By Tony Attwood
As far as we know Bob wrote around 36 songs in 1962, with a lot of the songs being experimental in the sense that Bob was just seeing where ideas were taking him. But he also reached the highest of heights with songs such as Don’t think twice and I would suspect he must have known from the very start that this Song of Leaving was taking him to a new level. Which is why I want to end this little commentary with the most moving version of “Spanish Leather” – Bob’s ultimate song of leaving.
Looking at the songs in the order Bob wrote them, it doesn’t seem he was immediately able to, or perhaps not willing to, build on this achievement. And that notion reminds us that Bob was creating works of art, and few artists (if any) can turn new ideas on as one might turn on a tap.
So Bob continued to explore and experiment, and in this regard it is worth considering the final song Bob wrote in 1962 and what appears to be the first song of 1963.
So here is how 1962 concluded in song writing terms for Bob… and indeed here the guitar part tells us as much as the lyrics; in the Witmark version, it is simply there to hold the beat.
The voice in his slower version is much more in sympathy with the lyrics and I suspect it is this version that was in Bob’s mind as he contemplated the next song. For the key line in the above song of course is “What you gonna do when death comes creeping in your room”. And Bob followed that with one of the most doom laden songs he ever wrote.
What is interesting is that this recording comes from 1988 – over 20 years after the song was written.
And amazingly the song has become even more doom laden than it was when it was first released. Also we might note that Bob has played the song in public an amazing 895 times. And this despite the fact that it is a song that presents a lot of difficulties to any performer who wants to take it on – it is so bleak and in the end the versions performed live seem to work only when they come back to the original…
But perhaps what fascinates me most about “Masters of War” is not the way in which Bob extracts the horrors of the desolation of war, but rather what he wrote next.
The answer was that Bob took one of previous melodies, “Boots of Spanish Leather,” and wrote a moving on song, which contains some of the sadness of lost love songs, but also the elements of the inevitability of moving on. A song which perhaps most of all stresses that he, the singer, has the strength to move on, no matter what.
It is another song that lasted across the decades – the last performance being in 2019.
Writing about it, that world (if it ever had existed like that) was passing away. Such a world is as far from the one night stand as it is from love and marriage forever – for although it is temporary, it comes with a real depth of feeling.
I would suggest that of all the subjects that Bob cast as central to his songs, that of one partner leaving another is perhaps where he reached his highest points.
And of the various covers this one can still bring me to tears – but then that’s how this song gets me.
So, take heed, take heed of the western winds Take heed of the stormy weather And, yes, there's something you can send back to me Spanish boots of Spanish leather
Bob had now written, these three songs, one after the other…
- Masters of War
- Girl from the North Country
- Boots of Spanish Leather
This surely was not only the work of a master songwriter, but also a master at the very peak of his ability. And the only reason we might ever think this was not the case was surely through knowing what was left to come in the rest of this year.