A Dylan cover a Day: She Belongs to Me

By Tony Attwood

“She belongs to me” is a simple 12 bar blues with a complex message about control and independence and… well I am not sure. Is the subject of the song the child of a divorced couple or a younger woman who is (rather unpleasantly) the object of desire of a much older man? One is never sure. Although Jochen as ever got to the heart of the matter if you want to explore it further.

And do any of the vast number of covers actually get anywhere near either to holding the paradox or resolving it? I’m not sure – at least until the final version I selected (see below), although of course such uncertainty comes in part because we all now suffer from knowing the song so well, it gets ever harder to unravel what Dylan actually had in mind. Thus it is impossible to unravel how the song ought to be treated.

It is a problem made ever greater by the huge number of covers that exist – far more than I can work my way through to give a balanced review. So here is just a selection, although it does lead to a final conclusion.

A vision of the child approach comes from Hugo Montenegro – the string based instrumental break gives me pictures of a child making up a dance to the song and all the adults applauding and telling her she is going to be ballet dancer “when she grows up”.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band do give us an interesting violin-based break or two but I just get the feeling that having gone that far they could have gone further – just to see where it all leads.

Robert Rex Waller Jnr of the wonderfully named I See Hawks in LA, seems to me to start out on the right tracks in terms of giving us some new insights, but as the song progresses it feels to me as if the ideas have been suffused under the song – which for a song that has been recorded so many times probably isn’t the best approach. The last verse now really feels that he is singing to an adult who has everything, exactly as the song says. There is nothing else left to give, except for the children’s toys as a symbol of her continuing vitality.

And what I do particularly like is the move toward additional chaos implied in the final instrumental verse.

Hamster Axis of the One-Click Panther featuring Roland Van Campenhout takes the thought of this being an adult not a child: the man is so utterly overwhelmed by the woman he has no idea what to do: she walks with her feet never touching the ground, while he scrambles along in the gutter. Now that of course is just my response and interpretation of their performance, and they may have had nothing like this type of thought in mind. It’s just where I got to.

When we looked at this song in our very first series on covers of Dylan songs the version by Jerry, Phil and Bob, was suggested by Edward Thomas. And I must say this is a relief, with performers who manage to balance their own input with Dylan’s original. Now I don’t care if she really is a child or no, nor if the vision comes from a lover or a parent. It is just a lovely interpretation of a long-loved song.

Margot Cotten continues the gentle theme, and I must say I do prefer these versions. The individuality here comes from the occasional rhythmic changes – changes so slight they can easily missed. Now the song doesn’t have to be about a person at all, but is somehow just about a time, a feeling, a place… I am not quite sure how I got to that feeling but with this version, it really is at the heart of what I feel. Suddenly despite all the cover versions I have listened to before starting to write this little commentary, I want to play it again.

I finish with the version Jochen picked – and it really does bring me back to earth with its straightforward gentleness. There are some interesting musical touches in the simplicity as well, such as the bass staying on the same note through the first line rather than changing as the chord changes. A tiny point, but it seems to help.

In a way it is very dated with the choral, backing but that’s hardly their fault; arrangements are always of the age in which they were written. I’m rather pleased I left this til last (by chance not design). I leave the song and move on to the rest of my day, feeling rested and happy, not concerned by its implications at all.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

Leave a Reply