A Dylan Cover a Day: “When He Returns”

By Tony Attwood

As you will be aware if you have followed any of this series, I am working through Dylan’s compositions in alphabetical order and writing about the songs where there are at least a couple of interesting commercial cover versions available on the internet. The logic of course is that if I write about versions that you can’t immediately hear, it is much harder for me to put across my own thoughts, and I guess it makes the article less interesting too.

So here we go with four covers, and two versions from Bob.

Larry Norman

I find this version simply too slow and ponderous for me. The impact of the lyrics is the power of the message, and I don’t mean that this should make the music fast – but there needs to be a power in the music and I simply don’t feel this.

Take for example the “don’t you burn” line – it is followed by four descending chords – something that turns up elsewhere. This is an absolutely conventional piece of accompaniment and really doesn’t fit, as I hear it.

And of course we are all aware Bob’s versions of the song. So having four conventional descending chords playing over again isn’t really inspirational. Nor is the over-excited voice, as the piece continues.

So not for me.

Bishop Rance Allen

Rance Allen is an established Gospel singer and this was produced for the album Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan. Here the problem is that I am not a fan of gospel music – and indeed as I have mentioned in passing before I am a confirmed atheist, so what attracts me to the song is the overall music, rather than the message.

My view is that in this performance the music is secondary to the meaning. For me the music and the meaning can co-exist, and indeed in the best songs are equal partners, but once the meaning overtakes the music then the essence of the music is in danger, and that is what I find here.

There is also an extraordinary moment just after 3 minutes where the organist seems to have got a bit bored and puts in a few extra twiddly bits which to me seem totally out of context with the way the Bishop has, just a few seconds before getting utterly carried away. I wonder what was going on in the studio! Or was that something they added later?

Phil Madeira

This is getting closer to what I think it takes to make this song work, as the singer keeps the performance under control much more than others, but then in doing so doesn’t really add much more to the song than we already have. And this is something I think I often come back to: that the point of doing a cover is to see where else the song can be taken without destroying the essence of the piece. Here the performer does this, but it turns out that the song can’t be taken much further!

Kevin Max

Now the opening of this next version sounds very similar to Bob’s version and yet there is enough variation in this version to keep me listening. The voice is beautiful, the piano accompaniment is perfectly controlled. This is more as I imagine the song, but then it is fairly close to what Bob did in the first place, but sometimes that is just how it has to be.

Bob Dylan

As I suspect you know, we have two Bob versions of the song. I’m putting both of them in, because after feeling rather dissatisfied with all the cover versions above I wanted to recover my faith in the song (although not my faith in the message which I don’t have ).

It is really interesting to listen both to Bob’s singing and the piano part in comparison with those above. Does this feel right to me because I heard it first or is it that this really is the perfect combination of lyrics, vocal line and piano? I think the latter, but of course one can never be sure.

The Trouble No More version was made public later, so in hearing it one was already used to the Slow Train version. The piano accompaniment is much smoother for much of this version and for me the final album version (above) does it better. Maybe Bob had got used to playing the part much more by then.

But that’s not to say that the “Trouble no more” version is not worthy of our time as members of the audience. It is just that somehow by the time of the “Slow Train” version Bob seems to have someone managed to take control of the balance between the piano, the lyrics, the melody and the meaning, and that is no easy achievement, as indeed I think the cover versions above show.

If you are really interested in comparing the two versions try this – play the version above from about four minutes on and the version below from about 3 minutes 30 seconds. There is a difference: for me the version below is more about Bob, the version above is truly about the religion he believes in – or at least believed in at that moment.

Overall, for me, this is a real case of “No one sings Dylan like Dylan,” even when I feel no personal relationship with the lyrics.

Previously in the series

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