Bob Dylan: the lyrics AND the music. “Things have changed”

“The Lyrics and the Music” 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.   An updated list of previous articles in the series is given at the end.  Details of recent articles and current series can be found on the home page.

 

“Things have changed” has a set of lyrics that a lot of the time, don’t connect.  They are descriptive of a seemingly unending series of scenes which are nothing but a set of statements.   In one line he is “waiting on the last train” and in the next “Standing on the gallows”.  OK we can make a leap and believe that the “last train” is in fact his execution, except within a moment he is contemplating dancing lessons and going to dress in drag.  And as time moves on through the song we get to, “The human mind can only stand so much, You can’t win with a losing hand,” and perhaps are tempted to think that’s it.  Our brains just can’t take any more.

Indeed sometimes we get hints of the “worried mind” and just what is happening within it, for from the opening lines we have “I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can” and the notion that “You can’t win with a losing hand”.

And then maybe “I hurt easy, I just don’t show it, You can hurt someone and not even know it” is the key to it all, but in the end we are always drawn back to that repeated set of lines…

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

So maybe that is the heart of it all.

But then, let’s imagine that the lyrics came first.  How on earth would you compose the music for such a scenario?   Virtually any answer is possible, and what Bob does is give us the opposite of the catastrophe that seems to be the essence of the “worried man with a worried mind.”  We get an easy and relaxed litling melody and accompaniment.  It’s calm, it’s gentle, while all around the world is falling apart.

For in Bob’s performance, there is nothing “worried” at all – everything in the music is restrained and relaxed.  There’s a smile – ok maybe a somewhat sardonic smile – but there is a smile within the performance.

If you were kind enough to read my review of some of the performances of this song during the Never Ending Tour you’ll know that Bob’s way of singing the song did indeed change over the years (I chose examples from 2000 to 2007) but the essence of the music did not change.   It was simply the way he moved from singing a melody to calling out the lines.

Personally, I thought that was a shame, because for me the melody is at the core of this song, and the more cutting guitar solo that we got by the time of the last outings of the song on the tour (it was performed 1001 times).

But things did change later – I just didn’t get that far in my review.  For by the last outing on the Never Ending Tour in 2019 the song had a totally different edge to it, and much of it had changed to emphasise the changes that were going on in, around and about the singer.  Musically this is almost a new song – perhaps a blood relative of the original, but still different…

And so we have moved a long way away from the original conception of the song.   But I have the feeling (and of course it is no more than a feeling – I can hardly phone up Bob and ask him!)  that Bob was simply looking for ways to make the song different, rather than reflecting on the original meaning of the song.   And that of course is his prerogative, after all he is the composer.   But when I hear the way he performs…

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

… I feel the meaning of the song has been removed in order to give us a new performance.  And yes it is fun, and the changes to the melody and the chords are interesting, and if I’d been there I would have cheered and cheered, although I think part of me would have been cheering my memory of the original.   For I still feel the need to go back to a version – the original in fact – in which the music and the lyrics were as one.

For in the original, I feel he is not contemplating falling in love with the first woman because he is so wrecked (which is the feeling I get from that live performance above) but rather because it is the world that is so wrecked.   It is not that nothing makes sense to him, but rather actually nothing makes sense to anyone.  After all, if you are stuck in a bomb shelter and the air raid sirens are wailing, it’s better to be friends with those around you, than to start an argument.

And I feel much more comfortable with that, because I don’t want to believe it is me that has gone weird, but rather that it is the world that has gone weird, and I am doing all right in this crazy world.

That, in fact, is the feeling I have from the album version of the song – and indeed from the video Dylan made in relation to it.  Things have changed, the world has gone completely insane, but the gallows and the noose are not real.  I can swing through this new world if I can just stay relaxed and keep my eyes on the road.

And so for me this evolution of the song from the album recording in 2000 to the live 2019 version is one that has taken a musical wrong turn.  OK who am I to suggest Bob got it wrong – clearly I am not qualified to say that.  But all my emotions drive me back to the original.  I feel the lyrics and the music in that version within me.   Yes in my 20s, and 30s… and through much of my life I used to care, and from that I felt I could make a difference.  But as I got to my 70s (not as old as Bob, but not so many years behind) I still care, but now I know my time has gone, there’s no way now I can make a change.   Except maybe just possibly suggest to a few people that Heylin’s latest double volume book is totally wrong.  Maybe there.

So maybe I still care enough to want that.  In fact I’ve got it now.  I used to care and think I could make a difference.  Now I still care, but the feeling I can do much about anything beyond my immediate friends and family has gone.  That’s the difference.

Here are the other songs in the series.

3 Comments

  1. It’s difficult to get Dylan thrown out of the Promised Land of America, with his circular view of history, even when things go wrong – a view the singer/songwriter oft portrays through characters of fiction – from pulp western short stories and novelettes, for example.

    Charente Mulford and Louis L’amour both typed out stories featuring Hopalong Cassidy; he’s a two-gunned, horse-riding cowboy; as time go by, Hoppy gets toned down to fit the censor’s view of what a kid’s hero in movies and on TV should be like.

    America’s depicted by Dylan as a country whose inhabitants more often than not worship the Almighty green dollar over and above ‘spiritual’ values.

    Actor Andy Clyde plays one of Hoppy’s sidekicks, California Carlson:

    (T)he American flag turned green
    & andy clyde kept pestering about a back paycheck
    (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

    The kid’s hero gets portrayed as a dangerous madman rather than a cool man of order who’s wearing a lawman’s badge:

    Out of his past appears Insanely Hoppy, screaming and dancing
    (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

  2. Love your thoughts on this, especially the observations about growing older and what that means vis-a-vis what we thought we could change and what we no longer think we van change.

    I’ve just now discovered your site, and look forward to reading more of your musings on the great Bob.

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