By Tony Attwood
1993
The last article in this series was Where the lyrics find new lands, keep the music simple and it made a point I should have spotted a long time ago. What finally tipped me off in terms of the importance of this issue were the last few songs I considered: Desolation Row, Can you please crawl out your window, and Positively Fourth Street. For in the first and last of those three, the message is complex, and so the music kept simple. In between it is the reverse – all Bob is saying is “Go Away” but the music is among the most complex he has created.
Now the point here in this series is that I am writing each article and publishing it on the same day – if you are kind enough to be reading the series, you are reading it as I write it. So as I write this, I don’t know if my new theory of Dylan either writing simple music and complex lyrics, or the reverse, but never complex lyrics and music together, is right.
But as I look at the next songs on the list in the order that they were written I can see that the dominant theme for Dylan through the rest of 1965 was in fact, that the world either made no sense at all, or if it did, that sense most certainly was not clear. But either way, Bob did not care much for the people he met. “Disdain” is a word I have used a number of times – indeed, I have used the phrase “Songs of Disdain” to describe the genre. I think that is a phrase of my own, but if I have nicked it from someone else, my apologies, and I will credit the originator if it is other than myself, as soon as I find out.
The www.genius.com website has the comment that ‘“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” is a tale of one man’s surreal misadventures in the tropics, featuring allusions to Malcolm Lowry, Arthur Rimbaud, and Jack Kerouac.
“Recorded on August 2, 1965, it took 16 takes for Dylan and the band to successfully record the lyrically dense song.”
But there is a problem with that comment because we don’t know how many takes other songs took and why. Of course, we know there are a few songs that were accepted by Bob on the first take, and we also know that sometimes he would accept a take even with a mistake on it (as with the bass guitar slip in the final verse of “Visions”). So it is not clear what the number of takes signifies. Does it show us that Bob had not rehearsed the song fully before entering the studio? Or that he was having a bad day? Or that someone kept sneezing? Or is the producer afraid to suggest that something Bob likes is still not good enough?
Such questions lead me to I think we need to be careful with “takes,” not least because I have never seen details of what information or music Bob gives his fellow musicians, once they got into the studio to record albums with full band backing. I mean, did Bob just play them the song once or twice, or did he give them sheet music or what?
Anyway, moving on, after the nether world of Positively Fourth Street, the opening line of which was “You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend” we get Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues which in my classification chart I put down as a song of “Total despair, an absolute nightmare.”
Indeed, I am not sure that most people who listen to the song actually know that Rue Morgue doesn’t exist but is an imaginary place created by Edgar Allan Poe in short story, aptrly named “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” But once you know that, the meaning becomes clearer.
Also at this stage, perhaps I should add for the benefit of non-American listeners to Bob’s music, there is no Housing Project Hill – a housing project is perhaps best described for UK readers as a Council Estate.
I won’t go on with the “translations” but in essence Bob is describing life among those “on the way down” only to admit that he’s been “on the way down” too, has been travelling the country to find something better, but can’t, and so is going back home. In short, the whole country is rotting, physically and mentally.
Now I suspect Bob expected everyone to get these allusions straight off, not thinking that among his audience could be some teenage English guys who had never been to America. But even so, for these people, Tom Thumb is just a person out of his depth metaphorically and quite possibly literally.
That notion as the explanation of the song is hardly complex, but the allusions that Bob makes to the characters give it more complexity than the simple explanation makes it sound. If we are not prepared for all these characters turning up at once in a song, it certainly can sound confusing.
So to counteract this, Dylan gives us once more a 12-bar blues sequence for the chords. The melody in line two is a repeat of the melody in line one, while the final lines take us to an expected high point and back down.
This is not to say it is a poorly written song – far from it. But it is to make the point that once again, when the lyrics get incredibly complex (and with all these characters turning up in the story surely we can’t hear it as anything other than complexity when we do turn to study the lyrics) then Bob keeps the music simple. The form is strophic – the most simple form there is – and within that, musically it is a 12 bar blues – again the most simple of songs.
This is once more not to say that Dylan is doing this deliberately – I’ve no idea if that is so, but it works. Complex music, simple lyrics. Complex lyrics, simple music.
The only problem with the approach is that we’ve heard a lot of 12-bar blues, and there is a limit as to just how many such songs the audience will accept, no matter how inventive the lyrics.
Bob has however, stuck with the song, playing across sixty years of touring. This is from 2012, from the Never Ending Tour series, of course. This is now much more clearly a 12 bar blues than it sounded in the original recording, where my feeling is that the aim was to hide that 12-bar format. It has, however, become more reflective.
Compare that if you have the time, with the 1993 version at the top of this piece. Here, the chord sequence has a couple of extra chords added, and it is almost a dance number.
Yes, Bob has taken this simple 12-bar song on a little journey, which of course is not a problem at all, given that we all know the lyrics. But if you have a moment, just consider these recordings: has any of the original meaning remained? Or are we all just having a bit of a bop to a relaxed 12 bar? I rather suspect we are, but then we got the message of the lyrics many decades ago. We’ve had our lives since then. If we understood, then there is probably a fair chance we survived ok, and we don’t need to be told again – so the music cane become more relaxed. We know about these things, and those of us who have lived through it all, have let it all happen. We did nothing to stop it, and one can argue (should one have a mind to) that it is now worse than ever.
But if you are not convinced, may I invite you to listen to the extended instrumental breaks in the 1993 version? Are these the music of warning the kids not to throw their lives away on junk? I think probably not. No,by 1993 it was just a song. A really good song, and a very enjoyable performance. But a song for all that; not a warning. And if you are not convinced, do let this second recording play through to its conclusion. The message is simple, so the music can become more complex – not in terms of the chord sequence, but in terms of the improvisations. We can create entanglement. But that doesn’t actually change anything, except maybe as we look back at the past we think, actually it wasn’t that bad, was it?
Previously
- 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
- 24: Positively Fourth Street
- 25: Where the lyrics find new lands, keep the music simple