If only there had been a Nobel Prize for music 3: From Times to Percy’s song

By Tony Attwood

• If only there had been a Nobel Prize for Music 1: We might have noted the musical innovations more
• If only there had been a Nobel Prize for Music part 2: From Hattie Carroll to the incoming ship

In the previous articles, I’ve noted some of the key issues in Bob Dylan’s compositions through which he changed the way the music of folk and rock songs was composed.  These changes included expanding the length of the song overall, and the length of individual verses.   Bob also introduced a range of new rhyming schemes and moved away from the traditional strophic (verse, verse, verse) and ternary (verse, verse, middle 8, verse) arrangements of the music.

He also explored emphasising the last line of a verse by repeating it and rather obviously, dramatically increasing the number of words that could be used within a song – which although a lyrical change, meant that the music itself now had to change to accommodate the additional lyrics.

However such changes always come with the danger that they can feel forced, as if the composer is making changes for the sake of being different, and it is a measure of Dylan’s success that most of us never feel this.  If we take “Times they are a-changin'” it is doubtful that many people realise the five six-line verses change their rhyming structure:

In verse one lines 1, 2, 3 and 5 rhyme (roam, grown etc)

Where the rhyming pattern does change, we tend not to notice it because of the effect of the strophic form – that is verse, verse, verse etc, with just the title line at the end and this seems like a highly structured song in terms of the lyrics (quite simply, change is happening now, and cannot be stopped), in terms of the time signature and the melody.

But the change is not just to the lyrics for the time signature here is 12/8, which means in each line of lyrics we have four sets of three beats:

Come gather round people where ever you roam

This doesn’t change at all over the years, quite probably because it would be impossible to maintain the essence of the song by taking it out of the 12/8 time.   So Bob has done something quite different.

In the 2009 version of the song, we can hear that familiar 1,2,3 beat as always, but the melody has now changed beyond recognition in many of the lines, including the melody for the last line of each verse.  Even the rhythm changes at times, for in verse three, “For he that gets hurt, will be he who has stalled; The battle outside ragin’, Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls” has a completely different set of emphases from anything we have heard before.  The way “soon”, “windows”, “rattle” etc are emphasised almost seems like a parody, as if Bob is saying, yes all this changed, but I am not sure if it made anything better.

That of course is my interpretation, but whatever reason you find for Bob changing the song in this way, change it he has.  (This recording comes from the Never Ending Tour series on this site).

2009

My contention here is thus that not only was “Times they are a changin'” a piece of music which challenged popular music’s standard approaches when it was written, through its rhyme structure, and its use of the 12/8 time signature, it was a piece of music that Dylan then changed later, by amending the melody, and placing an extra emphasis on the first of each of the three beats, to give a more plodding feel to the song.

Through these musical changes, I would argue, the meaning of the song has changed.  Whereas at first we might reasonably have taken the song to mean that there is hope in the future, because the younger generation has slipped the bonds of their forebears, and are creating a new world in a new way, and this is to be celebrated, this much later version musically suggests that since we are all just plodding along, going through the motions, believing something is happening, and not only do we not know what it is, (as was the case with Mr Jones) there might not actually be anything happening at all.   We are simply plodding along.

Of course, this is my own interpretation, and interpretations must always be treated with caution, but I would argue it is a valid interpretation, while the notion that Bob is still singing the same song with the same meaning as he was when he first wrote it, is very, very difficult to sustain in the light of these recordings.

Normally of course Bob’s songs are considered in isolation, or via the album on which they appeared, but if we do continue to consider the songs in the order in which they were written, what we now find is something very curious.  For, as far as we can tell, the next song written by Bob Dylan was Percy’s Song.   In one sense this a song on the same theme as “Times” in that it is about the failure of the system in which we live.

But there is more here, for this is really quite an extraordinary song – the music is utterly gentle and one might say almost delicate and yet contains the most horrific message, at the line “What happened to him could happen to anyone”.

It is in fact about the ineffectiveness of people in trying to change the system.  And in a very real sense this is utterly the opposite of Times they are a changin, for in Percy’s Song  there is nothing at all that can be done – the song is left with “With no other choice except for to go”.

Musically the composition comes from the traditional ballad “The Twa Sisters” and lyrically from another traditional ballad “Geordie”.

And I played my guitar through the night to the day
Turn, turn, turn again
And the only tune my guitar could play
Was, "Oh the cruel rain and the wind"

Thus my point is, to repeat it, if we wish to understand Bob’s music, we should not be looking at individual songs, but rather at the sequence of songs in the order of composition.   And here we see, “Times they are a changin” being immediately contradicted by a song about an appalling injustice which cannot be overturned.  There is no appeal, and everything is lost.  Nothing is changing.

These two songs are utterly contradictory in their visions, and yet the structures of the songs have certain similarities, such as the repeated lines in each.   But where they are so different is that “Times” has a strident quality in the music which within it carries the message of moving forward in hope.   The relentlessness of the 12/8 beat gives a strength to the words “Come gather round people wherever you roam” – the message is clear – group together, work together, support each other.

But in Percy’s song the meaning is quite different as it ends

And I played my guitar through the night to the day
Turn, turn, turn again
And the only tune my guitar could play
Was, "Oh the cruel rain and the wind"

What I think is extraordinary is not only that Bob could write two utterly contradictory songs one after the other (one saying the world is changing, and the other suggesting it isn’t, and worse it can’t be changed), but he could adopt completely different musical forms to convey the messages.   One might expect the horror of Percy’s song to be accompanied by more strident music but it is not.  It is just the music that never changes – the music that says “this is what the world is”.

Thus we have in quick succession Bob writing two songs with completely contradictory messages and in each case using different musical approaches.

We might ask why, and how he did it, but I think also just noting that at this early stage in his career that he could do this, gives a real insight into Bob and his music.   He could change his message and his musical approach in a trice.   And that I think gives us an insight into how his compositions and performances developed from throughout his career.

Bob, in short, has always been interested in different musical forms and messages, and having seen one side of the situation, he can not only quickly see the other he can also write about it.   One song is about the forthcoming liberation from the tyranny of the past, the next is about how the traditional ways still control us and there is nothing we can do.

And this was not just a one-off moment of two songs written in short proximity, contradicting each other.  For it was about to happen again.

Percy’s song was performed by Bob just once, on 26 October 1963 at Carnegie Hall.

The series continues.