Why is this specific cover of this Dylan song so amazingly incredible?

By Tony Attwood

Preface: Please note in the original posting of this article I became completely confused over who and what the band are.  I’ve now removed references to the band and will allow you, my reader, to find them and not be confused by anything I said before.

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In the recent article by Jochen Markhorst (It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry part 15: It blew my little 12-year-old mind) there was featured the track below by Ygdrassil.

This was a recording that I had never heard before – and of course that is more a reflection on my lack of research and knowledge than anything else.   But just in case it is new to you, and in case you missed the article, here it is again…

This track truly knocked me out.  Well, ok not truly in the sense of literally, but I found it one of the most extraordinary covers of Dylan’s work that I have ever heard.    And given that I have written my own series on Dylan’s covers on this site, I think it is fair to say I have done a fair amount of thinking about and listening to (not to mention pontificating on) Dylan covers.

What’s more, I am spending quite a bit of time at the moment thinking about Dylan’s music, as opposed to his lyrics (you may in passing have noted a little series of my own “No Nobel Prize for Music” in which I try to reflect on the way Bob has innovated musically.)  So covers of Dylan’s songs that radically change the music while keeping the lyrics in place are occupying quite a bit of my thinking hours just now.

Of course in this regard I am helped enormously by Jochen’s extraordinary knowledge of the covers of Dylan’s songs, and also obviously by Mike Johnson’s work for this site, for example, recently covering the entire Never Ending Tour, and currently the “History in Performance” series.  Here’s a link to all 144 articles in The Never Ending Tour series; the latest “History in Performance” article with links to those previously published is here.

Now what brings me to mention all this, is quite simply the above track, one of three cover versions in Jochen’s continuing series on “It Takes a lot to Laugh” – a series which I’m fairly sure Jochen will be publishing as a book in the near future, (and there will be links to buying it once it is available).

So, having given the background, here’s the point: Why, having heard so many versions of this song over the years does one particular cover version, which I had never heard before it appeared in that article, so affect me?  It can’t possibly be the lyrics, or the general musical approach because I bought “Highway 61 Revisited” when it was first released in England in 1965.   (I was a school kid then, so yes it makes me ancient, but not impossibly so).  And indeed one of the bands I played with did perform a (vastly inferior) version of the song a few times.

So to explain…

First the opening.   I think most of us don’t really focus on openings much; we know what the song is and we are waiting for the vocals to start.  But this opening makes us focus.  It is gentle and calm.  Almost anyone who can play an acoustic guitar could get this.  Except it is deceptive – I am a guitarist (not brilliant, my instrument has always been the piano, but even so I can still play), and I did have to listen to it several times to get that opening just right.  So I am intrigued.    And yes I am looking at that cover picture, which somehow seems in keeping with the opening.  “Where are we going?” is the question I am asking, which as it happens is quite right for a song that opens, “Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby,
Can’t buy a thrill.”

And then in comes the vocal after around 15 seconds.   15 seconds, not long, but enough time to give us that relaxed feel, which can make us feel at one with that picture above.

Perhaps now I must admit that I then got confused over exactly who and what the band was/is.   For it seems there is Ygdrassil  and there is Yggdrasill, two quite separate bands. It has been pointed out to me that in the original posting of this message I got them confused.  So I am now deleting the references to the band, so we can just focus on the music.

And as I said in the original piece in which I confused two different bands, I was and am influenced by that gentle musical opening, not by the lyrics.  The simple guitar for seventeen seconds, and then the two voices in perfect simple harmony.   Except even by the end of the first line (“Can’t buy a thrill”) one of the voices delivers a different,  unexpected harmony.   And that is wonderful because we all know the song so well, and we appreciate the calmness of the tree of life (or just of the music if we don’t know the meaning of Yggdrasill).  But as soon as we are into the second half of the first line the unexpected happens, without disrupting the music at all and we know we are on a journey.

I won’t bore you with the musical explanation of what the upper voice does in line one, but believe me it is unexpected as it includes as its upper note (at “Can’t buy”) a note that is not in the chord the guitar is playing.   And this just doesn’t happen by chance; this is either painstakingly worked out, or a singer of such instinct that we really do need to listen, and then when the performance is done, cheer and applaud.

And those unexpected harmonies continue, but more than this, the lower voice does not follow Dylan’s original melody – and yet the vocal line utterly fits.   Of course, we are helped by the fact that we have all heard the song a million times, so we know what’s what, but this is the point.  They are not starting from the notion that we don’t know the piece: exactly the opposite in fact.   They are performing for us, the people who know Dylan’s work – even if many listeners won’t have the musical background to know exactly what they are doing.  It feels right and sounds right, whatever your musical background.

OK so by the time we get to the third line (“And if I die…”) we are expecting not a radical difference from the original, but gentle variance, and we get that.  Just listen to what happens on the word “hill”.  99% of singers would hold that word on one note, but not here.   That fractional variation tells us that being on the top of the hill, is not all, is not everything, it is not ultimate stability, for anything can happen, which gives extra meaning to “And if I don’t make it….”

Of course, we know that line; we know every line.  But now if we are really paying attention, we have an extra nuance.   There’s only one note change in the harmony on the word “hill” but it is enough to tell us that all is not settled, there is not just uncertainty about “if I die” but also about the hill itself.

“If I don’t make it” is a harsh following line, and that is sung solo, but then “you know my baby will” is a soft gentle conclusion, and for that, we are back to harmonies.

A brief pause of a couple of chords – but even this is planned, for the second chord is extended far beyond anything we might have expected.  At 58 seconds there is that tiny adjustment of chords, and we are held suspended for four beats, before “Don’t the moon look good…”   The guitar is the same but the harmonies change.

And then “Don’t the sun look good” which is sung straight – no flashy extras until that long-held note with “sea” – and that (in my mind if no one else’s) forces in that picture of the sunset across the calm ocean on a beautiful evening.  OK, maybe I am helped by having lived part of my life at the edge of the sea, and could stand on cliffs and see exactly that.  But even if not, hopefully, the message is there for everyone.

Then what is effectively an instrumental verse, with a subtle change before we come to the third verse.  We all know it by heart of course.  We all know that there are just three verses.   We also know that surely with such subtlety so far they are neither just going to repeat what has been done, nor are they going to fly off in some other direction just to be different.

But we also feel there is a problem.   This version of the song projects a warmth and oneness between the singers and the earth on which they stand.   We have only just been asked “Don’t the sun look good…” and had that instrumental pause which keeps up that feeling.

And yet we all know what is coming….it is winter.   And none of what we have just had musically and lyrically fits with winter, nor indeed with frost.    But just listen, if you will, the lines “Now the wintertime is coming, The windows are filled with frost.”    Musically, and harmonically these lines continue as before.  For them the upcoming frost, and the winter, make no difference.   The warmth and gentility of the song is preserved – the singers are not in the slightest affected, and so nor are we.   (As it happens I am writing this on a beautiful sunny day in middle England, with an utterly blue sky, my study giving me an outlook, south, onto my garden at the end of which three giant poplar trees reach up to the sky, the upper branches swaying gently in the wind far above me.  I really am at one with this arrangement of this song, at this moment).

OK there is an extra strength in the music (not much but it is there) with “I went to tell everybody, But I could not get across”, and this is maintained in the next line “Well, I wanna be your lover, baby, I don’t wanna be your boss” but the overall gentility is maintained by one of the vocal lines taking in that slight meander around the final note.   It is a sign of warmth, of openness, of possibility….   There is beauty and light, but nothing is utterly fixed.  Possibility abounds.

I suspect a lesser band, and/or a lesser arranger, a lesser singer (sorry I don’t know who created the arrangement) would have held the harmony, but either through planning or simply because “it felt right” the word “boss” although starting with strength, loses its force through that meandering harmony.

“Don’t say I never warned you” sung as a solo line has the harshness in the vocalisation that the lyric requires, but even then, “When your train gets lost” manages to take us down gently.   Yes, the singer is saying, if you let this go, you will get lost, and I will be so sorry about that, and sorry not just for myself but also so sorry for you, but life is like this.  This is what happens.

And so we move on to verse three.  And of course. as this song was written 60 years ago we know this intimately, we know what comes next, we know where it ends.   And that is a big challenge for anyone recording an early Dylan song such as this.   We know it too well, we don’t need to hear the end.   But now, oh yes we do, we must continue to the end, we want to know how the last moments are made to work.

The first time we hear, “Don’t say I never warned you” is at 2’47”.  But there is over half a minute of music left, and that warning is there, unforgotten, unmistaken, forever.   You had the opportunity the singers are saying, but now it has gone.  Yes the wintertime indeed, is coming.

I must admit that my intention was to round off this article with a copy of Dylan’s original.  I know, we all know it inside out and upside down, but it sort of seemed like a way to draw it all to a conclusion.   But as I set up the link I played the original, and found to my surprise, that I didn’t want to hear it.   For in the last couple of hours as I have planned and written this piece I have moved far away from Highway 61.  I am now somewhere quite different and have no desire to be taken back.

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