Bob Dylan: if only there had been a Nobel Prize for music. Part 1

Details of previous articles on this theme of Dylan the musician, and how he worked to change some of the very fundamentals of folk music that existed when he strarted writing are given at the end of this article.

By Tony Attwood

In a recent piece I continued my argument that in his early days Bob Dylan avoided the obvious and took us into worlds unknown not just through the topics he covered in his lyrics, but also in the way that he wrote the music for those lyrics.

And yet, perhaps because writers on the subject of Dylan don’t always know too much about the structure of music, or maybe because they do but rather pompously believe that their readers can’t understand musical form and variation, (or maybe even because they think their readers don’t want to read about the way music is constructed), almost all the emphasis in most articles about Dylan has been on Bob Dylan’s lyrics, with Bob Dylan’s lifestyle coming second (thanks to Heylin), followed in third place with details of what Bob played on stage and the structure of Bob’s music (when discussed at all) coming a very, very poor fourth.  In fact sometimes I think there is more written about the weather at the gigs than the musical arrangement.

So given this site is “Untold Dylan” (rather than “What everyone else has said about Dylan but in a different way”), I’m writing at this moment primarily about Dylan’s music – and how he varied the standard approaches to music that he found dominating the world of folk,  pop and rock music as he began to compose.

But this approach brings a problem, for because I have not found many other writers considering the music of Dylan per se, I’ve been unsure how best to construct the argument that the dominant “let’s focus on the lyrics” approach does not give us a full understanding of Dylan’s work.

Of course, I am by no means the first to try to see Dylan’s work from a different point of view.  To give just one example, the in-depth analysis of Dylan’s individual songs contained within Jochen’s consideration of “It takes a lot to laugh,” really does get far beyond the lyrics as lyrics, and into the world of what lies beneath the song as performed and recorded.  Likewise, Mike’s “History in Performance” series gives us an exquisite vision of how Bob evolved his songs across time through the on-stage performances.  As indeed did Mike’s earlier series on the Never Ending Tour.  (Links to series are generally contained on the home page).

But what I am trying to find here is an even deeper understanding of the way the songs are constructed – which I hope might ultimately lead to a deeper understanding of the songs as music, in the way that Mike and Jochen have given us with their analyses of the lyrics – and which as Jürg Lehmann also explores through his earlier series on cover versions which took us to a whole different level.

Now these considerations are indeed important, because Dylan songs have been, and continue to be re-worked by Dylan himself and other artists.   It is as if Dylan provides us with a basic grid of a musical interpretation of the lyrics, ready for himself and others to then play with, seeking what comes out in the end.

And I know I have given my favourite example of this multiple times, so please do skip forward if you are now bored with it, but if you have not heard this before, or like me can never hear it enough, just consider this example below.  If you want the whole journey of this song’s mutation it is here.

And I keep quoting this just not because I love this arrangement, but because it seems to me to be one of the greatest journies of re-writing that I have come across with Bob.

Now of course, none of this is not to deny the importance of the lyrics of Dylan’s songs, nor indeed to suggest that he was not worthy of the Nobel Prize for Literature.  The lyrics are a central part of what Dylan has done, but if that is the heart and soul of the matter then surely he would have been a poet and nothing more.  But no, he is a songwriter – and most certainly the greatest songwriter of the modern age.  And also, for many years (at least until his voice inevitably started to go) the greatest interpreter of those works.

I say this not just because of the songs that Bob himself wrote, but the way in which he revealed to the world that the musical forms we know as pop, rock, modern folk and so on, could be taken in totally new directions both lyrically and musically.   But the problem we have had is that most writers on the topic of Dylan have focussed almost totally on the lyrics.

That this approach of not considering music and lyrics as a unified and unchangeable part of each song has not been adopted by many contemporary writers is perhaps because they have been influenced by the notion that the music (in the context of “popular music”) is simple and thus the lyrics are the only thing to be discussed.  Thus they have maintained the myth that Dylan’s work is of merit exclusively because of his words.  Indeed that ultimate accolade  – the Nobel Prize – was of course for literature, but this was entirely due to the fact that Nobel Prizes are only awarded for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economic Sciences.  They could have thought of giving Bob the Nobel Prize for Peace, and maybe they did think about that, but in the end, they opted for the only other possibility at their disposal: The Nobel Prize for Literature.

And so the prejudice of commentators on popular, rock and folk music – that really it’s all in the lyrics – was again maintained.  The music it seems is hardly to be considered.

But, I contest, that argument simply doesn’t stand up to interrogation.  For it seems to me that Bob from his earliest days, Bob has looked for ways to make changes to both of these all-pervading structures (lyrics and music), and he has done brilliantly, for it has been achieved without the music becoming incomprehensible to his audience.T

Thus to give one other example of what Bob can do, try this version of “Things have changed” – the quality of the recording is not so good at the start, but it does improve so it is worth listening to it all the way through.    And I hope you can hear like me that the meaning of the lyrics does indeed change through this change in the music.

If you have found this interesting you might also appreciate…

• How Bob Dylan turned the entire notion of how a song should be written, upside down.
• The songs got longer the form started to bend, we needed patience
• Dylan’s songwriting: does it matter who wrote the music (and were we missing a deeper meaning?)
• Bob Dylan, truth and fiction from 1963 to 1995. The Restless Farewell.
• Breaking down the rigidity of the popular song. Dylan in 1963
• How Bob Dylan has avoided the obvious and has taken us into worlds unknown