The lyrics and the music: Love Sick

 

An index to the current series appearing on this website appears on the home page.    A list of the previous articles in this series appears at the end.

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“The Lyrics and the Music” (or sometimes “the music and the lyrics) is a series by Tony Attwood which tries to find out what happens when one reviews a Dylan song not primarily as a set of lyrics, but as a piece of music which includes lyrics.

Love Sick from “Time out of Mind” has been played by Bob some 926 times across a 27 year period and indeed is still on the current set-list.  And unless you have done this before I would suggest you might listen to this official audio from the very start in a totally quiet environment, focussing on what is happening in the background.  And maybe turn the volume up a bit.

Of course you knew this all along, but before Bob starts sings, “I’m walking through streets that are dead”, there is background music – a sort of rumbling suggesting that there is a background sound of life.   Other musical sounds come in, there is a rhythm, and Bob tells us he was destroyed like a child while he was sleeping.  (Which relates to a line that I quote at the end of this little piece, but which was dropped from the album version).

And then at that moment, after over a minute and a half of quiet background music, the desperate lyrics and the pulse of the beat, we get those two explosive chords, with “Sick of Love”.   Those two chords come twice, and then we are on to the second verse, plaintive, quite, pleading.

Background musical counter-melodies come and go, gradually increasing until we get to the “Sick of Love” moment again.

The instrumental break then is led by the organ at first with the lead guitar coming in with a counter melody before giving way to the organ again – but (and this is the really clever bit) the instrumental break doesn’t include that two chord explosive interruption.   We have to wait until “I think of you and I wonder” before that comes back.

The official Dylan site writes out the lyrics in the conventional way

I’m walking through streets that are dead
Walking, walking with you in my head
My feet are so tired, my brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping

But if one just types into Google (at least where am in the world) “Love Sick lyrics” the format of the first entry (which is just credited to Google and nothing else) reads

I'm walkingThrough streets that are deadWalkingWalking with you in my headMy feet are so tiredMy brain is so wiredAnd the clouds are weeping

And that is interesting because writing the lyrics in that way really does reflect the music more than the official site version.  The “walking” is, the music tells us, not a brisk walk along the street or through the park, but a slow drag along the streets, and splitting those first two lines from the official version into four lines, really gives us, via the layout of the words, what the music is actually doing.  It’s a very slow walk to nowhere.

Or put another way, it is the slow plod of the man along the dead streets, is captured not just in the music, but in the way the lyrics are written out.  And we should remember that making the song of interest and keeping our desire to hear it through to the bitter end, is very difficult when the whole topic is one of negativity.   After all, “My feet are so tired my brain is so wired and the clouds are weeping,” really is incredibly depressing.

Yet via this unique musical arrangement, Bob manages to do this all the way through, even though there is no relief at all.  The music does not change, beyond the two crashing chords,  and the hopelessness of the lyrics gets deeper and deeper until ultimately it is lost.

Sometimes the silence can be like the thunder
Sometimes I feel like I’m being plowed under
Could you ever be true? I think of you
And I wonder

And thus at the end of the song we are utterly lost, both via the lyrics and the music.  He can’t say that it is over and he’s walking away, merely that it doesn’t know if she ever could be true.

Thus that contradiction in the music between the slow soft pulse that carries the song through, and the sudden explosive two chords at “I’m sick of love” gives us the contradiction held within the lyrics, between his love for her, and her behaviour toward him.

Everything about her is wrong – which makes his love for her seem ludicrous – as expressed by the lines that appear on the BobDylan.com version in verse two.  Is there ever something that could be less an expression of love?

You thrilled me to my heart, then you ripped it all apart
You went through my pockets when I was sleeping

But whatever version of the lyrics we look at, the conclusion with these two lines in the last two couplets, speaks of nothing but desperation – which is exactly what the contrast between the plodding verses and the sudden crash of the two chords in the chorus, expresses totally…

I’m sick of love…I wish I’d never met you
I’m sick of love…I’m trying to forget you

Just don’t know what to do
I’d give anything to be with you

In short, it is, both in lyrics and in music, the expression of an utter contradiction and utter desperation is complete.

The songs reviewed from the music plus lyrics viewpoint…

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