A Dylan Cover a Day: Seven Days

By Tony Attwood

Coming to “Seven Days” in the Dylan Cover a Day series, I had high hopes, as it seemed to me a song that Dylan had never really taken to its limit (it only got 18 performances across a 20 year period ending in 1996), and which had some real hidden potential.

Indeed several musicians of note have had a go at the song and yet somehow they don’t seem to get anything new out of it. Although please don’t make that comment of mine encourage you to move on elsewhere immediately because there is a bonus at the end – although it might cost you.

But yes, these opening songs are disappointing, and in listening to them I wondered if the fact that there was something else there in the song, was simply all in my imagination. Ron Wood’s version for example never really takes that dramatic leap which I feel lurks within…

Joe Cocker, another man of great eminence of course, has a spikier go which I prefer, although I still find something missing. And I find the shouting out of the first line of each verse a little obvious.

Mountain take the view that there must be something important in the song and again feel it needs to be shouted out, and that gives me the thought that maybe the opposite approach is needed. (Unless there really never was anything there at all – and by this stage I was starting to think that was the case).

But if that is the approach that is required, then Jimmy Barnes seems to be able to do it more naturally and hence with more conviction. When he sings “every inch of the way” followed by some really good vocal harmonies, yes I start believing in the song’s possibilities again. Maybe there is a really good cover version out there, if only I could track it down…

I even went touring the foreign language versions but really couldn’t find the innovation that I thought must be there somewhere. This is Niedecken – I am presuming Wolfgang Niedecken, the singer with BAP. Interesting, but still…

And so, in disappointment, and as a last resort, I turned to Spotify – which of course then means I can’t put a recording here. But if you have a Spotify subscription or can find it somewhere else, do try Born 53’s version of the song, if for nothing else, then for the fact that they’ve changed the beat and so changed the meaning of the entire song. Suddenly it’s bouncy and a fun celebration of what is going to happen. It really does work.

Then if you want to go any further there is Bitter Sweet’s version. Once again the artist has used his creativity and insight to build on Bob’s work but not slavishly copy the original style and intent. As a result we get Bob’s song with and lot of extras and thoughts of new directions that music can be taken.

I’m not here to convince you to buy a Spotify subscription, but if maybe if you don’t have one you could get a free trial or something like that, so you could use it to listen to these two recordings. They really do give a completely new set of insights into a song that does have all the possibilities that I felt must be hiding in there somewhere. I’m just sorry the other more eminent musicians didn’t quite find them.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

Leave a Reply