Hattie Carroll, an African American barmaid, killed in a drunken rage in a Baltimore Hotel in February 1963 by 24-year-old Wiliam Zatzinger, a wealthy, white tobacco grower – and the injustice fuelled by racism that followed.

The song is a perfect combination of vivid poetry, acoustic guitar and Dylan’s plaintive, soulful voice.

Dylan wrote the song just six months after Carroll was murdered and it no doubt struck a chord among the civil rights movement at the time. Every sentence of the song is wonderful.

Zantzinger killed Hattie Carroll, Dylan sings: “With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger” and after his arrest “Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders”.

He contrasts the Zantzinger’s wealth and high society connections with Carroll’s role as a servant “Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage”.

A few months later, “in the courtroom of honor” Dylans sings of the judge who “Stared at the person who killed for no reason” and then in a devastating line “handed out strongly for penalty and repentance William Zantzinger with a six-month sentence”.

As he tells the story of Hattie Carroll’s murder Dylan sings the repeated refrain: “But you who philosophize, disgrace and criticize all fears Take the rag away from your face, now ain’t the time for your tears.”

After singing how Zantzinger literally got away with murder, Dylan ends the song with: Oh, but you who philosophize, disgrace and criticize all fears. Bury the rag deep in your face for now’s the time for your tears“.

Just brilliant!

I listened to this song and all the other nine tracks of this album whilst walking my dog along quiet country roads and sleepy suburban streets in Lancefield north of Melbourne (where I live) and on holiday in Birregurra, a small town in the Otways region of Victoria. Both were the perfect backdrop for letting the wonderful storytelling songs of this album seep deep into my bones.

Hay bales in a field in Birregurra, Victoria

Alongside the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, I of course loved The Times They Are-a-Changing, a universal anthem about profound change that’s coming to society. At the time it was recorded, this change was the civil rights and anti-war movement but it’s wonderful lyrics still inspire people today who are pushing for change amid the punishing regimes governing the world:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

I also loved another haunting, narrative song, “Ballad of Hollis Brown” which tells the story of a poverty-stricken South Dakota farmer and the events leading up to a desperate act.

“With God on Our Side’ is a song that like “The Times They are a-Changing” reverberates loudly today, with its mockery of how believing in God justifies acts of war and America’s superior moral position.

“North Country Blues” is a wonderfully melodic, yet dark song sung in the first person about growing up in an iron ore mining town, where the work eventually dries up and the mine is closed

“Only a Pawn in their Game” is another powerful political song about the murder of a civil rights activist Medgar Evars, while another favourite track of mine on the album is the very catchy “When the Ship Comes in” which has a happy and triumphant feel to it.

The slow and contemplative “Restless Farewell” is a fitting end to a brilliant album, and also a great way to end an evening country stroll.

For me, this is Dylan’s best album of the three I have listened to and reviewed so far. Incredible that he was only 22 and 23 when he wrote and recorded all these amazing tracks.


The Bob Dylan project: Album 2, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

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Album cover, copyright Columbia Records. Low-res image reproduced under Fair Use for review purposes

Title: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

Length: 50 min 4 sec

Freshlyworded rating: 8.5/10

Number of songs: 13

Best tracks: Blowin’ in the Wind, Masters of War, Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall, Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright

If I had to choose just one track: Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright

Thoughts: From the iconic cover – a hunched-up Bob Dylan walking the cold, snow-covered streets of Greenwich Village, New York with his then girlfriend Suze Rotolo – to the iconic opening song, Blowin’ in the Wind, Dylan’s second album is a superb follow-up to his debut of the previous year that announced his immense talent to the world.

Firmly embedded in the storytelling folk genre, it showcases Dylan’s incredible acoustic guitar and harmonica playing and his songwriting – all but one of the tracks are original compositions.

As mentioned already, the album kicks off with one of Dylan’s most famous protest anthems, ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’. He was just 23 or thereabouts when he wrote one of the all-time classics, a song about injustice, about callousness, about indifference to suffering (and a song that’s been covered by many other artists).

Another classic protest song – a scathing attack on the people and institutions that create the machinery of mass destruction – is Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’. It contains some brilliant lyrics my favourite being the final two stanzas, delivered with great loathing and power:

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I’ll follow your casket
By the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead

Another classic track, and one of Dylan’s first long songs is A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall, which also made me listen to the great rock version by Roxy Music. It’s a song filled with complex, dreamlike and nightmarish imagery and is rightly regarded as one of his masterpieces. I am still trying to figure out what it all means, but it’s a real cracker.

My favourite track on the album though, and across the first two albums is “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”. I was listening to this beautiful ballad about Dylan’s anger and regret at a broken relationship as I walked down a quiet country road, and it just blew me away. Its power is the way its sung, almost without malice. I immediately listened to it again and have played it many times since getting into this album. It’s one of my favourite songs of all time. Ironically, given the album cover, the song relates to the woman depicted on it, Suze Rotolo, who was leaving him at the time to stay in Italy.

But I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
But we never did too much talking anyway
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

The heaviness of the album ends with a light-hearted song “I Shall be Free” which has some very funny and unusual lyrics.

The intriguing error in an Australia history book and the true story of an all-female convict ship sent to Tasmania

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In one of the early chapters of respected historian John Molony‘s The Penguin Bicentennial History of Australia (which I reviewed here), a seemingly incredible story is reduced to just a few sentences.

It’s the early days of the colony, 1813 to be exact and Molony writes about the convicts being sent to Tasmania, or as it was then known, “Van Diemen’s Land”.

Molony writes: “The first direct consignment of 200 male convicts arrived in Hobart in 1812, but a vessel carrying female convicts was captured by an American privateer. The women were put down on an island in the Atlantic on 17 January 1813 and never heard of again.”

According to Molony, an entire ship full of female convicts had been taken prisoner and deposited on an unnamed island in the middle of the ocean, their fates an unsolved mystery.

I was utterly intrigued by this strange and disturbing story, and eager to know more.

While Molony did not have the luxury of Google when he wrote his book (published in 1987), he was a renowned historian and academic being the Emeritus Professor of History at the Australian National University. So my immediate instinct was to completely trust his version of events. But still the sentence nagged at me. How could a whole ship of female convicts completely vanish? Didn’t someone try to find out what happened to them?

While Molony may have dismissed it as just a footnote in the history of Australia, I was keen to find out as much as I could about the Emu, the convicts on board and the events that had sealed their mysterious fate.

Entirely untrue

Very quickly, I found a lot of information about what happened to the Emu, and I have to report that Molony’s simple verdict that the convicts onboard “were never heard of again” is entirely untrue.

In a fact, an entire book has been written about the ship and the convicts on board titled: “Journey to a New Life: The Story of the Ships Emu in 1812 and Broxbornebury in 1814, Including Crew, Female Convicts and Free Passengers on Board” by Elizabeth Hook.

Hook (now Beth Taylor } is a descendent of one of the convicts aboard the Emu, Jane Jones.

Jones, like so many of those sent to Australia, was convicted of a rather petty crime at a time when Britain was a highly unequal society, where the middle and upper classes lived well and the lower classes struggled to survive.

Aged just 17, she was convicted of theft in 1812 after she and a younger accomplice broke into a public house in London and were caught in the act of stealing a large quantity of food and money. Jones was sentenced to death, but because of her young age and being “of good character” (her father was a glassmaker) her sentence was commuted to transportation to the fledgling colony of NSW for life.

(You can read the entire Old Bailey trial transcript here).

She was put on the Emu, a merchant ship built in Liverpool which set sail in October 1812. Jones was one of 49 female convicts. Rather than never being heard of again – as Molony claimed – she did reach Sydney, but only in July 1814 and on a different ship, and after a hellish experience that lasted almost two years.

Molony was correct about the initial fate of the Emu. It was indeed captured by a privateer, the 18-gun Holkar, led Captain J. Rolland. A privateer was a US-government sanctioned ship whose task it was to steal British ships and their cargo.

The taking of the Emu occurred at particularly treacherous time to be sailing the seas as Britain was at war with the United States, a conflict sparked by maritime disputes and known as the War of 1812.

Journey to Cape Verde

As to that unnamed island in the Atlantic Ocean Molony says the crew and convicts aboard the Emu were dumped on, it was St Vincent (now Sao Vicente) in the Cape Verde islands, about 840 km west of Dhaka, Senegal. According to numerous trustworthy online accounts, the 22 crew of the Emu and the 49 female convicts were put ashore on January 17,1813 at Porte Grande.

View of downtown Mindelo, Bay of Porte Grande (Photo credit: ElsondeMadrid, Wikipedia)

Porte Grande is a bay on the North Coast of Sao Vicente, and is where the island’s main city of Mindelo is situated today. Discovered by the Portuguese in the 1460s, the Cape Verdes were populated by Portugese settlers who were allowed to keep slaves.

At the time the female convicts were put down at Porte Grande, the Portuguese-owned island was recovering as settlers returned following a devastating drought.

Final journey to Sydney

The female convicts and crew spent 12 months on St Vincent before being picked up by the Isabella and returned to Britain. Here they were put on a hulk (a floating prison) in Portsmouth Harbour for four months and then put on another ship, the Broxbornebury and transported to Port Jackson in the colony of NSW, departing in February 1814.

Beth Taylor, in her post on Convictrecords.com.au about her “3X great-grandmother” Jane Jones, notes that while there was no official record of what happened to the women convicts, their children and the crew during their stay on St Vincent, “an unverified report states that they were looked after by Catholic nuns. One of the women, Elizabeth King, died on the island on the 29th of January 1813”.

Illustration of a hulk or prison ship (Credit/source: The Museum of History NSW)

Taylor writes: “They arrived back at Portsmouth England (via a journey to Bear Haven, Ireland), about the 12th of October 1813, only for the authorities to be told the women were “….in a state of nakedness and inadvisable of their being landed…” They were kept on board in the harbour for a total of four months until another ship was made ready for a voyage to the Colony, which was the Broxbornebury in February 1814, along with an extra eighty-five female convicts.

Taylor continues: “Not all the thirty-nine remaining women from the Emu made the journey to New South Wales. Five convicts were transferred to the Captivity prison hulk ship in Portsmouth Harbour. Four of these women were granted Full Pardons and one died on the hulk ship. For the other thirty-four it had been a long voyage when they finally arrived in Sydney in July 1814, twenty months after first embarking on the Emu!”

After a long, exhausting and terrifying ordeal that lasted nearly two years. Jane Jones would have been just 19 when she arrived in the fledgling city of Sydney. She did, however, live long life in NSW, dying on the 24th of April 1868, aged 73. Her occupation is listed on convictrecords.com.au as “servant”.

The story of Jane Jones

I contacted Beth Taylor to ask if she knew of Molony’s book and his error about the Emu.

She replied a few days later that she had never heard of the book I’d read “so did not know about the mistake regarding the ship Emu“.

She went on to say: “I first heard about the Emu in the mid 1980s when I started researching my family tree & found my 3X great-grandmother Jane Jones was a convict onboard. The story had been passed down many generations & about how she had met her husband-to-be, a free passenger, John Stilwell, on the ship Broxbornebury.

“At that time, I did most of my researching at the Mitchell Library [part of the NSW State Library] in Sydney, but it wasn’t until years later when I found I had many other relatives, free & convict, on the Broxbornebury, that I looked into it further & attempted to confirm the story of the Emu.

“This was confirmed in The Convict Ships 1787-1868 by Charles Bateson, page 191. Quite a long story about what happened & it was first published in 1959.”

That’s almost 30 years before Molony researched and wrote his Australian history book.

Beth added that she undertook further research online in 2000, which she incorporated into the third edition of her book, published in 2014.

After corresponding with Beth, I came across another entry about Jane Jones on a website called immigrationplace.com.au, which fills in quite a few blanks about her rather extraordinary life as does a detailed entry on People Australia (a website of the Australian National University).

It seems that Jane’s luck changed when she met John Stilwell on board the Broxbornebury. Stilwell was a steward of the surgeon Sir John Jamison who was also travelling to Sydney aboard the same ship.

It appears Stilwell used his relationship with Sir John to secure her a job as a housekeeper at one of his properties, the Westmoreland Arms Hotel, where Stilwell was installed as publican and manager. The alternative, had she not met Stilwell, was to be sent to another hellish institution, the “Female Factory at Parramatta” where unmarried female convicts lived like slaves and in solitary confinement in an imposing sandstone building on the banks of the Parramatta River.

Jane Jones married Stilwell, had five children with him and received a full pardon from Governor Macquarie in 1820. Rather than leave the colony as she could have done, Jones stayed in NSW, had another six children with another ex-convict John Webster (Stilwell ran into financial problems, abandoned Jane and their children and returned to Britain in 1825) and later moved to Goulburn, where Webster became a butcher.

“John died on 28th February 1842 aged 44 years. Jane died of ‘old age’ in her house in Auburn Street, Goulburn on 24th April 1868 aged 74 years. It is believed they are both buried in the Presbyterian section of the original burial ground, Mortis Road Cemetery,” according to Immigrationplace.com.au.

Mortis Road Cemetry, Goulburn, the final resting place of Jane Jones (Pic: https://www.goulburnhistoriccemeteries.org/mortis-street/)

Jones is just one of the 34 original Emu convicts who came to Sydney in 1814. There are fascinating stories of the other women who made it to Sydney aboard the Broxbournebury, some of which you can read here. Today hundreds if not thousands of the descendants of these brave women live in Australia.

Reconsidering Molony’s error

Returning to Molony’s error, I do wonder – given the fact there were texts available, and he was a very experienced historian – how he managed to get the story of the Emu so badly wrong. Charles Bateson’s book about convict ships, which Beth Taylor used as a reference for her own book, was published – as I mentioned earlier in 1959 – and would presumably been available to Molony.

It remains a mystery as to what source material he relied on to come to the conclusion that the Emu and its crew were put down on an island somewhere and never heard from again.

He might be a bit embarrassed about that error were he aware of it, but I am certain he would have been utterly intrigued, as I was, by the story of what actually happened.

I’m currently reading a second, more comprehensive Australian history book, titled Great Southern Land by Frank Welsh (published in 2004) and am intrigued to see if the story of the Emu is given more prominence, and whether Welsh got the facts correct! Stay tuned!

The Bob Dylan project: Album 1, Bob Dylan (1962)

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I came up with the idea to listen and review every single Bob Dylan studio album out of the blue, on New Year’s Eve, 2025. (I guess you could call it a kind of New Year’s resolution).

It seemed like a cool and interesting project, and one that I could do easily with that great modern invention: Spotify.

Imagine having to buy or borrow the 40 albums that the prolific Dylan recorded over the past 63-odd years. It would be quite the task and bloody expensive too.

A young Bob Dylan with Joan Baez. Copyright-free image via Pixabay

Why Bob Dylan? I, like millions of other people, have long admired his incredible songwriting, guitar playing and unique singing style.

As a child and then as a teenager I’d heard of Bob Dylan and some of his most famous signature tracks (“Like a Rolling Stone”, “Blowin’ in the Wind”) but I only really got into his music when I purchased a three-CD boxed collection called “Biograph” which had 53 tracks recorded between 1961 and 1981. It introduced me to a much wider collection of Dylan songs, many of which became some of my favourites: “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar“, “Tangled Up in Blue“, “Senor“, “Solid Rock” and “Blind Willie McTell“.

I have since listened to a lot of Dylan albums (at least a dozen) and some of my favourites are “Blood on the Tracks“, “Desire” and “Street Legal“.

But there are so many albums and songs of his I have never heard, so why not take a deep dive into his enormous catalogue and see what other gems I can discover.

A couple of important things to mention. I’ve deliberately not read other reviews of the albums I have listened to before writing my own. I didn’t want to be swayed by the opinions of others. These are purely my opinions and impressions after hearing the album.

However, I have looked up the songs to see if Dylan wrote them himself, to read the lyrics and to do a bit of research about some of them.

Album cover, Copyright Columbia Records. Low-res version used under Fair Use for review purposes.

So here it goes. Number 1 of 40, Bob Dylan’s first album.

Bob Dylan (1962)

Length: 36min, 54 sec

Number of songs: 13

Best tracks: All of them, but top picks: The House of the Rising Sun, Baby Let me Follow You Down, In My Time of Dying, Talkin New York

If I had to choose choose just one track: Baby Let me Follow You Down

Freshlyworded rating: 9/10

Thoughts:

Released after Dylan had begun to make his name as a folk singer in New York’s Greenwich Village art, music and poetry scene; his unbelievable debut album was simply titled Bob Dylan. He was 20 or 21 when he recorded it.

The album cover features a fresh-faced (one could almost say baby-faced) Dylan his fingers clasping the neck of his acoustic guitar. He’s wearing a winter jacket with the collar turned up, yellow sweatshirt underneath and a black cap. He stares at the camera in a rather contemplative, serene pose.

I’d give this album 10/10 but have stuck with 9/10 because nothing in life is perfect. Also, to my surprise, Dylan only wrote two of the songs on the album. They are “Talking New York” about his arrival in New York from Minnesota and trying to make it in Greenwich Village. It was the first song Dylan ever wrote and recorded and showcases his songwriting and storytelling abilities. It really takes the listener back to that time, when Bob Dylan was just a young kid with a guitar and (excuse the corniness) ” a dream”.

I walked down there and ended up
In one of them coffee-houses on the block
I get on the stage to sing and play
Man there said, “Come back some other day
You sound like a hillbilly
We want folksingers here”

The other song he wrote for the album was a “Song to Woody” which was a tribute to his idol, folk singer Woody Guthrie.

It includes Dylan’s amazing version of the classic American folk song “Man of Constant Sorrow” (a great version also made its way into the Coen Brother’s movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?) and an American gospel song written by Blind Willie Johnson “In My Time of Dying”.

Other standouts are Dylan’s soulful and foreboding version of “The House of the Rising Sun” and one of my favourite Dylan songs, his rendition of traditional folk song, “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” where he begins the recording telling listeners that he first heard sung by blues guitarist Eric Von Schmidt in the “green pastures of Harvard University”.

Listening to this album, it make sense why many fans were outraged when Dylan started playing the electric guitar, given how deeply he was initially embedded in folk music.

If you’re looking to get into Dylan, there is not better place to start then his sensational debut album.

Delving into the history of modern Australia

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There have been dozens of books written about the history of modern Australia since the arrival of the first fleet of English convicts to Sydney Cove in 1788.

The latest book hot off the shelves is Australia A History by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

I haven’t read it yet but have been delving into the story of European settlement via a much older book, which I bought for $2 at a book sale at the Athenaeum Library on Collins Street in the Melbourne CBD.

Seeped in history (the Athenaeum Library is one of Melbourne oldest cultural institutions), it seemed an appropriate place to pick up a copy of The Penguin Bicentennial History of Australia by the late historian John Molony.

Published in 1987, it traces the 200 years (199 to be exact) since the arrival of the first fleet and finishes with the prime ministership of Bob Hawke and the success of Paul Hogan‘s Crocodile Dundee.

While it obviously misses out on everything that happened in Australia from 1988 onwards, I found it to be a really good summary – in less than 400 pages – of the key events that shaped the fledgling nation since those first majestic-looking e ships, laden with convicts, sailed through the Sydney Heads towards what is now Circular Quay.

Molony, who wrote many history books, was Emeritus Professor of History at the Australian National University. He died in 2018 at the ripe old age of 91, meaning he was alive for 61 of the 200 years encapsulated in the book.

Interestingly, I was midway through the book, when I happened to be in Sydney and visiting Gap Park in Watson’s Bay. Here you can stand at the edge of a cliff face that plunges into the turbulent Tasman Sea below (an infamous Sydney suicide spot) and look out over the Sydney Heads, the series of headlands that market the entrance to Sydney Harbour.

It is through this 2km wide entrance that the 11 ships carrying 732 convicts sailed through and made anchor at Sydney Cove, now known as Circular Quay.

As Molony describes it rather movingly in the opening chapter of his book:

High summer saw a fleet of eleven ships take up moorings at a small cove in a noble and extensive harbour on the eastern coastline of the southern continent. A few dark-skinned people of the Cadigal band, whose ancestral home that place had been for age upon age, watched closely from nearby scrub. The date was 26 January 1788 and the newcomers called the cove after an English public servant named Sydney…The modern history of the world’s oldest continent had commenced with the coming of a new people.

(In fact, as Molony’s book explains, the fleet first made shore first at what is now Botany Bay (where Sydney Airport is) but due to the “infertility of the soil” and a lack of fresh water, it was quickly discarded, and the weary travellers travelled a few miles to the north to the “finest harbour in the world”

237 years later, as I looked out over the Heads towards the sparkling Sydney skyline, I was filled with a sense of awe imagining these wooden ships, laden with their weary human cargo, making their way into a vast and primitive land, with not a single structure in sight.

And what did the weary English convicts, after a gruelling eight-month voyage from the docks of Portsmouth, make of what would be for most their permanent home?

No doubt they were filled with dread and fear (as were their aboriginal onlookers) and a longing to return the urban environment of England; the busy streets filled with people and buildings.

Gap Park, with a spectacular view over the Sydney Heads

Over the next 406 pages, Molony tells the story of the birth of modern, mostly white Australia. There’s a lot to get through, but he does a good job describing in an entertaining, easy-to-read manner the key events and colonial personalities that shaped what became the Australia we are familiar with today.

Looking out over the ocean towards a city of some 5.5 million people, with the Manhattan skyline of its Central Business District, the modern wonders of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House and the densely populated suburbs around the harbour, it is a stunning visual reminder of the pace of development that occurred over a relatively short period of time.

And to think that nothing was here, not a single building was standing 237 years ago, whilst Europe and the colonial parent (the British empire) were full of teeming metropolises.

In many respects it’s a miracle that Australia thrived at all. As Molony describes it, the early years of the colony of New South Wales was full of great hardship and suffering: starvation loomed as crops failed and desperate convicts dreamt of escape. In one instance, a group of convicts headed off into the bush, believing they could walk to China. For nearly all Australia would be a life sentence.

At first it was a primitive existence, with public hangings becoming a common occurrence. The first person hanged in the colony was a 17-year-old boy named Thomas Barrett, for stealing.

But slowly, as Molony describes it, an agricultural-based economy is established, centred around the production of fine wool and wheat (a sector which still thrives to this day). Amid the search for arable farmland, the colony expanded into Parramatta and then other regions of the country. Tasmania developed a whaling industry, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide were founded and settlers travelled west to establish Perth.

Then came a momentous event: the Victorian Gold rush, which turned Melbourne into “Marvelous Melbourne” and brought settlers from all over the colony, and abroad to make their fortune. This included the Chinese, who were the subject of a well-entrenched colonial racism. At its height- as I learnt – Victoria accounted for 40% of the world’s gold production.

Another defining moment, and one where Australia lost its innocence, was the Great War in which thousands of young Australian men lost their lives or came back injured and shell shock. The horrific, but courageous battle of Gallipoli that left nearly 9,000 diggers dead.

Molony writes of the end of the war:

It was Anzac Day, 25 April, the day of the landing at Gallipoli, that overshadowed memory and made all new and vital in significance for it was seen as the day on which the nation had shaken off the bonds of subservience and Australians had come to know themselves. [Prime minister] Billy Hughes saw it a little differently. To him victory in the war meant national safety, liberty and the safeguarding of the White Australia policy. Despite some signs to the contrary, Hughes was still convinced that Australians were ‘more British than the people of Great Britain’.

This long adherence to the White Australia policy, one borne out of British racism and fear of invasion from the East, is remarkable given how Australia changed into a successful, and vibrant multi-cultural society (notwithstanding the recent re-emergence of a wave of anti-immigrant feeling fuelled by a cost of living and housing crisis).

For so long Australia had been a land only for Europeans, and it took visionaries like Gough Whitlam to dismantle its final elements and welcome Asian and people of colour to our shores. Even so, by the 1980s, after nearly 200 years of European settlement, “the new nation [of about 16 million] was still predominantly white, spoke mainly English of the Australian variety, owed allegiance to the English Queen and observed laws derived from British sources”.

What I wanted to get out of the book, was a well-rounded understanding of the making of Australia, and Molony’s did a good job of that.

While it impossible to include in detail everything that happened over 200 years, I felt the story he told captured all the important elements without too much politicising, and with some sympathy for the plight of the aboriginal people, whose suffering was immense.

Most striking is his portrayal of the pace of development, how Australia so quickly build up its cities and towns, established a civil and well-functioning society that very early on and to this day, is among the greatest places to live in a troubled world.

It may be an old book, but the Penguin Bicentennial History of Australia is a great place to start for anyone wanting to learn the history of the country of their birth or – as in my case – of their adopted homeland.