By Tony Attwood
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Previously in this series, which offers my choice of Bob’s greatest composition year by year we have….
- 1961. “I was young when I left home”
- 1962: Tomorrow is a long time
- 1963: Seven Curses
- 1964: Gates of Eden
- 1965: Visions of Johnanna
- 1966: One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)
- 1967 part 1: “Drifter’s Escape”
- 1967 part 2: I’m not there
- 1968: Bob stops but even so (Lay Lady Lay)
- 1969: I’ll have you any time
- 1970: Time passes slowly
And what this series of articles is showing (in case you did not know it before) is that one year for Bob Dylan is very much not like another.
While in the 1960s Bob could write anything from 25 songs upwards, many of which could be in contention for “song of the year,” or even “song of the decade,” things changed, so that after the Basement Tapes era, when we get to 1968, we had just one new Dylan song. It was a corker (“Lay Lady Lay”) so it could still be “song of the year” but it left those of us who followed such things somewhat worried.
1969 did give us 15 new songs, which suggested a recovery of Dylan’s songwriter powers might be on the way, and 1970 offered another 15 new works, which seemed fine, and anyway, at this time, I doubt that anyone other than me was counting. But then, for anyone who actually was taking note, 1971 was a real worry; just five songs, several of which you will be fully excused for not remembering or even knowing.
And yet, and yet, in the midst of this, we had, “When I paint my masterpiece” – one of the greatest ironic titles of a song in the popular style, given that it was and remains, an utter masterpiece.
What we have here is not only a terrific set of lyrics, but also a superb melody and in this case, a really interesting piano accompaniment, which I take it is played by Bob.
Lyrically, he covers areas that he has not dealt with in his songs before, and from this point, he clearly sees that with such lyrics, he now needs a new approach to the music. And amazingly, he does find both melody and accompaniment which fit perfectly not just with the lyrics but the whole meaning of the song.
Now, if you have kindly been reading my ramblings in this series in which I try and pick out a “composition of the year” in terms of Bob, you will know that most times I have managed to find something that stands out from the 20 or so other songs Bob wrote that year.
1969 did give us 15 new songs, which suggested a recovery of Dylan’s songwriter powers might be on the way, and 1970 offered another 15, which seemed fine, and anyway, at this time, no one was counting. But then, for anyone who noticed, 1971 was a real worry; just five songs, several of which you will be fully excused for not remembering or even not having heard in the first place.
Except that one of these five songs was this superb “When I paint my masterpiece”. And if I ever met Bob and had a chance to overcome my total nervousness and then actually say something coherent, I think I would try and say something about the way he produced this wonderful work at a time when I guess the songs were not flowing as they used to. (Although thinking about it, I think that might be rather rude – I’d probably just stand there grinning rather stupidly).
So what we have here is not only a terrific set of lyrics, but also a superb melody and, in this case, a really interesting piano accompaniment, which I take it is played by Bob.
Lyrically, he covers themes that he has not dealt with in his songs before, and from this point, I guess he saw that he therefore needed a new approach to the music. And lyrically, we get some big-time clues – although of course Bob changed the lyrics over time. But just consider…
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room, Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece. She promised that she'd be right there with me When I paint my masterpiece.
Does he really give us a clue as to why he’s not writing works of genius any more? Could it be that he needs the right lady by his side? Of course we don’t know, although we do know that with Bob, one masterpiece is never enough, as he then came out with “Watching the River Flow”. So in this year we have five compositions, three of which most of us would struggle to remember, and two utter masterpieces.
Both songs appeared on “Great Hits Volume 2” , with “Masterpiece” itself being performed 468 times up to and including this year of my writing (2026), while “River Flow” was sung 772 times up to and including last year but seems to have been set aside for a while.
So what we have is a total change in terms of Bob’s approach to writing. Instead of writing 20+ pieces, he created just five songs, three of which you will be excused for not remembering at all, and two utterly wonderful works that he has, quite rightly, carried with him throughout the tours over the decades
And what makes this all the more amazing is, as I have noted before, I struggled to find a “song of the year” in the year before these two compositions emerged. What exactly happened that made the songwriting almost come to a stop, and yet then restart with five songs, of which two were utterly brilliant works?
Did Bob himself realise that he was simply not living up to his previous standards and so take five or ten times as long as usual to write these two masterpieces? I’ve no idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Certainly, from my perspective, I do wonder about the impact the time spent in the basement had on Bob, and how it changed Bob’s view of songwriting, and maybe even of the world around him… Certainly something happened.
Bob Dylan – Watching The River Flow, Lyon 2023:
Surely it’s Leon Russell, who produced the session, on piano on “When I paint my masterpiece”…