Oh Bob you’re such a big boy now; just watch out for that storm

by Tony Attwood

Tbis is part 26 of All Directions at Once.  An index to the series  is available here.   The last episode was “After the tour”

As we have noted in recent articles, Bob Dylan had a prolonged period from 1968 to 1973 in which he was writing songs at nothing like his earlier levels of productivity.  The total number of songs was much reduced but despite this he was by and large not producing songs that were considered by most listeners to be of a quality akin to that found in the songs he had composed with much more frequency in earlier years.

Of those songs that were written we might perhaps note these eight of being of particular merit, although I know many who would cut this list down to perhaps just three or four compositions written during these six years – particularly questioning my continuing insistence of including the last two songs of the era: “Dirge” and “Wedding Song” and perhaps the much lighter piece, “You Angel You”.

• Lay Lady Lay (1968)
• Time passes slowly (1970)
• When I paint my masterpiece (1971)
• Watching the river flow (1971)
• Forever Young  (1972)
• You Angel You (1973)
• Dirge (1973)
• Wedding Song (1973)

Given that from 1965 alone many fans of Dylan’s work would be able to list a dozen songs they would put in the “genius” class (from “Chimes of Freedom” to “It’s alright ma”) even if you agree with my selection of the eight songs above, the fact that it took Bob six years to write these, shows how far his creative genius output had dropped.

But now, as we have seen, at the start of 1974 Dylan had written two songs (Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts and Tangled up in blue) which most fans would list as among his greatest works, it shows how far Dylan’s creative output had risen once again.

The third song Dylan wrote in 1974 was “You’re a big girl now” which has always struck me as the reverse of  “Just like a Woman” where she breaks just like a little girl.   I don’t see any woman or girl breaking in “Big girl”.  Rather I find a man who is broken, and there really is only one way to read lines such as…

I’m going out of my mind, oh,
With a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew to my heart
Ever since we’ve been apart

A A 
B C
D D

A A 
B
C C C

I’m going out of my mind, oh,
With a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew to my heart
Ever since we’ve been apart

Bird on the horizon, sittin’ on a fence
He’s singin’ his song for me at his own expense
And I’m just like that bird, oh, oh,
Singin’ just for you
I hope that you can hear
Hear me singin’ through these tears

During the next 30 years Dylan played this song over 200 times in concert.  Looking at the totals of live performances that is only three fewer than Visions, and half the number of times he’s played Tweedle Dum.   He wanted to say it, each performance of this song takes it out of the singer – at least it does if he is thinking about the lyrics.

But let me leave you with a comment from a reviewer on the internet.

“I haven’t played Blood in the Tracks for a few years, but I’ve been listening to it over the past few days. I’m going to play that song at an upcoming arts conference. And I’m going to talk about why the words “oh, oh” might constitute some of the best songwriting ever.”

I can see exactly what he means.

Here’s the original version

Quite extraordinarily, the next song Bob wrote was another masterpiece, and Shelter from the storm  takes Dylan’s magnificent return to songwriting form even further.

Of course he had written masterpiece after masterpiece before, and it is possible that Dylan tried out several other songs in between these compositions – songs which have simply been lost.  But it seems unlikely.  Over 620 songs written by Bob Dylan have survived, why would the non-album pieces here be so utterly removed from public consumption?

So if we take it that what we know about is the sum of Dylan’s writing at the time, we have to look back to periods such as 1962 wherein, “Hard Rain,” “Hollis Brown,” “John Brown,” and “Don’t think twice” one after the other.   Or perhaps the start of 1963 as he produced “Masters of War,” “Girl from the North Country”, “Spanish Leather,” and “Dylan’s Dream”, hardly (its seems) pausing for breath.  Indeed 1963 had another stream of amazing compositions one after the other at the end of the year, ending with “Restless Farewell.”

But then as we have seen, eventually Bob ran out of steam.  Yet now here he was producing masterpiece after masterpiece for next came “Shelter From the Storm.”

And not just another masterpiece – but another change of subject

• Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts: a rambling epic tale of four characters
• Tangled up in blue: An ever-changing relationship in a seemingly ever changing world
• You’re a big girl now: lost love, deep hurt, and there’s nothing to be done
• Shelter from the storm: the world is a storm, there is nothing we can catch onto, nothing is fixed.

These are complex themes, far beyond the reach of 99.999% of song lyrics, and is one is so different in both temperament and style.  And each has its own input, its own approach, its own vision, its own issues that it is explaining, relating, and perhaps resolving.

“Shelter from the Storm” adds another dimension in that there is a disconnect between the verses (as happens in “Tangled”), and yet the same line ends each verse, which suggests there ought to be a connection but somehow we can’t find it.  The world is nonsense, there is nothing we can latch onto, there is no reality that is fixed.  Indeed when we get to

Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it’s doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn

we are left wondering “Where did that come from?  Where does it take us?”

And all the while the same three chords are repeated and repeated as if there is a stability here, right under our feet… except we can feel it going round and round.  As if somehow we are fixed but the world around us changes in ways that are completely beyond our understanding or control – and yet at the same time we seem to be in there, handling the affair, continuing our life.  It is like a recurring nightmare where one cannot take control, but it is not a nightmare at all because she is there all the time offering shelter.

Long before Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Heylin, called this “a lyric worthy of any poet laureate”, which shows a rare bit of insight, even if it was wholly fortuitous in its predictive sense.  For once I’m with Heylin on this one, and so it seems was the Nobel Prize committee.

Dylan had moved on from being the guy who wanted to get away from it all and live in a remote rural idyll to becoming a myth maker.  The creator of worlds that are condensed into a song format, but which could, at a moment’s notice, be opened up, into something much broader.

Of course Dylan is not a myth maker in the true sense, for the songs are not complex or long enough to have the feeling of the myth, although in the missing 11th verse he gets closest…

Now the bonds are broken but they can be retied
By one more journey to the woods, and the holes where spirits hide
It's a never ending battle for a peace that's always torn
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm"

which gives us the real clue as to what Bob was about.  This is Dylan playing with images, showing us that lyrics can paint any picture, even against the simplest of musical textures.  And that is brilliant; of course it is a brilliant song. The chords rotate, the melody follows, nothing changes, nothing moves on.  The instrumentation is played out in the same terms of never-endingness.  Round and round it could go on forever.

Here’s a variant I’m not sure it is better but hearing a different approach reminds us of just how much there is in this world of an endlessly repeating melody, rhythm and chords.

To me this represents the conflict of the man perceiving beauty and his desire to possess it (which will ultimately destroy that peaceful beauty).   Hence the simple presentation, the repeats and repeats, and yet the complexity encoded in the lyrics.

Steve Adey actually went further in recording it and took it so slowly that it lasted forever, which fits the end, and tells us what else is possible if you have eight minutes to spare.

But overall, if you want an image for this song, just think of a cottage with no other habitation around, and a howling wind blowing outside, with all manner of evil lurking in the dark as the thunder crashes and rain falls.  Then you have it.  But as you find your own image, just remember those opening lines…

’Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud

Here’s the world:

In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm

And this is her:

Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm

And this is the singer:

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn

She ends his torture…

She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns

She is a goddess, he is a mortal, his pain self-inflicted.  He wants to possess beauty, but knows that he cannot – and yet he can’t let go of that desire.  In the end that’s it.  He wants to possess, but she will not let him for beauty is to be shared, always, always, always.

Many people find this to be the greatest re-working of all by Bob.  I’m not sure if it is the best, but to me it passes the eight minutes with more meaning and insight than I get from Adey.

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