All the songs Bob has never sung
“On the road again” is a 12 bar blues, and it is possible that Bob doesn’t play that many 12 bar blues on the Never Ending Tour – I have never counted, but maybe he keeps the number down. (That’s a task for the future: how many 12 bar blues per show?)
But on the other hand, Bob doesn’t mind putting 12 bar blues (which basically means that the song follows a standard pattern of chords with the chords being the three major chords that can be built from a major scale – so in C major the chords are C, F and G) on an album occasionally.
I have had the thought that these songs are just fillers, on the album to make up the number, or included perhaps because it is felt by Bob or the production team that one needs an upbeat 12 bar song because “that’s what the audience wants”. Either way, I’m not very happy with the explanation.
But then if that is so, why include a 12 bar blues on a 12 song album but not in a 25 song live show? I don’t know.
The idea put about is that this song, along with a number of others from this era, focuses on the artist against society and “previews the comic grotesques that will become more prominent on songs in later albums.”
Well maybe that’s so when we look at
Well, I wake up in the morning, there frogs inside my socksYour mama, she's hidin' inside the icebox Your daddy comes in wearin' a Napoleon Bonaparte mask And you ask why I don't live here Honey, how come you have to ask? Well, I go to pet your monkey, I get a face full of claws I said, "Who's in the fireplace, " and you tell me Santa Claus The milkman comes in, he's wearing a derby hat And you ask why I don't live here Honey, how come you have to ask me that?
But then that still doesn’t explain why, if it is good enough and/or important enough to be on the album, it is not going to get a showing on stage. After all, 12 bar blues can be easily re-written in order to maximise the musical entertainment while still putting across the message within the structure of the song.
And so, if “The song reflects a paranoid version of dread of dealing with in-laws” (these and other quotes here coming from the Wikipedia review of the song), the music doesn’t really relate to such a concept. If we accept the Wiki view that, “The narrator wakes up in the morning and has to face a surreal world where his mother-in-law hides in the refrigerator, his father-in-law wears a mask of Napoleon and the grandfather-in-law’s cane turns into a sword, the grandmother-in-law prays to pictures and an uncle-in-law steals from the narrator’s pockets…” why is all this portrayed in a 12 bar blues, put on the album and then not played in concert?
I guess I can see the argument about 12 bar blues, and not having more than one per show, but with all these lyrics written, maybe Bob could have given us a jolt by using them again to a new tune, new rhythm, new melody…
There probably is no logical explanation, and it was just a case of feeling the need for something upbeat on the album at that point and so dropping it in.
It has been suggested the song is a response to the song “On the Road”, a traditional blues performed by the Memphis Jug Band with more serious lyrical content concerning an unfaithful woman.
One of the original versions of On the Road Again was recorded by the Memphis Jug Band. As with a lot of performances of this type there is a long instrumental section at the start, but the lyrics do come in…
But many of those who have decided to record the song, have tended to stick to Bob’s original version, rather than trying to change the music in any way.
Pat Guadagno and Tired Horses had a go but that lack of any sort of original melody means we know exactly where we are going as soon as the piece starts.
Ben Sidran does at least try and find a unique sound behind what is basically a recitation of the lyrics.
Julie Doiron abandoned any real attempt at a melody and has a voice that really takes us to somewhere so utterly different that I am not sure where I am anymore.
So maybe Bob just felt that his 12 bar belter was about all that could be done with the song so having put it on the album there was nothing more to do. But then again, maybe after the album came out the fact that Willie Nelson produced a different song with the same title, made Bob shy away from the track. (The Willie Nelson song got into the Billboard charts and later won a Grammy. But that was later – years after Bob had written his song and put it on the album.)
But back to Bob – he wrote the song, recorded it, put it on the album, and then left it alone. For myself, it is not on my “Dylan’s 100 greatest songs” list – far from it in fact. And I don’t mean any criticism of Bob for writing it – great artists in every genre create works that are created, as it were, “along the way”, as they are edging toward something far more important, complete, interesting, etc etc.
So no worries about why Bob wrote it. It is just that having written it, he put it on the album and then left it alone.
And maybe today we can say “none of this is important” because on the internet we can access every song Dylan has created. But at the time we couldn’t, and for me, even if no one else, every song on an album was important, and this one didn’t really seem to take me anywhere, or tell me anything. And if that was why Bob didn’t play it on tour – why then take up one precious track with it. Why not something else?
Yeah, its basically filler. Artists often make two or more similar works, in getting to the sweet spot, or they may go past it into a repetitive dead end. Its part of the process. But studio recording timelines and pressure can lead to bad decisions, like using this somewhat dull track on an album. But he did this repeatedly, he often had much better songs he recorded and never used. Perhaps the fact he was on Columbia records was as much a curse as a blessing. For Columbia gave him access to the best studios and session players, huge international (western world) marketing promotion and distribution, BUT, also very classic-minded and ultimately conservative company executives. This may have had some impact on the way album cuts were chosen. Imagine how much better Highway 61 would have been with Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence thrown in somewhere on side two – completely raucous and unexpected, with a lyric that in a single line expressed way mote than multiple verses could – I bet you think this song is just a riff!