A great song makes quantum leaps
“A great song mutates, makes quantum leaps, turns up again like the prodigal son. It crosses genres. Could be punk rock, ragtime, folk-rock, or zydeco, and can be played in a lot of different styles, multiple styles. Bobby Bland could do it, Gene and Eunice, so could Rod Stewart, even Gene Autry. Coltrane could do it wordless,” says Dylan in the Wall Street Journal interview, December 2022.
Dylan’s reverence for songs is proverbial and well-documented. Not least by the master himself; the 2022 essay collection The Philosophy Of Modern Song is Dylan’s wondrous, respectful tribute to the art of songwriting. Wondrous, as it is sometimes surprising to see Dylan placing songs on a pedestal that the average reader would consider to be substandard, standing way below even lesser Dylan songs, songs like “CIA Man” or Johnnie Ray’s “The Little White Cloud That Cried”. Still, we know that about Dylan too – his humble admiration and respect for songs and artists that in our eyes and ears really could not stand comparison with Dylan’s own artistry and oeuvre.
On 19 June 2020, Rough And Rowdy Ways, the 39th studio album by the then 79-year-old Nobel Prize winner, is released, and in the three songs on Side A, Dylan seems to want to address this artistically, the art of songwriting. And not only in words, in the lyrics, but also by demonstrating it in the musical accompaniment of “I Contain Multitudes”, “False Prophet” and “My Own Version Of You”: quantum leaping, genre-crossing songs.
In Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side A, Dylan scholar Jochen Markhorst delves into the overwhelming lyrics, irresistible musical accompaniment, rich music-historical roots and literary brilliance of the three great songs on this record side – and shows why the album belongs in the outer category of albums like Highway 61 Revisited, Blood On The Tracks and Time Out Of Mind.
The book is available on Amazon. The German and Dutch translations are in preparation and will be published in the coming weeks.
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Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
- Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
- Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
- Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
- Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
- Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
- Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
- Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
- John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
- Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
- Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
- Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2nd Big Bang
- Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
- Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
- Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
- Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
- I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
- Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
- Bob Dylan’s 1971
- Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door
- It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry b/w Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Bob Dylan’s melancholy blues
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side A