Heylin’s “Double Life” volume 2 episode 6. Making “New Morning”

An index to the current series running on this site, and many of the past series is given on the home page: I don’t know what it means either, but it sounds good.

The series looking at volume 1 of Clinton Heylin’s epic review of Bob Dylan concluded here, and at the end of that piece, you will find an index to all the articles that were part of that series.  This is part five of the review of Volume 2 of Heylin’s opus., “Far Away from Myself.”  Again an index to previous episodes is at the end.

By Tony Attwood

Leading up to “New Morning” Heylin describes Dylan as an artist lost.  An artist who agrees to work with the Byrds, but then doesn’t tell them where or when, until the day of the recording, by which time, they’ve given up and “flown” away, with Bob seemingly not having anything new to record anyway.

Elsewhere, the story is told of the recording of “Self Portrait” in which according to Heylin, Bob gave everyone a half-hour’s notice, but still ends up recording 17 songs on the first day and 11 more on the next.

Of course, this way of working is utterly disrespectful of everyone else.  They are tales of a man who is focused only on himself and his art.  It is almost as if no one else is seen to have a life.  But then, one can also say, that’s often the way for brilliant creative artists.

Worse, even when the musicians got into the studio to record with Bob, it wasn’t as if Bob was prepared with a series of songs that he could teach them, and then they could record (although this in itself would have been unusual – normally there would be rehearsal time elsewhere so that everyone got into the studio knowing exactly what was to be done).  But no, Bob was found in the studio on day one, flipping through copies of “Sing Out” songbooks looking for songs he wanted to try.

Which brings us to a key point.  Yes, this appears utterly disorganised, and lacking in any sense of recognition that other people have their own lives and their own work to get on with.  Yes we might allow that artists can have bursts of inspiration and need to get the work completed as that inspiration hits, but Dylan’s approach seems to go much further and be infinitely more disrespectful.

Drawing once more on my own very modest time in the world of music, I recall once being with my partner in south Wales, and getting a phone call from a musician of quite considerable repute saying that he and his band were finishing their new album in a studio about 150 miles from where we were, and the producer had just decided that one particular track needed an organ part.   They didn’t have an organist in the band who could handle the part, but there was an organ in the studio, and would I mind driving over there, now, at that very moment, and help cut the final track.

Since I did like the guy who was phoning, and since my partner had never been in a studio before to see a band making an album, after a brief consultation I agreed and we did the journey, cut the track, and got back to her house in the small hours of the next morning.  I was thanked by the artist, but no more, and never heard from him again, (although we had previously been on very good terms, and had worked together several times on different projects).

Now I slip that bit in, not to boast “that’s me on that album” but because that’s how it can go in the music business, especially at my end of the music business where tiny budgets and lack of resources can lead to such circumstances.

Dylan of course, at the very opposite end, has never had such problems, but seemingly had, at least at this period of his life, that total self-centredness that many people who are not highly creative themselves can’t understand.   What people often seem to want is the creative genius to be both a creative genius and a really nice, ordinary guy.  It doesn’t always work like that.

Indeed I recall being a guest at a convention celebrating a particular TV series with which I was involved, and had to listen to a member of the audience telling everyone how awful my work was and what a pity it was that they hadn’t got a “proper writer” involved.  I at least had the consolation that the theme of my book then became a major series, but that’s how it goes.

Now I make that point because in most walks of life abuse from members of the public is rare (except perhaps in the case of the member of the public being drunk), and my novel referred to above sold well and led on to other work.  But as that episode shows, when working in the creative arts one necessarily builds up a certain level of resistance to what one might see as unwarranted criticism.  Lots of highly creative people can be pretty awful to work with.

And I mention this here, as Dylan at the time of Self-Portrait had suffered from a lot of heavy criticism – indeed Heylin cites a comment that his work at the time was that of an “amnesiac searching for his lost self.”

Now the approach adopted for Self-Portrait was a form of working that very few artists could get away with, because a) they didn’t have the wherewithal to hire the studio on spec, and b) they didn’t have the recognition of those around them that something good can come out of this.  Dylan had that respect and recognition and thus people who were willing to take time out to oblige the artist, most certainly did so.

But the whole point, and it is clearly one that Heylin doesn’t get, is that Dylan was wanting to capture the essence of older songs not just in terms of the lyrics and the melody, but the essence of how these songs were performed when first created.  Which meant not going back to correct mistakes, not using overdubs etc.  In fact just one song in the collection was is worked on (apparently it was first recorded for Dylan’s wife) while the rest all got one take and that was that.

And that, I can say from my own experience, takes some doing.  At home, I record the songs I write these days as a hobby, and each will normally take me six or eight attempts to get a version that has just one or two slips within the recording, slips which most non-musicians won’t notice.  But Bob was creating these songs in one or two takes for potential release on an album.  On the rare occasions he felt any further accompaniment was needed he apparently simply left a note – accompaniments were added later.

Heylin also makes much of the fact that “Self Portrait” is most decidedly not a self-portrait.  The songs are not written by Dylan, the photographs on the album were not taken at his home, the arrangements of the songs were often not Dylan’s…   In fact Heylin calls it “a gag” – noting that unlike other “gags” this one was not funny.   He also notes that Bob couldn’t decide on a cover for the resultant album, and then decides at the last minute to use one of his own paintings.  The album famously got a review in Rolling Stone that started. “What is this shit?”

It was in short an extraordinary artistic endeavour; one of the sort that no one who was not an extraordinarily well-known creative artist who had a contract that allowed him to do whatever he wanted, could get away with.

So what are we to make of this album, its form of creation, and the subsequent allegations that Heylin delves into (such as that at the time of the album and thereafter, that Bob was “fooling around.”)

As Heylin does seem to grasp, Self Portrait was a way of clearing a lot of other thoughts and issues from Bob’s mind, thus allowing space for the creation of songs like “If not for you”, “Time passes slowly” and “Sign on the Window” to emerge later.

But despite this, Heylin still doesn’t seem to get the key point: musicians of whatever type (save perhaps for the likes of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven) do need to do all sorts of preparation and exploration before the masterpieces pour forth.   And indeed it appears (both here and in other reports) that Bob was not planning it this way… it just happened.

This was in fact a very interesting time: Bob just could not get himself together, until suddenly out of the blue he books the studios, tells whoever he can reach to be there that day (or the next at the very latest) and without any preparation just records all these songs that he already knows… and then finds through that process he is liberated from whatever the bonds were that were holding him back.  He records then “Self Portrait” and as a result finds he can start writing again.

Heylin of course, as ever, goes into detail, and tells us of the various experiments, which is quite interesting in itself, but I am not sure that through this Heylin fully gets what is actually going on.  “Self Portrait” got Dylan working in a studio again, and cleared the decks as it were, but not for a series of already written Dylan compositions.  It was for a series of new songs: most of which in retrospect Dylan decided that he really didn’t want to play to anyone else.

What we know is that “Went to See the Gypsy”, “Time Passes Slowly”, and “If Not for You” overlap the two albums – clearly showing that the work on Self Portrait enabled Bob to overcome his songwriter’s block and start composing again.

But it does also appear (although not that clear via Heylin, one almost has to be making notes as one goes along to get the full picture) that “Three Angels”, “If Dogs Run Free”, “Winterlude”, and “The Man in Me” evolved subsequently in a fairly chaotic manner.  Indeed there was a plan to do a new album, but quite what it would include seems not to have been planned at all.   Nor was the overall feel of the album considered – or in fact anything else.  It just happened.   Indeed the impression delivered by Heylin was that music was being created and recorded just to make the album seem acceptable to all concerned.

Heylin’s comment about Bob and this album is, “He was treading water and he knew it,” which although probably true, seems hardly adequate as a full story.  True “If not for you” is more sentimental than we normally associate with Dylan, and “Day of the Locusts” is an interesting passing vision of what it is like to be given an honour you don’t want.  (And I feel that particularly, for around this time I introduced the lady who was going to become my wife to my parents, and we then all went together to the ceremony in London where I picked up my research degree.  Locusts no, utter pride and joy yes.  But then, I got my honour for making a contribution to human knowledge. Dylan got his for being Dylan.  Maybe that makes a difference.   I’ve still got mine up on the wall.

And maybe that’s why “Time Passes Slowly” follows the locusts – the award was an interruption to total tranquillity.   But then there’s “Went to see the Gypsy”, which Dylan completely denies is about meeting Elvis (whom he never met), and from then on, for me at least, it all seems to be downhill.  “Winterlude,” “If dogs run free”…, to me they sound as explorations…  Songs that were quickly created and recorded for an album to come out immediately8 after the last album, just to show people that he really could write new songs.

Maybe there are many Dylan fans who really love these songs, but I am not sure Dylan is among those who feel anything for “New Morning”  Over half the album is made up of songs that Dylan has never ever performed on stage (at least according to the official site) and of the remaining five, “Locusts” has only been out eight times, the title track 79, “If not for you” 89, “If dogs run free” 104 and top of the list “The man in me”: 155 times.

That I think tells us something about how Bob felt then as he quickly left the album behind and moved on, and subsequently.

———–

The series looking at volume 1 of Clinton Heylin’s epic review of Bob Dylan concluded here, and at the end of that piece, you will find an index to all the articles that were part of that series.  This is part five of the review of Volume 2 of Heylin’s opus., “Far Away from Myself.”

Previously….

• 1: Far Away From Insight
• 2: “I looked into the bleak woods and said, ‘Something’s gotta change’. 
• 3:  If this is a bunch of noise, then it is noise that I love
• 4: Far away from the music
• 5: How to ignore important details