The previous articles in this series are listed at the end of this article. For indexes to the main series on Dylan’s compositions through the years please see the links under the setting (or is that rising?) sun at the top of the page.
By Tony Attwood
Bob Dylan’s compositions are generally considered by commentators as individual items, or as a collection when released on an album. But neither approach reflects the actual order in which Bob wrote the pieces, and thus give us little insight into how one composition followed another.
Which is why we produced a list of Dylan compositions not in relation to the album each appeared on, but in the order they were written. And in doing this, for 1964, we saw a sequence of five songs that are all, in different ways, about the end of affairs. (The full list of songs written in that highly productive year is shown here.)
Now at first sight this might seem to be a rejection of the notion that Bob jumps around from theme to theme, which we have considered in recent articles. This explanation of what Bob wrote about at different times is expressed in the notion (which he himself put forward) of his ever changing personality which he suggests is a singular aspect of his writing.
Indeed this sequence of songs from 1964 which I consider here, is a sequence about relationships, and is one of the relatively few times in which Bob has stuck with the same theme within a series of songs.
But the briefest of considerations of the music shows that the even when the underlying lyrical theme is the same, the entire essence of Bob’s approach to the subject can vary from one to another. Indeed one only has read the lyrics of “Mama you’ve been on my mind” to see this is so…
Perhaps it's the color of the sun cut flat
And covering the crossroads I'm standing at
Or maybe it's the weather or something like that
But mama, you been on my mind
And then compare this with the lyrics of the next composition, Ballad in Plain D:
I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn I courted her proudly but now she is gone Gone as the season she’s taken
Now both are about the concept of losing a lover, but from the very off, the former song takes the view that the way the singer feels about her is to do with incidental events – the colour of the sun etc. But the second suggests from the very start that the woman is not something built out of the weather on a particular day, but these aspects which he describes are a central part of the essence of her.
Put another way, “Plain D” is the reverse of “Mama”. They are both lost love songs, but “Plain D” makes it clear she has left forever and he is mortified. “Mama” expresses the fact that she has gone as just one of those things. Life moves on, people come and go. It’s OK (or as Bob said later, (“It’s life and life only”).
Now this relationship break up issue was clearly not just an event that affected Bob for a few days, because what we have here, as I have been trying to show, is a whole sequence of songs about losing his lover…
- Mama you’ve been on my mind (Lost love)
- Ballad in Plain D (Lost love)
- Black Crow Blues (Blues, The sadness of lost love and moving on)
- I shall be free number 10 (Talking Blues; humour)
- To Ramona (Love)
But what Bob is dong in this sequence of songs is trying to deal with an overwhelming torrent of emotion through a series of songs that take on different aspects of the world that he is experiencing. Consider this…
I’m just average, common too I’m just like him, the same as you I’m everybody’s brother and son I ain’t different from anyone It ain’t no use a-talking to me It’s just the same as talking to you
Whereas two songs earlier, Bob was in a state of utter desperation about the woman he has lost (Plain D) but then is able to reflect on the sadness of lost love with the notion that it is something that happens to everyone (Black Crow Blues), and then quite amazingly gives us
Preacher an’ a rooster had a terr’ble fight Preacher knocked the rooster clean out o’ sight Preacher told the rooster that’ll be all right Meet ya at the hen house tomorrow night
which is from “I shall be free number 10,” the title of which suggests to me that Bob has had a number of love affairs that have gone wrong, and that this one, indeed was the tenth. But he can cope.
And if we can just pause for a moment and consider the lines which open Black Crow Blues
I woke in the mornin’, wand’rin’, Wasted and worn out" I woke in the mornin’, wand’rin’ Wasted and worn out Wishin’ my long-lost lover Will walk to me, talk to me Tell me what it’s all about
what we find Bob doing is ruminating on the break of that long lost love affair, and wishing it could be put right.
Now we can interpret these songs, as just a set of songs Bob wrote at different times when he was in a series of different moods, but I think that does the songs an injustice. After all “Plain D” is a monument in terms of folk music, while “Black Crow” is perhaps best described as “Great Fun”.
Yet Bob was writing these songs one after the other in a sequence of 20 songs in one year – an extraordinary feat for a songwriter working on his own rather than with a fellow co-writer. (There were probably more like 50 songs written that year, but 20 is the number that survived).
And it is not the number of songs that I am reflecting on, nor indeed the fact that Bob used a range of musical forms, but rather that he seems to be reflecting on the events that surrounded his breakup with his lover, from a multiplicity of different angles. Indeed one is tempted to say that Bob has in fact covered all the angles in this run of compositions., which vary not only in terms of the lyrics, but also vary enormously in terms of the music.
But if you are still with me, yet doubtful, consider this verse
Through young summer’s breeze, I stole her away From her mother and sister, though close did they stay Each one of them suffering from the failures of their day With strings of guilt they tried hard to guide us
And not that much later is writing
I got a woman, she’s so mean She sticks my boots in the washing machine Sticks me with buckshot when I’m nude Puts bubblegum in my food She’s funny, wants my money, calls me “honey”
Now this sequence of articles was initiated by Bob’s claim that Bob revealed that he had Dissociative Identity Disorder – an issue that means the individual involuntarily changes his or personality very quickly, in a way that the vast majority of us don’t. Of course we all change from time to time, and we are all affected by events and people around us, but most of us have a fairly standard way of handling issues. At one extreme if a person tells us we’ve got something terribly wrong, and have hurt others by what we have done, one recipient of the news might reply “fuck off”. At the other extreme a person with the opposite type of personality might agree the situation is awful, but suggest maybe the two individuals should sit down, have a chat and see if they can’t work out a possible way out of the mess.
We are taught that the psychological norms that dictate such behaviour are a standard part of life, and we most of us have a way of reacting to events which is consistent. Bob has suggested that he doesn’t have this consistency. Instead he changes regularly – sometimes several times a day! One time he reacts to an event with compassion, another with anger, another by saying “it’s not my problem”….
I’ve been trying to find evidence within his songs that might show that Bob’s analysis of himself is right, and that he does change personality types, and I think here, in this group of songs we do see that. For here he expresses his emotions in such incredibly varied ways through a set of songs that probably do all relate to the same issue, that it is hard to see at first sight that they were all written by the same man within a period of a few months – possibly even less. (And do remember I am taking the songs in the order they were written – as best we know – not in the order of publication).
So I think now we do have some evidence of Dissociative Identity Disorder affecting what Bob writes. Put another way, his personality can change rapidly, and as it does this can affect what songs he composes, how they sound and what they say.
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In case you wish to go back further over this issue, previously in this series on Bob’s “Dissociative Identity Disorder” I’ve offered….
- “I don’t know who I am most of the time. It doesn’t even matter to me”.
- I don’t know where I am going, nor what it will look like
- Bob Dylan and the ever changing personality. Four early songs.
- How the meaning of a Dylan song can change across the years.
- How Dylan jumps from theme to theme, music to music
- Bob reveals Dissociative Identity Disorder for the first time. Pretending not that I don’t know