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By Tony Attwood
In 1986, Bob Dylan told Maurice Parker, that “I can’t describe myself in one or two words, considering the fact I’ve written over 300, 400 songs that do describe me. I gotta let other people speak for me, you know? If you want to find out what I’m like, you usually have to ask other people. Usually you can find out better from some people that don’t know me”.
Then he added, “I think it’s wrong for a person to talk about themself. A person’s life speaks for itself”.
That is certainly an interesting point, and one that I think I would rapidly agree with. It is rare for me to have heard other people speak about me, but when I have had that experience I have often been quite upset by what I have heard, and have vowed to make myself a better person… but it doesn’t seem to have happened. They just don’t see me as I see me.
But with Bob the problem is different because there is no need for his songs to be about himself, or to reflect his own views. I know we tend to think that songwriters do express themselves in songs, but I am not sure why this view has grown.
After all, we don’t expect novelists to be ceaselessly writing about themselves (in the form of the lead character) in their stories. So why should song writers?
Of course it is often said that Dylan’s songs speak for themselves and as ever we can turn back to “Times they are a changing” in this regard – but it does seem to me to be a valid question when one says, “I know Bob wrote ‘Times’ but is it automatically the case that he believed when he wrote it that times really are changing? And does he believe now all these years later, that the times still are changing as the song says?
If so, the perspective surely has now changed. For the mothers and fathers to whom he directed one verse have by and large passed away now and their sons and daughters are now mothers and fathers – and that of course includes me. Am I guilty of criticising what I can’t understand? I do hope not!
Although I certainly am still as critical of politicians now as I was when I first heard “Times”. And yes as I tried my very best to give my three daughters the best upbringing I could, did I fail? Certainly I know they are beyond my command now (they each have children of their own) – but the last thing in the world that I would want to do is to command them to do anything (other, perhaps, than do their very best for my grandchildren!)
Thinking on this it did strike me recently how lucky I am never to have kept any of the demos I made in my 20s, and how lucky I was that none of them ever got beyond the demo stage. My views then were not my views now and my voice wasn’t nearly as good as I liked to think it was!
But I did read the comment recently that Bob has written far too many songs for us to be able to extract any overall message. The writer of that comment did however add that an IBM AI system has interrogated all of Dylan’s songs that his “major themes are that time passes and love fades”.
That was apparently put to Bob and he replied “Well, that sounds about right.”
Now of course Bob doesn’t have to worry about consistency. I know from the small number of novels I have written that in fiction the author absolutely does have to worry about consistency, for if that is lost there is every chance of an avid reader pointing out that a character has suddenly changed within the telling of the story.
But when I come to think about Bob’s lyrics in this way I was reminded of a comment that said they were about everything and nothing. Which doesn’t really tell us anything, but is as good a way as anything of wrapping the conversation up. Perhaps the one true line in all of the lyrics was “It’s life and life only.”
We know that when he sings, “if not for you, my sky would fall and rain would gather, too / without your love I’d be nowhere at all, oh what would I do? If not for you?” that he’s madly in love, and when he sings that, “Most of the time, she ain’t even in my mind / I wouldn’t know her if I saw her, she’s that far behind / Most of the time, I can’t even be sure / If she was ever with me, or if I was ever with her” that he’s still in love, but is trying to deny it.
Sometimes of course Bob comes up with wonderful lines which although going beyond conventional meaning still stay with me all the time, and still seem to me to be profound, and yet not comprehensible. “Trying to get to Heaven before they close the door” is one of those. My understanding of Christianity is that the promise of Heaven is there for everyone, so that door never closes, as even if I have lived a pretty hopeless life, that doesn’t mean the next guy can’t get in. But I guess that is just me being picky.
So I am often left with the notion that I should take Dylan’s images as I take the images of the 20th century painters whose work I like. I can imagine the lampost standing with folded arms, somehow being sentient and looking down at us poor humans scurrying by.
But when we move on to “All and all can only fall”, no, then Bob loses me. My own simple philosophy is to try and do good things rather than bad things. Try to be kind and helpful; that sort of thing. So maybe I am just too simple.
So from this point I hold onto “Not Dark Yet” as one of my favourite songs, but when I hear it I take it as a warning not to waste the latter years of my life. I am much closer to the end of my life than to its start, but maybe I can still do one or two things that are worthwhile along the way before my time comes. And if not, at least I can try not to hurt anyone along the way.
So maybe I am getting closer to the point – songs they are there for enjoyment and perhaps for inspiration. In which case it doesn’t matter too much if I don’t like some and do like others. Nor that I understand some and not others.
And thinking of this I found myself thinking back through 70 odd years to the first record I ever bought. I have had in my head for decades that this first purchase made with my carefully saved up pocket money was “Don’t knock the rock” by Bill Hayley. So just now for the purpose of this article I searched for a copy of that song and found….
… and I have absolutely no recollection of that piece of music at all. The title is right, but I don’t recognise the song. Which suggests that my memory of how I interacted with past music is even more dodgy than I thought. Maybe I never bought that record at all!
What we do know about Dylan is that quite often after writing and recording a song he changes the lyrics considerably, which suggests that there is no one deep meaning to most of the songs, but rather a set of varying images that emerge from each song – of which we can make what we want.
It was only a few days ago that I wrote about I’m not there
and confessed I have never worked out if there is actually a meaning in the song at all, but I do find it haunting. One website defined the song as being “transcursive” which didn’t help me much since I didn’t know the meaning of that word, any more than I knew the meaning of the lyrics. And even after I looked “transcursive” I didn’t really know much more except that I still love the song.
Perhaps I can sum all this up by saying that Dylan’s songs are rather like paintings in which I can keep finding more details and intriguing items, each and every time I turn back to them.
In which case I don’t want any explanations of what each one means, because every time I hear one of those songs, my brain does the work and comes up with something else. Which it certainly never did with those old Bill Hayley songs. Although it is possible that had it not been for Hayley and the Comets I might never have made it to Dylan. And there’s a thought.
Bill Haley has sold over 60 million records worldwide; I went to see him perform in Bournemouth, in the UK in 1965. He died on 9 February 1981 aged 55 and was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and that really makes me feel very, very, very old.