By Tony Attwood
Previously in this series
- Why does a simple, hardly known Dylan song, get recorded over and over again?
- How the most subtle of musical changes gave “Bob Dylan’s Dream” a totally different meaning
- How Bob Dylan became a poet first and a songwriter second: “Masters of War”
- When copying other people’s music was Bob’s prime way of working
- Who killed Davey Moore?: A different type of borrowing
When we come to Dusty Old Fairgrounds however we have something different from all that had gone immediately before – a song that seems musically to be a Dylan original – and in fact what we have been noting so far as Dylan using other people’s music without publically recognising the fact, in this case he seems to have created a new piece of music which he himself then reused within his later composition “Times they are a changing.”
Now this is not to say that the song is itself copied from somewhere else – rather that I haven’t been able to identify an earlier version of the song. If you can spot an antecedent, please do write in and say.
After that Dylan wrote Walls of Red Wing
The song is pretty much based on “Only a hobo” and the Scottish ballad “The road and the miles to Dundee”. So what we do have is a case of Bob writing a melody of his own with “Dusty old fairgrounds” (although it must be said, hardly a revolutionary melody, but at least something original) and yet then going back to the idea of taking a melody from elsewhere.
Following this in terms of Dylan compositions, we had New Orleans Rag. This is a song that could be described as having music of its own, but the musical content is fairly minimal – it is a two chord affair with the same two lines of melody repeated over and over. The song is really all about the lyrics, in the same way that a talking blues is.
And although Bob was still using and re-using older material, I think this is the moment when he really did start thinking about the fact that in a few of his songs he had indeed created original music as well as the lyrics, and maybe he should be focussing on this a bit more. Thus, instead of taking an existing melody, what we have here is a melody that Bob himself was going to re-use to some extent in the song (yet to be written at this point) Oxford Town.
The song is a cross between the lyrics of “With God on our side” and the melody of “Ballad for a Friend”. Indeed, the melody was also used in part later in 1962 in “Oxford Town”, although obviously at a very different speed and to different effect, and then used again in 1963 in “With God on our Side.”
To me this re-use of his own material does indicate that Dylan had a very free and easy approach to melodies, rather than having a deliberate attempt to copy existing melodies. When he found a melody he liked he re-used it irrespective of where it came from. So one might conclude that during this era what Bob sought was the right musical and lyrical balance, without having a worry as to where the music and lyrics came from.
And there is a further point here, for what we have also noticed is that Bob has an extraordinary memory for lyrics, as witnessed through his generally faultless performance of his songs through his multiple tours. It seems more than likely that he has a very good memory of melodies too, and so a melody once heard in, for example, a folk song, can then be re-used when the need arises – and because of Bob’s musical ability can be transformed.
And it is because Dylan was and is so deeply engrossed in the musical genres that fascinate him that he could undertake these reuses of songs and still produce music that is itself of interest rather than music that can be readily dismissed as a copy.
That reuse of melodies in totally different ways, of course, is exactly the sort of thing Dylan can do, but if anyone else had written this, it might well have been one of the songwriter’s crowning glories. It says its message and its eats right into your heart and soul, and leaves you standing there wondering what on earth to do next. Or at least, that is what happened to me.
And if you are coming to this song for the first time in the Donald Trump era, I suspect it might actually ring a few more very shrill bells in your head. Now of course, I am not an American citizen, so I have no say in the matter, and so comment as an outsider who might well have a warped vision of what is going on, but from where I live it seems that what Dylan was worrying about back in 1963, still needs protesting against with as much vigour as he created for this song and its extraordinary final line.
It is also a remarkable cross-over song when it comes to form and format. While “With God on our side” is straight folk and “Ballad for a Friend” is straight blues, this is somehow both, and that is quite a remarkable achievement. All the more remarkable in that it is in 12/8 – a time signature very rarely used in popular or folk music, but it is the time signature of Times they are a changing. Put another way its in triple time, and the 1,2,3 1,2,3 1,2,3 1,2,3. The pulse rings out through the whole piece, and yet still gives it that feeling of being the blues.
What’s even more interesting is the way the guitar is played, which seems to have chord and note clashes throughout, the explanation for which I only understood when I turned to Eyolf Østrem’s work which helped me out via his dylanchords.info site. If you want the musical explanation of what makes this song sounds so spooky and extraordinary here it is. I am quoting from Dylan Chords…
“Both in the guitar and in the singing, the tone Bb is prominent, which of course clashes with the B in the G major chord of the guitar — which of course is how it’s intended. In the guitar this is accomplished either with the high Bb (as in the second measure of the intro) or the low Bb on the fifth string (I’ve indicated this in the tab by using “bb” for the high and “Bb” for the low Bb), which is frequently hammered-on from the open string, as in the third verse.”
What we are in fact seeing is the evolution of Dylan the composer of music, who can work alongside Dylan the composer of lyrics.
This composition does, I believe, mark the start of the work of Bob Dylan the truly original composer.