Important note:
A technical event has meant that for the past few days I have not been able to receive emails, and thus not been able to post up articles written by anyone other than myself. If you are waiting for a reply to an email from me, I can only apologise and say that I am hoping this issue will be fixed very shortly. Comments on the site are being published as usual – it is just emails direct to me that are affected. Really sorry.
So, in the meantime, I can do no more than offer the next article by me: my choice for the best Dylan song of 1975
After moving away from regular songwriting in 1971 and 1972 Bob had returned to creating his muse with 14 songs in 1973 with another 12 in 1974, and these compositions showed Bob absolutely back to his best form as a songwriter.
Then in 1975, Bob’s work took another turn, for this was the year when he decided to work with a collaborator Jacques Levy, although my choice for the song of the year is perhaps perversely a song that Bob wrote on his own.
There are of course a number of songs from this year that we still remember, such as “One more cup of coffee”, “Oh Sister”, “Black Diamond Bay,” and “Sara” but really nothing matches “Isis.” Not just for the lyrics but for the delivery of those lyrics by Bob. Never has he sounded so committed to a single piece of music.
There is a rival to Isis, of course, in this year, for when I first did a review of all the songs of 1975, I kept coming back to “Abandoned Love” and that song is still with me. Indeed, as I noted in a much earlier comment, “Everything about this song shouts, “genius” and leaves one wondering why Dylan needed a collaborator in so much of his songwriting this year.
Two versions of that song exist in recordings and both are on this site, but my own view is that neither version really makes the most of what is in the song, and Bob has long since dropped the song from his schedule, so we don’t have any more.
So I pondered once more and really I had no choice to make but to come back to Isis not least because of the way the accompaniment works in terms of both instrumentally and vocally. This recording really is something else – and if you have heard it dozens of times before, I would urge you to listen again now. I know the recording inside out and so haven’t played it for a year or two, but coming back to it now transforms me once again.
And yet, despite being an absolute monument of a piece of music, Bob only performed “Isis” 46 times, and all of those performances came in a seven-month spell in 1975 and 1976. Maybe it was the fact that the song just contains three chords played in constant rotation that puts him off… Maybe he felt that without that original band playing it with such vigour, it didn’t work anymore; I can’t really say. All I can say is that the song is still heard in my house on a regular basis – although mostly when the lady with whom I share my house is out. Not that she would complain, but one doesn’t like to overdo things.
So here we have the brilliance of this song: 13 musically identical verses – and most particularly that utter musical explosion after three verses – which is of course, the music repeated but with complete extemporisation by everyone involved. Indeed, now we know the song so well, we are eternally waiting for that moment in the penultimate verse.
She said, where ya been? I said, no place specialShe said, you look different, I said, well, I guessShe said, you been gone, I said, that's only naturalShe said, you gonna stay? I said, if you want me to, yes
I know we will never hear Bob perform it live again, but I can at least imagine new versions that somehow, “in a different lifetime,” Bob might have done.
Previously in the “Song of the Year” series
- 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
- 1971: When I paint my Masterpiece, and Watching the River Flow
- 1972, Forever Young – preparing to open a minor door
- 1973: Amarillo and a back-up just in case.
- 1974: Idiot Wind