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By Tony Attwood
When I first heard about “What did you hear?” by Steven Rings, I had to admit I was excited, for I have often felt that I was one of a very small crowd in writing about Bob Dylan the composer rather than Bob the lyricist.
And therein was my mistake, for on seeing the word “musician” I immediately made the assumption that the book would be about Bob Dylan the composer, since Bob is self-evidently primarily a composer, although most commentators write about him as if her were a lyricist alone.
But of course, “musician” primarily means a person who performs music professionally, and that is what this book is all about – or at least as far as I have read it. It is a telling of the tale of Bob Dylan, the musical performer. Now, of course, that does mean for the most part the performer of his own works, but the emphasis within the book is that of understanding how Bob performs.
So for me, not the book I thought I might be getting, for if you have been kind enough to glance at any of my reviews in the series “No Nobel Prize for Music”, you will, I hope, have realised that I have an interest in Bob, the “composer” of music, rather than Bob the lyricist or Bob the on-stage performer.
Which is not to say that these alternative Bob attributes (performer, lyricist) are not part of what makes Bob Dylan – of course they are. But my feeling is that we already have a million books on Dylan’s lyrics, and Bob’s ability as a musician is not the reason we listen to his music. It is Bob the composer that draws us to the albums, and Bob the re-arranger and Bob the performer that draws us to the shows. But – and this is central to my thinking – “Bob the composer” (and subsequently “Bob the recording artist” is the most important to most of us, since most of us only have the chance of seeing Bob once or twice a year. Life, relationships, earning money and all that stuff get in the way.
But not only is Rings book not what I thought it might be (which is obviously a matter totally of my fault in believing that others might be thinking the same way as me and wanting to explore Bob’s music), but the book also reveals a difference in the way Rings hears Dylan’s work and I do.
And I come to this point with a certain amount of expertise as I was the author of the “Absolute Highlights” series, which looked for, and gathered together some of the very best performances Bob gave of his own songs during those years of the Never Ending Tour.
Now, to go a bit deeper in relation to Rings’ book I should also explain that my background is in classical music, wherein I studied not just how one might play a Bach Prelude and Fugue or a Beethoven piano sonata, but also the form of the music. Indeed, if you have studied such music, or even taken an interest in it, you will know that a substantial part of the basic understanding of the works of the classical-romantic composers is the form and how they use it. At its simplest, the form of music might be the song, with its structure of verse – verse – verse etc or maybe verse / chorus / verse chorus etc. And then the next variation, adding the “middle 8” (an alternative section) after a couple of verses, to break up the song. At its most complex one might care to listen to and study a few Bach Fugues, or maybe the later Beethoven piano sonatas.
These matters are seemingly not of concern to Steven Rings, and that’s fair enough. But he does comment upon the structure of the songs occasionally, particularly noting the Dylan compositions that are extensively on one note (he calls them “reciting-tone chants” and gives “Maggie’s Farm”, “On the Road Again”, “Bob Dylan’s Dream” etc as examples. contrasting this with songs with two reciting notes, such as “Outlaw Blues”, “Gates of Eden”, “Highway 61 Revisited” etc.
Now I have no argument with an author examining any specific aspect of a musician’s work, of course. I have chosen the form of the music, while here Rings is choosing the melody, or rather lack of it. Fair enough. But I do think that this review does Dylan, the composer, a disservice.
Consider “Bob Dylan’s Dream” for example.
Just listening to the first verse, we have two facts that, from a musical point of view really stand out. First and most obviously, the melody ranges across five notes. Second the chord structure.
But even then, there is more: for example, the rhythmic effect and the issue of the chords. A folk song in G would normally have within its accompaniment the three major chords of that key (G, C and D) and one or two of the minor chords (Am, Bm, Em).
In the “Dream” (above) Dylan uses just four of those chords (G, Am, C and D), so this is a conventional folk-music approach. But what makes this song stand out is the way Dylan uses the chords. The first line finishes on A minor, which is not particularly eccentric or forbidden, but is somewhat unusual. And then, breaking a little more with classic folk tradition at the “I” in “I dreamed” Dylan plays the chord of C, which effectively clashes with the note “D” which is sung. A similar passing “clash” comes with “me” in the phrase “made me sad”. The words “made me” are sung against the chord of C, but the word “me” is sung against the chord of G, which provides that moment of uncertainty (one might say “clash” but that is I feel, too strong a word) before Dylan takes us back to the key chord of G major, for the word “sad”. The annotation below is taken from the Dylan chords website – invariably the site to go to for such information.
G Am
While riding on a train goin' west,
C/g D/f#
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
C /b G C/g G
I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
D C /b G
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.
So what we have is not in any way a reciting tone chant, but a really fine melody, made all the more interesting by the way chord changes and melody, each anticipate or drop behind each other.
Now, to my mind, this is not a composer or folk singer showing off a bit of technique, but rather a composer with an intuitive feeling for the way in which the melody and chordal accompaniment can play one off against the other. It is in fact something utterly appropriate here because this is a song of “one against the other”.
But this is only the start, for what Bob has done here is create a beautiful, simple song, which can then be explored and developed in a way that many songs of more complex creation cannot. Consider, for a moment, this utterly gorgeous version by Judy Collins.
The essence of the song is retained, but the rhythmic effects with the melody are extended and developed – something that can only happen because the original song contains all the elements that allow this to happen. The result is once more a song of sadness within a simple strophic construction, and at the same time, a song which allows multiple musical reinterpretations while the lyrics remain the same.
The changes are indeed subtle, but that is all they need to be, because of the elegance of the original construction.
Now the comment by Rings is about the 115th Dream, not the original Bob Dylan Dream, and I think the first point here is that taking a few single examples to make a point, while those examples can be contradicted by others, does not make for a firm argument.
Yet there is more, because in his review of the 115th Dream Jochen made the point that the song is in “no sense of time”. For the Mayflower sailed in 1620, Moby Dick is set in the 1840s. And then we ignore the semantic oddity to ride on a ship and the seemingly pointless pun to rename Captain Ahab Captain Arab – presumably no more than a nod to Ray Stevens’s Top 10 novelty hit “Ahab The Arab” (1962), the song with the most impressive camel impersonation ever.”
Besides which we once again have five notes used (although you can get away with just singing four since one is little more than a passing note).
Now also included in this put-down list of songs with only a few notes of melody, we also have “Like a Rolling Stone”, and yes indeed, this is true, there is no attractive melody as there is with “Bob Dylan’s Dream”, but that is because of the accompaniment used and the chorus. Listen to the song afresh by hearing just the instrumental accompaniment with its slow rising bass line – something of an innovation since previously most songs that used the technique had a descending bass line.
What we find is that there is still a song there for multiple reasons. One is the organ, playing its now so well-known part, in the chorus. Another is the clear break line between verse and chorus. Another is the upward progression of chords in the verse, answered by two downward progressions near the end of each verse.
My point here is that to focus just on the melody, which is admittedly highly restricted at the start of each verse, and to count the number of different notes used, is to misunderstand the song completely. “Like a Rolling Stone” self-evidently is about a person who once had it all, and now has nothing. Or put another way, it is about losing everything you once had. As such, my experience is that the music reflects the meaning completely, and thus the interesting thing is to see exactly how Bob achieved this. And there is one more issue – that is the driving force at the end of each verse as it leads into the chorus.
Now you don't talk so loudNow you don't seem so proudAbout having to be scrounging your next meal...
So yes, I have to confess to a disappointment with “What did you hear”. Which is not to say that the book is wrong in any way or should not be published. I just think that the key issue that is worthy of focus (what with the lyrics having been analysed to death) is the musical arrangement, and indeed the way Bob has subsequently re-written so many of his songs.
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What did you hear by Steven Rings is published by the University of Chicago Press.