24/12/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Amidst all the moral relativism of Dylan, all the references to the fact that “you are right on your side, and I’m all right on mine”, all the comments about not following leaders, and the commentary that says that everyone is just a pawn in everyone else’s game, suddenly like a beacon of certainty there is When the Ship Comes In.

Never has Dylan been more certain than here that there is an answer, that you are wrong and these guys (whoever they are) are right.   There is a truth, and I am part of it.

The image of the ship itself takes us back to earlier days – to the time when the British explored the new world.  Wealthy men paid for the ships to sail to the Americas, and if one ever returned then even greater wealth and fortune was yours.  Your ship came in, and you really were made for ever more.

Dylan retains the nautical imagery through the opening verse and a half, and its all a jolly caper of exploration, until we suddenly have

And the words that are used for to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they’re spoken.

The song is now so familiar to us after all these years it is hard to remember what a jolt those lines brought on first hearing.  Words getting the ship confused?   What is all this about?   Every reference until then has been to the nautical adventure.

Then he is back to talking about the ship literally, until  it is the final verse where Dylan suddenly develops this alternative theme, and takes us into a realisation that the ship is a metaphor for change.  We are the new army.  We are the revolution.  Stand aside, for we are the future.  Times they are a changing.  We are David, you are Goliath.

The trouble is we have no idea who or what we are – at least not from this song.  Are we the Jews entering the promised land?  Or the young throwing aside the President of the United States?  Are we overthrowing capitalism, or are we saying no to war and bringing in the world of peace and love.

We don’t know.  In the end it is the sheer vigour and vitality of the song and the guitar playing that carries us through so that after a couple of listens we really don’t care.   It is enough to know that somewhere there is an answer.

The classical structure of the song (every chord is one taken from the major scale – no flattened sevenths or thirds here), emphasises the straightness of the song – this is the positive side of folk singing (a total contrast to North Country Blues.)

We can join in the celebration – and indeed we should.  Because the whole wide world is watching.  Who cares if we don’t know why.  Let’s just enjoy it while we can.

Posted in Times they are a changing, No Direction Home, Bootleg Series volume 3, The Songs | Print | No Comments »

14/12/2008 by Tony Attwood.

What is it that makes Dylan stay with Maggie’s Farm?  Hardly a tour goes by without it being wheeled out, it has been on over half a dozen albums and it was part of the notorious Newport Festival programme where the sound system produced a noise that excluded Dylan’s voice and it is actually not a very interesting piece of music.  So why do we still get given it?

Musically it’s a variant 12 bar blues with very little by way of chordal change – just one chord change from the tonic to the dominant in most versions – and even that cut out on the live version on No Direction Home.

Most commentators see this as a protest against the folk-protest movement.  While folk-protest protested against the stylized thought and life styles of straight culture, so, it is argued, Maggie’s Farm protests against the stylized thought and life style of protest culture.  Dylan is saying “I’m not going to be part of this, any more than I am going to be part of mainstream culture.”

On such an analysis the electric music makes sense in that it is essentially dull and repetitious – which the man forced to follow the views of others (or indeed working manually on the farm) might well feel.  The farm incidentally is supposedly a pun on Silas McGee’s Farm, where Dylan had performed in 1963.

So far, so good, but the problem with an uninspiring piece of music which makes the point about the fixed attitudes of both sides of the argument, is that it remains an uninspiring piece of music, no matter how many times you play it.  The singer might well have a “headful of ideas, That are drivin’ me insane” but that still doesn’t mean either that the music has to be so uninteresting, or the piece performed so often for the message to get across.

The clue as to Dylan’s attitude comes perhaps with the fact that although it is not necessarily the first song in a performance, it is an early song – a statement about what this is all about.  In that case it is a statement saying, “no ideas are fixed, we break them all down.”

Whether, “Then he fines you every time you slam the door,” actually is a note about a folk club where people are as constrained in their behaviour as in any other form of life, we’ll probably never know – but in the end that’s still not the main point.

What we actually have is a contribution to a much more interesting debate.  Pre-Electric-Dylan the “rule” was that black blues musicians played the electric guitar, but white protest musicians played the acoustic.  That was one of the strangest conventions there ever was, with strong racist as well as musical undertones.  For pointing out the absurdity of this situation, Dylan deserves all the accolades.   But maybe there could have been a better vehicle for this than Maggie’s Farm.

Well, I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.
They sing while you slave and I just get bored.
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.

Posted in Hard Rain, At Boudakan, Greatest Hits Volume 2, Bringing it all Back Home, Essential Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, The Songs | Print | No Comments »

13/12/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Sometimes it is a little too easy to forget just how perfect some of the early Dylan works are, and that is why the demo version of Don’t think twice is so welcome on the “No Direction Home” album. Beautifully understated, lovingly caressed, it seems the most perfect version of the song ever.

This is the start of the goodbye songs that occupied Dylan so much in the early years – “You just kind of wasted my precious time” – so much the precursor of It ain’t me babe and the other early songs of that genre.

From the instrumental introduction there is the feeling of oneness between Dylan, the song and the guitar. Through this early version you feel for him, and you even feel for the girl who is cast as the outsider – Dylan walks off with the guitar and the song, the girl has nothing save humiliation.

After all, “You’re the reason I’m travelling on” is one of the harshest lines anyone has ever sung to a woman.

It is such a perfectly simple song – the simple strophic verse-verse-verse, which makes the words become understated. Sometimes it seems that “I give her my heart but she wanted my soul” needs to be accompanied by a clash of drums, with possibly some lighting and thunder to help us along.

And this simplicity is why it can work. It is so beautifully understated. Even though “You just wasted my precious time” we have that simple chord structure and elegant melody. How could someone write such a beautiful farewell song?

Posted in No Direction Home, Freewheelin, The Songs | Print | No Comments »

21/11/2008 by Tony Attwood.

Of course you never know with Dylan, but it is hard to put any interpretation on “She Belongs to Me” other than that it is about a child – a daughter most like, but it could be the daughter of a friend.

Never has a 12 bar blues sounded so beautiful, so relaxed, so warm, so kind. Perhaps a listener who is in his 20s smoking dope might not find it so, but anyone who has a daughter instantly sees it, feels it, warms to it.

If the lyrics don’t convey the message then the music and the accompaniment does. The most famous version of course is on Bringing it all Back Home, but there are also examples on the curious Self Portrait album, recorded at the Isle of Wight, and a truly lovely version on “No Direction Home”. This last version is perhaps the earliest attempt by Dylan to have an instrumental break without a lead instrument – something that he worked on over and over again in the concerts and recordings of the late 90s and early 21^st century.

The girl in the song has everything – she never stumbles, she has an Egyptian ring, she’s got everything she needs…

Of course it is a child – the child who can play forever with the simplest toys, who can paint or crayon a picture and make it exactly what she wants it to be. She is the girl you idolise, the girl you bow down to, the girl whose birthday you make into the biggest occasion in the history of the world. The girl to whom you want to say, “I made you, you are everything, this is the world I give you.”

And of course you buy her toys.

What father would not have wanted to give her such a beautiful eloquent testimony as this elegant song, in that most simple and traditional of formats, the 12 bar blues with its repeated opening line.

Quite how it is possible to interpret the song differently, and still make sense of the title is beyond me – although I must admit much of the world is beyond me. The girl has the freedom of the world – which only the young have. And yet she belongs to the adult in her life. Only with a child is the title, the general lyric, and the final line about the trumpet and drum meaningful, without getting into the most convoluted analysis of the trumpet and drum, not to mention the title and half of the lyrics being symbolic for something else.

In a case like this, let’s live with Occam’s Razor – if there is a simple explanation why not take it, and make it so.

If you haven’t heard the version on No Direction Home, give it a try. It is just something to behold.

Posted in Bringing it all Back Home, Self Portrait, No Direction Home | Print | No Comments »