Previously:
- 1: We might have noted the musical innovations more
- 2: From Hattie Carroll to the incoming ship
- 3: From Times to Percy’s song
- 4: Combining musical traditions in unique ways
- 5: Using music to take us to a world of hope
- 6: Chimes of Freedom and Tambourine Man
- 7: Bending the form to its very limits
- 8: From Denise to Mama
- 9: Balled in Plain D
- 10: Black Crow to All I really want to do
By Tony Attwood
The history of music in the 20th century was one of experimentation and innovation, alongside the evolution of new technology. For the traditional “serious” musical forms of the classical-romantic era, wherein such giants of composition as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven had defined what could and could not be done, their music could now be heard by all who wanted to hear, whenever they wanted to hear it.
At the same time, folk songs and blues – the music of the people which was rarely, if ever, written down – suddenly found itself transformed through the fact that it could be heard on recordings. It thus attained a solidity it had never had before, as well as a much larger audience
It is impossible to overestimate the impact the development of recording techniques had on music, for through this technical innovation, the performances that were recorded started to become the definitive performances, simply because they were recorded, and could be heard over and again.
Dylan, as we know, was one of the very few composers in what became known as the “popular” form of music, who turned against this: he wanted the freedom write, re-write and re-invent his songs, and although the record company insisted of course that he put versions on record, for Dylan they were never the definitive versions, as he endlessly sought to re-write the arrangements, and indeed often the lyrics, melodies and chord sequences for his performances.
At the same time as this technological evolution was happening, so popular music continued to evolve from earlier popular forms such as dance music, and combined with different ethnic forms such as the blues, to develop in a multiplicity of ways. Then as radio stations took to playing recorded music (initially in the USA, but later elsewhere) the music of both contemporary and historic artists to a much wider audience.
Thus, music became increasingly diversified, although at the same time some cultural groups found the music of other cultural groups unintelligible. Popular singers were deemed unable to sing while the music of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen was considered incomprehensible. You can find their work across the internet but here’s an example to save you time…
Meanwhile, popular music likewise diversified, and here a more vigorous cultural battle arose with some music being classified by belligerent groups as the “music of the devil”, some, such as the music of modern jazz, the avant-garde or the music of experimental artists such as Frank Zappa was considered “unintelligible” and in some countries unfit for broadcasting. Indeed in countries such as the UK, government control over radio broadcasting continued for many years, thus restricting the spread of awareness of new musical forms.
And this was a rather curious issue, because the music aimed at the mass population tended to convey a message that everything was, or could be fine, and as such it supported the status quo. I’ve quoted “White Christmas” as one of the prime examples of the genre; one of the most popular songs of all time, I expressed the simple view that everything was, or soon would be, fine. There was nothing to struggle for; our world needed no change.
But of course some musical forms – most particularly the blues and folk music – carried the message that everything was far from fine, and it was these two forms combined with the arrival of radio stations in the USA playing music 24 hours a day that paved the way for the evolution of new forms of music, and which could allow people to hear music of a different style, incorporating different visions of life.
And inevitably, a few composers such as Frank Zappa and Bob Dylan then went further, taking the conventions of the styles of music that they were interested in, and then expanding and combining them using approaches that had rarely been heard before. We might at this point remember “Constant Sorrow,” and note that here Dylan was deliberately extending the length of some lines, yet achieving this without breaking the construction of the song – the rhyme and the regularity of the chords continuing to make it easy for us to appreciate where we are in the song and how each line fits into the pattern of the music.
However there is a boundary beyond which the manipulation of the form goes so far that the music itself becomes something different – something that inevitably will at first be, for the average listener, harder to understand and accommodate. And of course when this happens it brings forth a dichotomy. The singer/songwriter wishes to break new ground, but also wishes to keep his/her audience, and these two drives can be found to be pulling in different directions.
And just how interested Bob was in such concepts was the theme of the earlier article in this series, which took a look at All I really want to do which is a song about expressing one’s individuality, and not following the contemporary manner of focussing on expressing love, as was found at the time in folk, pop and rock songs.
Although it is of course not the done thing for the author to refer the reader to the author’s own writing, perhaps I might break that rules with reference to my articcle on I’ll keep it with mine because it was on re-reading that piece written almost ten years before, that I decided to take on this series about the music rather than the lyrics.
So quite often we find examples of Bob clearly wanting to experiment both with the music and the lyrics, while sometimes liking a composition of his own enough to try radically different approaches, although on occasion only to conclude that none of these experiments were working well enough to put on an album, or indeed to perform to the wider public.
However, that does not stop such songs becoming part of the official Dylan collection, which means others then have the freedom to work some more on the song, and try making a recording of the song, despite the fact that the composer had given up on it. And this is what I think happened with “I’ll keep it with mine”.
The problem with this song is that the music and the lyrics simply don’t fit, which leaves the musicians forever trying to work out how best to perform the song. As Eyolf Østrem writes in relation to the Bootleg series version quite reasonably wrote, “The bass moves in mysterious ways. The piano has the bass line | g-a-c-d | e-d-c-a | g-a-c– | d—| at the beginning of the clip, whereas the bass guitar tries its best to figure out how the song goes, without consistently failing nor succeeding.”
What adds to the problem for me is that in the Biograph version, Bob is playing the out-of- tune piano that he has used elsewhere and which has the honky-tonk effect, while tapping his foot on the beat, and putting in the occasional harmonica break.
But his problem overall is that the lyrics often contain too many syllables to fit with what is available in the music. The beat, in short, is defeated. Consider the opening lines,
You will search, babe, at any cost But how long, babe, can you search for what is not lost?
Forget the tune if you can, for the moment, and just look at those words. The first line has a musical pause at “babe” bringing in “at any” after two beats, meaning that the four beats of that bar are used up, and so “cost” – a word that is extended, fills most of the next bar.
At one level, that works fine – “cost” is an important word, and is going to rhyme with “lost” in the next line so we need to keep it in our short-term memory to help us make sense of the pattern of the song.
But the line “but how long babe, can you search for what is not lost” now has too many syllables in it. “Long” because of its meaning and sound, needs to be stretched out, but it ends up making “what is not lost” a gabble at the end of the line. Dylan does make it work, but at a stretch, and as a listener we are unsure of how the metrics of the song are working. In short, we have lost the beat.
Then we get “Everybody will help you” in which “Eve-ry” gets two beats, forcing “body” to be pushed together onto one beat, and Bob makes this work by extending the number of beats in the bar. That is fine for Bob, although it might feel uncomfortable for the listener, but even Bob comes unstuck with the extra syllables with the line “Not for what you are but for what you are not.”
Of course we can still make sense of the song with the lyrics set out as below, but it is immediately clear that the number of beats in the bar varying as they do, is not helping the song to be understood, nor helping it to sound as if it is offering a coherent message.
You will search, babe, at any costBut how long, babe, can you search for what is not lost?Everybody will help you some people are very kindBut if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to me I'll keep it with mine I can't help it if you might think I am oddIf I say I'm loving you not for what you are but for what you're notEverybody will help you discover what you set out to findBut if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to me I'll keep it with mine The train leaves at half past tenBut it'll be back in the same old spot againThe conductor he's still stuck on the lineAnd if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to me I'll keep it with mine
The effect is disconcerting, and for anyone trying to perform the song today, it really does take quite a lot of rehearsal to get it right, even when the pianoist and singer are the same person and no one else is involved (which is to say no one else dependent upon your time-keeping.)
Such variation in the song’s rhythm is interesting and certainly worthy of experiment, and Bob’s solo version works because he knows where he’s going; his hands on the piano and his voice delivering the vocals can work as one. But if you just listen to the first recording below, you can probably hear that occasionally there’s an extra bounce in the playing of the bass as the musician is trying to keep a grip on where Bob is going. It is as if the notion of this being a sad, plodding song in 4/4 time is suddenly picking up a bit of bounce. Which is rather odd.
We can perhaps perceive the problems within the song also just by looking at line two in each verse; we can see that no matter how the lines are performed, they end up with a different number of beats in each line. Five in the first verse, six in the second and four in the final verse.
But how long, babe, can you search for what is not lost? If I say I'm loving you not for what you are but for what you're not But it'll be back in the same old spot again
Now there is no problem with doing this in poetic forms, but when it comes to a song, we automatically expect an accompaniment which has the same number of beats in each line. Of course, a composer can decide not to proceed in this way, but if that is what happens then for most of us, brought up on the regularity of songs, it all feels a bit weird, not to say uncomfortable.
Judy Collins however, with a fully rehearsed backing group, did to some degree turn the composition into a regular pop song, extending bars to make the music and lyrics fit, but for me it is not fully successful and I am left with the thought that the essence of the song has somehow been tampered with, to make it more easy to listen to – and I am not at all sure that was Bob’s idea in writing it in this way.
You will search, babe, at any costBut how long, babe, can you search for what is not lost?Everybody will help youSome people are very kindBut if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to meI'll keep it with mineI can't help it if you might think I am oddIf I say I'm not loving you not for what you areBut for what you're notEverybody will help youDiscover what you set out to findBut if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to meI'll keep it with mine The train leaves at half past tenBut it'll be back in the same old spot againThe conductorHe's still stuck on the lineAnd if I can save you any timeCome on, give it to meI'll keep it with mine
What I take from this piece is that Bob really was, this early in his career seeking to push not just the lyrics boundaries, but also the musical boundaries. This song was never intended to be released, I feel, but I am glad it was, because as a record of what Bob was exploring musically it is invaluable.
I am surprised you wrote a long column about this song and didn’t mention the version by Nico from her 1967 album Chelsea Girls. To me that is the definitive version.