Previously in this series
- No Nobel Prize for Music 42: One more weekend and New Morning: Musical pathways new. Links to all the previous articles in the series can be found at the foot at that piece.
By Tony Attwood
In that article noted above, I was continuing my argument that in 1970 Bob was deliberately exploring new ways of approaching songs. We all know that he has declared himself not to be any sort of rival to Paul Simon, saying, “My songs come out of folk music and early rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s it. I’m not a classical lyricist, I’m not a meticulous lyricist. I don’t write melodies that are clever or catchy. It’s all very traditionally documented.”
In 1999 he added about Paul Simon, “I consider him one of the preeminent songwriters of our time. Every song he does has got a vitality you don’t find everywhere.”
And something in that comment hit me as I played “Three Angels” for the first time in maybe ten years – since the time I wrote a review of the song for this site, when I was trying to make sure that every Dylan composition we knew about was reviewed here. And in fact, I am not sure that I have ever listened to the song again. Certainly, Bob hasn’t ever played it live.
As Far Out magazine quoted Randy Newman saying, “Dylan knows he doesn’t write like he did on those first two records. The tremendous praise that the last two have gotten, I’m not so sure [that would have happened] if they didn’t have his name on it.”
There’s an old saying that folk is ‘four chords and the truth but Bob had long ago eclipsed that notion. If we can summarise his songwriting in the years before this period, it was one of continuing exploration. But now it seems, he wasn’t quite sure where and what to explore next.
However if we take Three Angels simply as part of the sequence of songs written in 1970 it is far more than just the next song, for it is quite clearly part of a highly experimental era for Bob. He was not trying to write songs that everyone would remember; he was trying to do something quite different. If there was a problem (and actually I do believe there was) it was that he could not find the next something.
If there is a lyrical theme that emerges in that year, it appears with references to the environment – not in terms of a call to protect the environment, but with a greater recognition of the world out there. This I feel is what we can take from songs such as All the Tired Horses, Sign on the Window, One More Weekend, and New Morning. None of those songs are specifically about the environment per se, for they each encompass other issues, but the question of the environment is there, touching each song. In short I feel Bob was looking at the same old world, but recognising a new day dawns so there are new things to be done.
And then Bob wrote “Three angels,” and I suspect when most of us heard it for the first time, we simply said, “What?”
So the three angels announce the end of the world, and tell us that anyone who has not followed God will be tormented forever. It is a message which I think is at the heart of the Seventh-day Adventist movement, which I have written a little about before and won’t repeat. But the point is that Bob didn’t continue with their message (which is a very specific version of Christianity), and (thankfully in my perception of such matters) quickly shuffled on elsewhere.
Musically, the song is hardly something to remember – the four chords F major, C major, D minor, G major over and over, and I have speculated in the past that he was wondering how much he could get away with on an album track. But to be fair it is a most unusual chord sequence – and I am not sure who had used it before, if anyone.
And so maybe the message was that the music of the angels is largely unnoticed by the people who pass them by. People pass by doing their everyday things. – nothing is really connected. God’s message and God’s music is out there, but some people just get on with life and ignore it.
If there is a broader message, maybe it is that we should appreciate what is around us, and the diversity of life, which is always beautiful. As Dylan himself once said, “These songs are not allegorical. I have given that up… Philosophical dogma doesn’t interest me.”
Maybe he was trying to prove the point he made in a “USA Today” interview in which he said, “I don’t consider myself a songwriter in the sense of Townes Van Zandt or Randy Newman. I’m not Paul Simon. I can’t do that. My songs come out of folk music and early rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s it. I’m not a classical lyricist, I’m not a meticulous lyricist. I don’t write melodies that are clever or catchy. It’s all very traditionally documented.”
Paul Simon once said, “Dylan: everything he sings has two meanings. He’s telling you the truth and making fun of you at the same time,” and that comment in relation to Three Angels now suddenly rings very true for me as I think I was edging toward in Bob Dylan’s Three angels: its a slog to find it, but there is curious message here
But in this most curious piece of music, there is one quatrain that I remember even though I haven’t played the recording for years….
The angels play on their horns all day The whole earth in progression seems to pass by But does anyone hear the music they play Does anyone even try?
Supposing the whole world turns away and no one takes any notice of the Angels. What then? Does the world end with no one being saved? What happens to the Angels?
That is quite a thought, and it is one that crops up in a number of science fiction stories in which the Deity is dependent on the worship of the lesser beings, and withers away when the worship stops.
I am sure that was not Dylan’s message here, but it raises a point. If the message is not utterly clear, all sorts of interpretations can be found. Was that Bob’s point?
I don’t know the answer, so I am still left with one big question. Why put it on the album?
In my 2017 article Dylan in 1970: a stuttering return to song writing, that title was an attempt to give an answer: unlike many earlier albums where Bob could pick an choose from a multiplicity of his own compiositions which ones to put on the next album, now (it seems to me) he was just writing enougth to fill the album – virtually everything from 1970 was used, whereas in previuos years he might ignore at least half of the songs he he written.
And in fact, if we look forward, we can see that in 1971 he wrote six songs (of which you might recall three) and in 1973 he wrote two. I suspect the answer was, Bob included “Three Angels” because he had a contract to fulfil, but didn’t have any other songs to put on the album. Which is not the Bob Dylan we were used to in previous years.
In a review on Songtell we are told, “Ultimately, Three Angels serves as a poignant reminder to pause and appreciate the music of life, even amidst the chaos. It encourages a deeper awareness of the world around us, urging listeners to seek out the divine in the ordinary and to recognise the beauty that often goes unnoticed.”
But also, as I said at the start of the piece, Bob was at this time exploring new ways of creating songs. I think that is quite right, and the problem is that he simply hadn’t found what he was looking for. And in this regard, we might pause to remember the difficulties that can beset a person whose area of work is, in effect, creativity.
Most people can go to work and do the work they are paid to do, and then come home again. The creative artist may often be able to do this, but there is a difference, for if he or she slips below the level of work previously offered to the audience, the work is not only rejected, but so can be the artist’s reputation. Audiences and fans are demanding, not just of new works, but new works of artistic merit. The problem is, very, very few artists can turn on the tap and produce another work of genius just because the audience (and in this case the record company) ask for it.
In short, if Bob were not in a creative frame of mind, but the record contract demanded a new album, there’s a problem, and the people who suffer most are the fans.