There is an index to current and past series on the home page.
“No Nobel Prize For Music” is a series of articles reflecting on the fact that when commentators write about Dylan’s compositions they tend to engage fulsomely with the issue of his lyrics, but less commonly consider his music in the same depth. In this series, I try to rectify this to some degree. A list of previous articles in the series is given at the end.
By Tony Attwood
1964, as I have tried to show in this series of articles, was the year in which Bob Dylan adopted both the concept of “individualism”, and the notion of “moving on”, as his core themes. He portrayed the world – or at least western societies, as places that made no sense, where all one could do was to be oneself. One possible way to achieve this was to keep moving on, while at the same time, he then felt he could start to explore new ways of constructing the musical side of his songs which were the vehicles for expressing his thinking about the world around him.
But Bob also needed to keep the songs accessible to his audience – he was of course touring and playing to vast crowds, and his albums were selling in great numbers, so it must also have been important to him not to go too far, too fast. He was after all a folk and rock musician, not an avant-garde composer.
Yet within that notion of “moving on” there was a problem, for although Bob could make dramatic changes to his musical form and style (as I have tried to show in recent articles in this series – see the links at the end of this piece), he still had to make the music something that people would want to listen to. Ideally, since Bob was always committed to performing many of the songs live, the songs needed to be acceptable to the audience that attended his concerts. Although since they might well have bought the album/s first, that did not mean the songs had to be acceptable at first listen.
Thus as Dylan progressed through his songwriting career, the lyrics might become more obscure, but that would be ok if the music made the composition something that people would listen to over and again, and thus eventually be able to perceive the intended meaning within the music and the lyrics. And, of course as all of us who have been to his concerts will know, he always had the option of radically re-writing the music, even if the lyrics stayed pretty much the same.
Now this does not imply that Bob was directly thinking along these clear lines, for it is more than likely that thoughts that Bob had about each song could change across time, sometimes being subject to multiple changes, both as shown in the scraps of paper that we have seen with lyrics written out without coherent form, and often being very different from anything that turns up in a song, and through subsequent live versions.
As a result of this, it is a valid argument that within Bob’s musical universe there was a continuing contradiction: a desire to venture into new forms, as we saw with “Gates of Eden” and “It’s Alright Ma”, alongside a deep interest in being, and desire to be, understood. Which could well have combined into a desire not to go too far too fast into his new ways of thinking about what songs could put on albums, and which ones he could perform live.
And from all this, what we must bear in mind is that if nothing else, Dylan clearly saw himself as a performing musician who could take his music out to his audience while at the same time pushing the boundaries of the music and the lyrics.
And we should also note that as we look back on Bob’s work, clear sequences appear. He may well at times have jumped from one theme to another, but quite often, when we study the chronological order in which the songs were written (as opposed to the order in which they turned up on albums) we see Bob was often less inclined to jump in this manner. More commonly, the lessons learned in completing one song appear to have been taken forward to the next, both in lyrical form and in the music.
Thus we may note that as his last composition of 1964, Bob offered us the song of leaving,”If you gotta go,” and so for the first song written in 1965 it is not surprising we have another song of goodbye – “Farewell Angelina.” They are very different songs, but behind each one, there is the same lyrical theme of moving on.
However as we can hear, although the theme of the lyrics continues, the approach of the music does once again move on in a radically different manner. For where we can hear vibrancy and energy in “Gates of Eden”, “It’s all right ma” and “If you’ve gotta go” in which the individual’s choice is asserted, suddenly, in the next song, although the theme is again moving on, finding a new way, and finding a new world, the approach is more tenuous. It is more, “I can keep moving on, but…”
Thus instead of simply moving on, or pronouncing that this is how it is, the singer in “Farewell Angelina” is pausing to say farewell rather than just going, or simply announcing, “this is how it is”. He must move on, because that is what he does, but…
To accommodate this change in focus, Bob once again changes his musical style. “Farewell Angelina” is in every regard a much simpler song than those written before this composition.
And if one listens to “Farewell, Angelina” sung by Bob (and especially if one listens to this version below, perhaps heaving it for the first time in many a long year), the impact on the listener can be overwhelming. For there is an extraordinary plaintiveness in the song created by the simple strumming of the solo guitar. There really is nothing to prove, the singer is simply saying goodbye, exactly as he said in 1962 with “Don’t think twice”, but with far, far less certainty as to what is around the next corner.
Thus here perhaps more that in any song that Dylan had written up to this point the lyrics put across a certain desperation and indeed a certain level of hopelessness. And if you have heard the song so many times that it is hard to step back from past encounters, just consider
There’s nothing to prove, ev’rything’s still the same Just a table standing empty, by the edge of the sea
Just how bleak do you want a song to be?
What is interesting is just how much effort Bob was putting into songs of farewell at this time. For in 1963 alone Dylan composed “Girl from the North Country”, “Boots of Spanish Leather”, “Bob Dylan’s Dream”, “One too many mornings” and “Restless Farewell” – all songs of leaving and moving on.
In 1964 we were given “It ain’t me babe,” “Mama you been on my mind,” “Black Crow Blues,” “My back pages”… in most of which moving on and regret were linked.
Now for most of us, the version of “Farewell” we will be familiar with is that by Joan Baez and here in fact it only requires the first two bars of the accompaniment to give us an utterly different feel. For in this version, the music (and it is entirely the music that makes the difference) gives us a sense of a cheerful wave goodbye – which is not in Dylan’s version at all.
Dylan is helped in conveying a message of almost sad desperation of his moving on by the chords he uses, alternating C with the plaintive, uncertain F major 7. Joan Baez (and her arranger of course) not only put light a bounce in the music, but simplify the chords to C and F. Of course if you are not familiar with what a difference there is between the chord of F (which contains F, A, C as its notes) and F major 7 (which adds a E at the top) trying playing them on a piano. There really is a difference.
If we turn (as ever) to Dylan Chords it is made clear that Dylan is playing F major 7, which I certainly don’t hear in the Baez version, where by playing F instead, she makes the song sound more positive and less uncertain. Here’s Bob’s version.
C Fmaj7 C Fmaj7 C
Farewell Angeli - na The bells of the crown
C Fmaj7 C Fmaj7 C
Are being stolen by ban - dits I must follow the sound
Joan Baez also makes quite a few changes to the lyrics that we hear on Bob’s original version. Some of these are difficult to understand – “the trembling sky” replaces the sky that is changing colour, while later the sky is not folding but falling, and so on. But the biggest change is that one verse written by Dylan is removed totally.
"The camouflage parrot, he flutters from fear When something he doesn't know about suddenly appears What cannot be imitated perfect must die". Farewell Angelina the sky is flooding over I must go
Of course, we don’t know why, she dropped that verse, although the line “What cannot be imitated perfect must die” sounds very much like a criticism of people who re-arrange Dylan’s composition, but maybe it doesn’t matter, because those who came after Dylan performed the song in a different way, and imposed new meanings.
But still, that verse contains a challenge for anyone undertaking a cover version of Dylan’s original, because of the lines, “The camouflage parrot, he flutters from fear When something he doesn’t know about suddenly appears What cannot be imitated perfect must die…” No, best not to try and deal with that on stage.
Obviously a cover artist is, to some degree, an imitator, and the comparison of the cover artist with the parrot is far from pleasant, so maybe that is why the verse is lost. But it does make the point that Dylan’s solo version is much more in keeping with the lyrics than what came later. For indeed Joan Baez delivers a version of the song which takes the meaning of the lyrics in a totally different place.
In fact, it is this song perhaps as much as any other that shows us how much the musical arrangement of the lyrics can change the entire meaning of the song. Although it must also be admitted that anyone listening to the Baez version of the song, even without knowing about the missed-out verse, may be somewhat bemused by the relationship between lyrics and music.
As for the music, a typed set of lyrics to the song in the Bob Dylan Archive contains a handwritten note at the top of the document that reads, “Ewan McCall tune,” and this probably relates to “Farewell to Tarwathie” (see the top of this article), a song written in Scotland in the 19th century and popularized by MacColl.
Although of course the overlap of such songs is enormous, and there is also a link with the song “Wagoners Lad,” and I suspect many others…
But whatever the origins, and no matter how often I hear the song, I end with the lines “Farewell Angelina The sky is erupting, I must go where it’s quiet.”
Not just because that is indeed part of the song, but I think it was part of Dylan’s need at this time, to move on and contemplate exactly where he was taking his music, and where he wanted to go.
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
- 11: I’ll keep it with mine
- 12: Dylan does gothic and the world ends
- 13: The Gates of Eden
- 14: After the Revolution – another revolution
- 15: Returning to the roots (but with new chords)