By Tony Attwood
This series looks as the way Bob Dylan evolved from being a man who would take existing melodies and write his lyrics songs around them, to an extraordinarily effective composer of both lyrics and music.
Previously in this series I’ve looked at…
- Blowing in the Wind and No More Aucion Block
- Bob Dylan’s Dream How the most subtle of musical changes gave the song a totally different meaning
- Masters of War How Bob Dylan became a poet first and a songwriter second
- Girl from the north country, Farewell, All Over You, The Death of Emmett Till
- Davey Moore and Joni Mitchell’s complaint
- Walls of Red Wing and New Orleans Rag
- Seven Curses and With God on Our Side
- Dylan 1963, the era of other people’s songs: From talking blues to eternal circle
Now, I’m moving on to what seems to me to be a pivotal moment in the work of Bob Dylan the composer: North Country Blues
Bob had a certain affection with the notion of the “North Country” in 1963, writing both “Girl from the North Country”, and “North Country Blues” that year, but there is a huge difference between the songs, as the second of these pieces is as bleak as it could possibly be, both in the lyrics and the music.
The theme of economic change and the destruction of communities and individuals by an uncaring economic system, is very a Dylan theme, and indeed a theme of a lot of folk music, giving as it does an artistic context to the bleakness of lives affected by economic change which was not of fault of those affected so deeply by it.
Of course such change is always rationalised away and what we generally don’t feel or get to hear is the perspective of those most deeply affected, and who lack the resources to escape from the hell into which they have been plunged by unchecked capitalist exploitation of the local resources. In most cases the stories of those whose lives are destroyed by unbridled economic change are never heard. But Bob did give us one – although of course imaginary, the music and the images in the lyrics bring home to the listener the destructive nature of the economic system that created the problem.
Of course there have been other such songs but many will have been lost, and of course we don’t have recordings of how the songs were originally sung. But there are elements of Dylan’s composition in the traditional ballad “Red Iron Ore”
Of course many recordings have been made by professional singers who will want to show their own vocal skills – as indeed will the pianists who accompany them, but beneath it all, there are elements of an earlier, simpler song
But it is important to add that this is not to say that Dylan somehow stole an earlier song, for the similarities between Bob’s version and those before are far fewer than we find in many of the other songs Bob was writing at this time. Yet of course Bob was, we might agree to say, “influenced” by the folk song genre, but it does seem to me that here he created not only a completely new set of lyrics to tell the tale, but also a new song. If there is an antecedent, please do let me know. I’m not trying to claim my knowledge of folk songs is absolute.
What Bob does here is take these earlier versions and make out of them something more desperate still, and indeed more plaintive. And it is not as if Bob did not have a variety of versions of the song to be influenced by… the notion of the destruction of the old ways as modernity and industrialisation transformed the world, is one that has been portrayed in song since the industrial revolution began in the later 18th century.
Here are two such songs that emerged from the revolution
But although many writers took the essence of the changes wrought by the industrial revolution and the tragedies it brought to the individuals caught up in its changes, Dylan it seems to me went far further with this song both musically and lyrically.
So although there may be some borrowing from the various Red Iron Ore songs that came from the era, Bob is most certainly not simply re-running the folk song. He has personalised the situation in a way that makes us believe the characters are real.
Through this approach Bob has emphasised the horror and poverty of the situation by changes to the melody within the constant rotation of just two chords, which seem to suggest that there is no escape, there is absolutely no way out, everything is just stuck where it is, society and the capitalist system, is utterly uncaring.
But there is more because Dylan has, seemingly without being influenced by anyone else, decided to write a song in which most of the lines don’t rhyme – reflecting, it seems to me, the fact that these people’s lives can’t in any way be said to be rhyming.
Come gather ’round friends And I’ll tell you a tale Of when the red iron pits ran plenty But the cardboard filled windows And old men on the benches Tell you now that the whole town is empty
Compare this with the lyrics of Red Iron Ore where the traditional AA BB format is continued throughout in terms of rhyme.
In the month of September, the seventeenth day, two dollars and a quarter was all they would pay. And on Monday morning the Bridgeport did take the E. C. Roberts out into the lake.
So I see this as a real moment of Bob moving into his own field of musical composition, for here even the rhyme scheme reflects the horror of the story. Bob has not copied music or lyrics because generally the music and the lyrics do not reflect the horrors of the situation. The desperate bleakness of the situation is maintained throughout by only using two chords, and that repeated rise and fall of the melody, rising to a shout of anger, falling into desperation.
The lyrics and melody become a backdrop to this bleakness as the song ends as the husband, now utterly confused and reduced by drink either leaves or kills himself…. there is not even any need to clarify which, so deep is the desperation.
I lived by the window As he talked to himself This silence of tongues it was building Then one morning’s wake The bed it was bare And I’s left alone with three children The summer is gone The ground’s turning cold The stores one by one they’re a-foldin’ My children will go As soon as they grow Well, there ain’t nothing here now to hold them
The absolute tragedy of the lyrics in which there is no way out, is profoundly reflected by the simplicity of the music, and if, as it does seem to me, that Bob did in fact create the music himself, he must have known just how powerful his own writing could become.
So for me, this really does seem to be a big turning point. Dylan is now creating his own song, and with incredible poignancy, weaving a tale around his original music. OK, the music is not radically different enough from all that has gone before to call it ground-breaking – it is after based on all just two chords, but the impact and effect achieved in this piece, surely does mark it out as one of the key moments in the work of Bob Dylan the composer. Two rotating chords is right – that is all that happens in the lives of the people in the song. There is nowhere else to go, there is nothing to provide alternatives, except the alcohol. And that is of course, never a solution, although it can be an end.
But for Dylan this was, I believe, a major new step forward – a song in which the music AND the lyrics equally portray the situation.