No Nobel Prize for Music: Positively Fourth Street

By Tony Attwood

If ever Bob Dylan was giving us a message in consecutive songs it surely was in 1965 when he composed, one after the other, “Can you please crawl out your window” followed by “Positively Fourth Street”

The disdain in both these songs however was not new for in this run of eight successive compositions virtually every one (possibly except “From a Buick 6”, although that included the lines about a “graveyard woman” who is a “junkyard angel”) seems to be about nothing making sense, life being a jungle, and above all a world full of disdain.   That notion that everyone else is unworthy of consideration is mixed with that of nothing making any sense, through this whole sequence of songs leading up to Fourth Street.

If you have been following my ramblings in this series, you will know the songs I have in mind, including particularly Desolation Row in which Bob is inviting the recipient of his message to meet him at the bottom and please crawl out your window in which he is expressing his exasperation at the subject of his song.

There have been some covers of course, but not many and Cash Box described the version by the Vacels as a “hard-driving, bluesy message-song which utilizes some vastly different but interesting melodic constructions.”   But what neither that publication nor Billboard mentioned directly was how negative the song was – although that band also recorded “Please Crawl Out”.

In an era when songs were about love and lost love these songs (both “4th Street” and “Please Crawl” were about sheer dislike .  Indeed things don’t get more negative than the title of “Please Crawl Out” nor more negative than the opening line of Fourth Street.    In fact, though of course I don’t know who you are dear reader, I am sure you know…

You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winnin'

One might ask, “Just how nasty do you want to get?”   And the answer comes with looking at the last verse

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you

I’ve had some pretty nasty things said to me, but I am not sure anyone has gone that far.

So that much is clear – the lyrics are nasty and very unlike anything we have heard within pop and rock before – or indeed very much since.   We might think of “How can you treat me this way” but really there is no much comparison.

However the big question for Bob was what to do about the music?   With “Please crawl out your window” he used an accompaniment that sounds awkward and a chord sequence that is most unusual in pop and rock.  In that song what makes the music sound so edgy is the use of unusual chords in sequence such as having two lines that run from A minor to C.   I find it impossible to think of another song that does this

   Am                    C
you know that he has no intentions

        Am                      C          
That he needs you to test his inventions.

It really is an extraordinary sequence, helping to create a very edgy sound and what surely must be one of the ultimate songs of disdain.

What Dylan does in Fourth Street however is use a standard set of chords in a standard way.  But he gets the effect of tedium and hopelessness by repeating the same chordal and melodic sequence not just in each verse, but keeping the two two-line sequences very similar

G         Am
You got a lot of nerve
C                 G
To say you are my friend
G            D
When I was down
C        Em          D
You just stood there grinning

Thus we get that exact same sequence and exact same melody a dozen times without variation.  There isn’t even an ending.  The song just fades out.   It is the perfect expression of tedium – even the melody line and accompaniment stay the same throughout.  And indeed, through the various takes, the lyrics hardly change.

Yet the song works brilliantly, and Bob has played it 359 times in concert.   So what makes this happen?

That I have trouble in answering because the strict structure of the song makes it very hard to find much new that can be done with the song.

You can skip forward to around 4 minutes 45″ on the above and hear a different version – but in reality not that different.  It is a sorrowful rather than an angry version, and in that regard interesting, but the structure remains unchanged, and hence so does the song.

It is perhaps the way that the lady pretends that nothing happened that is the most shocking

You see me on the street, you always act surprised
You say "how are you?", "good luck", but ya don't mean it
When you know as well as me, you'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once and scream it

And really that gets to the heart of it all for me.   She has treated him so badly, but then pretends nothing happens – hence the music just goes round and round 12 times across six verses.   In those few words Dylan captures the world many of us discover – where total denial of what happened in the past is seen as a way of excusing an individual’s actions.   It never has been, and never will be yet people do it all the time, and Dylan captures that perfectly.

And for that, as much as for anything else, I am so grateful for this song.

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you

But there is another point.   For it is the sheer repetition of this approach by many individuals that makes the situation this song describes so appalling.  It is not about one act of betrayal, one broken date, because a “better offer” came along.  It is about the fact that such behaviour goes on and on.

Which is why there are only two musical lines, repeated, in each verse.  For that is what the girl in this song, and people who behave like this, do over and over.   Their method of living is hurt – repeat – hurt – repeat, and Bob captured this totally in the song.   Bob gave up on the song 12 years ago, but for my money, he could bring it back any day he wishes.

After all it is the sheer repetition of the music that makes that song.

The story so far

• 1: We might have noted the musical innovations more
• 2: From Hattie Carroll to the incoming ship
• 3: From Times to Percy’s song
• 4: Combining musical traditions in unique ways
• 5: Using music to take us to a world of hope
• 6: Chimes of Freedom and Tambourine Man
• 7: Bending the form to its very limits
• 8: From Denise to Mama
• 9: Balled in Plain D
• 10: Black Crow to All I really want to do
• 11: I’ll keep it with mine
• 12: Dylan does gothic and the world ends
• 13: The Gates of Eden
• 14: After the Revolution – another revolution
• 15: Returning to the roots (but with new chords)
• 16. From “It’s all right” to “Angelina”. What happened?
• 17: How strophic became something new: Love is just a four letter word
• 18: Bob reaches the subterranean
• 19: The conundrum of the song that gets worse
• 20: Add one chord, keep it simple, sing of love
• 21: It’s over. Start anew. It’s the end.
• 22: Desolation Row: perhaps the most amazing piece of popular music ever written
• 23: Can you please crawl out your window