By Tony Attwood
Some time, quite a few years ago, having put together a list of all the songs I could find that Bob Dylan had written, I then spent a bit of time first putting them in the order I thought he had written them in. Then, finding a bit of a gap in my life, I tried to describe the subject matter of each song in a few words.
The first section of this work is here – but I don’t mention this now because I think it is of particular or unique significance. It helps me, and a few other people have kindly dropped me a note to say it has been useful to them, but I’m not trying to claim this is a directory that every Dylan fan needs.
Rather, I am mentioning it today because at a later date I decided to give each song the briefest of descriptions in relation to the lyrics.
And what struck me then, having written up and published that list, and which still strikes me today, was that during the Basement Tapes days Bob did tend to write (or at least record) songs that had a similar lyrical theme, one after the other.
I’ve given examples of these songs on similar themes before, and I’d like to point out one more today which I am not sure too many people have noted in their commentaries: the theme of being trapped.
For on the second basement tapes collection there are no less than 11 songs, which as far as I can see, were written one after the other, all of which have the theme of being trapped.
The series started with “I shall be released” – which of course not only admits to being trapped but also has the assertion of finding the way out. And the notion of escape from the entrapment was a recurring theme in the 11 songs, but, I should add, it was not always there.
And indeed there seemed to emerge in this selection of songs a mid-point of the final song in the mix – “I’m alright” which appears to suggest that I am ok despite being trapped.
Here is the list of songs in the order that they appear to have been written.
- I shall be released (I am trapped)
- Too Much of Nothing (Being trapped)
- Tears of rage (Being trapped)
- Quinn the Eskimo – The Mighty Quinn (surrealism)
- Open the Door Homer (Escaping from being trapped)
- Nothing was delivered (We’re trapped, nothing’s been sorted)
- Sign on the cross (We’re trapped and misled)
- Sante Fe (getting away from being trapped)
- Odds and Ends (we’re trapped by time and don’t get the time back)
- Clothes line saga (trivia and profundity mix in life; nothing means anything)
- I’m alright (life’s a mess, I’m trapped, but I’m still going on)
Now as you can see immediately, although being trapped is something that for many of us (and certainly for me) would be a very frightening experience, for Bob this doesn’t seem to have been so. Indeed in the final song in the list of eleven above, Bob appears to say he is trapped but he is still keeping on. As the chorus of that song says…
Alright, I'm alright I'm a three time loser But I'm alright Alright, I'm alright I'm a three time loser
So if we had the thought that Bob was working his way through this collection of songs about being trapped as a way of overcoming such a problem, this can only be felt to be true up to a point. That point being, he’s coping with being trapped, but he is still trapped.
And this is interesting because this long series of songs of entrapment start, in my chart, with “I shall be released”. However, I wrote that list and came up with the notion of the songs being concerned with being trapped some years ago, and looking at it now I think one might go back to two earlier compositions – and include them as well.
For example one could go back to Please Mrs Henry which in my four or five word notes on each song was described as “My life is a mess”, and was followed by Lo and behold which I have summarised as “Nothing makes sense” but which could equally fit into the notion of “everything is a mess”. Then we had Crash on the Levee and Dress it up, Better have it all – which at the time I summarised as giving us the idea that nothing has to make sense.
Now I am not trying to suggest that my one line summaries of each of these songs is absolutely correct and all-encompassing, and maybe I have misunderstood the fundamental point of one of two songs, but I would suggest that there is nevertheless a strong sense of everything falling apart in these songs.
But I also think we might miss this on occasion, because although our natural thought is that music portraying life as a mess should be dark, slow and mysterious, this was clearly not always Bob’s thought. One only has to take This Wheel’s on Fire – which has a jolly, bouncy tune but lyrics warning of the end.
Of course one can argue that there is a suggestion of lightness at the end of “This Wheel” and maybe that song shouldn’t be in the list but it certainly comes out of darkness….
And after ev'ry plan had failed And there was nothing more to tell You knew that we would meet again If your mem'ry serves you well
The songs of darkness that are revealed on the Basement Tapes certainly make up quite a prolonged collection, and may well reflect Bob’s view at the time. But he did manage to come out of the negativity that was expressed in Too Much of Nothing and Tears of rage in a most unexpected way with Quinn the Eskimo and Open the Door Homer.
Perhaps that is one of the many factors that makes Bob such a great lyricist – his lyrics can reflect where he is in life, but he can find the most unexpected ways out of whatever mood or set of feelings he is in.
The full list of the Basement Tapes songs, in the order they were written, with a three or four word summary of the essence of the lyrics, appears here.