How the most subtle of musical changes gave “Bob Dylan’s Dream” a totally different meaning

Posted on February 14, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

By Tony Attwood

I was writing a couple of days ago, in the article Dylan the lyrics, the music and some false comparisons: Blowing in the Wind, about how I felt the link between Blowing in the Wind and its supposed antecedents had been overplayed.

That however (in my opinion) is not the case with “Bob Dylan’s Dream”, and its antecedent, “Lady Franklin’s Lament.”  The closeness of the songs cannot be denied – but the ways in which Bob Dylan performs his “Dream” is utterly different from Lady Franklin’s Lament.  And this I think is an important point if we wish to understand Dylan the composer, as opposed to just Dylan the lyric writer.

As you can hear below, the whole approach of the Lament is that it is (rather obviously) a lament: “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow” as Google helpfully tells me.   And indeed if you just look at (let alone listen to) the final verse you will see the full meaning of the “lament.”

And now my burden it gives me painFor my long lost Franklin I'd cross the mainTen thousand pounds I would freely giveTo say on earth that my Franklin do live

Now if you listen to Bob’s rewriting of the old song as we have it on Freewheellin’, the whole style and approach is much more upbeat, even though the lyrics tell us that the dream made him sad, as you would expect, what with it being about his friends who have long since died.

And indeed I would say that even if you remove your undoubted ability to recite the lyrics of the song by heart, there is still a certain buoyancy about the song.  Which when one ponders that point for a moment, is again rather odd.

Certainly what I remember, learning and performing this song as a young man, was singing the line about not getting old with a fair amount of gusto.  I had no thoughts of getting old of course; I had a life before me. And yes it was easy to tell wrong from right; I knew that.  I just wished the government did.

Such a view was helped by the fact that the sadness doesn’t really come in until the very end.

How many a year has passed and gone?Many a gamble has been lost and wonAnd many a road taken by many a first friendAnd each one I've never seen again

Now as it happens that rings incredibly true to me today, as just a few weeks ago I heard that a good friend of mine from my school days (some 50+ years ago) who was in fact one year younger than me, had died a couple of years back.   We had not been in touch for a long time, but I remember him fondly, and it was a great shock to hear the news.   I asked the one pal I have from those days who I am still in touch with what had caused my best friend’s death, but he didn’t know.

So of course this song suddenly came back to me, and its poignancy hit me stronger than ever.  I don’t quite feel the way Bob expressed it…

I wish, I wish, I wish in vainThat we could sit simply in that room againTen thousand dollars at the drop of a hatI'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that

…but I am feeling sad about a lost friend, and the remoteness I now have from my own past.

And yet, and yet…. I never felt when I performed the song in folk clubs in my teens and 20s, and I still do not feel, “Bob Dylan’s Dream” as a sad song.  And of course it wasn’t sad then because I was young, and had a full life to look forward to, rather than a full life to look back upon.

So for me the question now arises: how could a song by Dylan which is about such a sad event and which ends with that note of desperation…

I wish, I wish, I wish in vainThat we could sit simply in that room againTen thousand dollars at the drop of a hatI'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that
… not make me feel sad now just as indeed it has never made me feel sad.
The answer has to be the music.   Dylan performs it at a moderate to fast pace, and there is no returning to a sad line as a repeat which can thus hammer home the sadness of the event.
What’s more the song is in a major, not a minor key, and we do tend to associate sadness with minor keys.   True, the second chord is a minor, but the piece is resolutely in the major.  Eyolf Østrem who knows everything there is to know about how Dylan creates and uses chords gives us
      G           Am
While riding on a train goin' west,
              C/g    D/f#
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
C /b G                    C/g     G
I    dreamed a dream that made me sad,
             D            C         /b        G
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.

Now if we go back to the wonderful performance “Live at Town Hall New York April 1963” (Live 1962-1966 — Rare Performances From The Copyright Collections (2018), which is at least at this moment on the internet and in case that vanishes, also on Spotify if you have an account),   we do get a greater sense of sadness because of the way Dylan sings, and in particularly occasionally holds onto some of the lyrics, and takes the guitar further into the background.   Indeed by the penultimate “Many a year” verse, you have to be completely insensitive to the performance not to feel at least some of the emotion inherent in the song.

Which may leave us puzzling over why Bob took the emotion level down for the recording on Freewheelin’.  Why do we not get the full blast of the sadness there?

Of course it may have been because by the time of that recording Bob had played the song so many times, he longer felt easy putting all the emotion into the song.  It may have been habit, or it may have been the producer in the studio suggesting he might “lighten it up a bit”.

And it is that thought that brings me to my real point: what Bob has done is created a song, based on an old ballad, that with very minor amendments in performance, could be desperately sad, as the lyrics suggest, or could in fact be a piece that tells the same tale with exactly the same lyrics, but which via the music by-passes some of the desperation implied in the last verse.

Now these musical changes that Dylan introduces are indeed subtle, and of course I have no idea how they came about, but they do tell us a lot about Dylan’s music – and it is the music that is important here, because the lyrics stay the same.  Play the song one way, as on the album, and the sadness is there in the lyrics, but not reflected in the music.  Play it the other way, as in the 1963 New York Town Hall performance, and all the desperation is there in both lyrics and music.

And this for me is a perfect example of how Dylan is able to manipulate his compositions through very subtle changes in order to vary the way we react to a piece.  And indeed it is an example that gives an insight into why Bob has sought endlessly to re-invent his music on tour.

What we can conclude from this is that for Bob the music is absolutely as important as the lyrics, which is why we have multiple versions of the same song.  Indeed my view is that with this song, and with the most subtle of changes, Dylan shows just how much understanding he has of the impact of the way the music is performed on the message of the song.

And at this point I would also like to add Judy Collins version here.  What we have here is a very enjoyable performance of the song, and one that I have willingly listened to many times, but it has none of the desperation of Dylan’s early version.  Rather I can imagine I would have been applauding warmly if I had been fortunate enough to be in a Judy Collins concert and hearing her play that, but there would not be tears rolling down my cheeks as I suspect there might have been if I had heard a performance that delved into the meaning of the lyrics.

So my point is that what Bob has done is create a song, using an old folk melody, which can be performed in a genteel way which gives us a feeling of warmth and comfort, or something utterly different.  This flexibility is achieved because it is possible to perform the piece to emphasise a sense of distance between ourselves and the music.  Indeed this is how Dylan performed it at the Town Hall, New York, incorporating a feeling of desperation in relation to the loss of one’s past, and most particularly one’s past friends.   It was this sense of desperation which was then removed (for whatever reason – we will probably never know) when the album was recorded.

But my main point is that in my view, to create a song which can through minor changes in performance, reveal both stances, while keeping the melody and lyrics the same, is quite remarkable.  And indeed we have here one of the foundations of Bob’s subsequent career of performing many of his songs in completely new ways musically, while keeping the lyrics pretty much the same.   This was, I think, rather an important moment.

Here are the other songs in the series. There are details of our recent articles and series on the home page.

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One Response to How the most subtle of musical changes gave “Bob Dylan’s Dream” a totally different meaning

  1. denise k says:
    February 14, 2025 at 8:03 pm

    Thanks Tony, I agree the way a song is delivered can very much affect emotion and mood! Bob has such an intrinsic ability to take any song and create various atmospheres; often by minor adjustments. I don’t think much of his arrangements are nailed down, especially when it comes to his singing and harp playing he always leaves room for spontaneity. I love how he will string certain words together rapidly and other times draw one word out in emphasis. I
    think his performances are meant to be fully experienced not just heard.

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