My apologies for the technical problems on this article – I think I have resolved them by removing the links to examples from the Never Ending Tour series – so the article is now readable. I’ve now included a link to what I consider the most perfect live version of Love Minus Zero in this revised version of the article.
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This series looks at Bob’s compositions from a musical point of view considering the songs in the order that they were written, Details of earlier articles in this series are given at the foot of this piece.
By Tony Attwood
After composing “Subterranean Homesick Blues” Bob returned to an even more basic style of composing. For while Subterranean used the approach of a 12-bar blues composition, the lyrics were varied throughout, thus taking the focus away from the fact that musically the piece was just based around the standard three-chord format found in all 12-bar blues. But having navigated that problem successfully Bob seemed to be attracted by the notion of ever more simple music, as he came back to an even more basic blues format, For here, lyrically, we have one line repeated, and then an answering line and that’s it: Outlaw Blues is the absolute classic basic form of composition. You can’t get more basic than that.
Bob played the piece once on stage on 20 September 2007: that was as part of a two-song interlude played with Jack White. Jack White returned the compliment although with a more exciting instrumental break than Bob would ever contemplate.
As many have said, the song is a set of references to the life of a man on the run. The weather is extremely cold, he falls over, he has nowhere to live, he is an outlaw, he wants to be somewhere else but doesn’t know where, and even the identity of his lover has to be kept secret because of social prejudice. But musically Bob can find nothing new in expressing these thoughts, and so it becomes one of those strange Dylan compositions: he wants it on the album, but perhaps realising there isn’t that much in the song, he chooses not to play it in public.
Lyrically, we can take this song to be a personal statement of the artist against society – the artist saying I am going to create my work as I want to create it, and I certainly am not going to start explaining it to you! Why should I? And yes up to a point that is ok, except if the artist has a message or at least a feeling she/he wants to put across, there has to be something there that appeals to us.
So this is, in essence, a non-musical composition by Bob, and one can argue that because the 12 bar blues format has existed for around 150 years and is nobody’s copyright. Bob is using a musical form that has existed for a long time and putting lyrics over the top with a minimal amount of melody. (Incidentally, if you are not familiar with exactly what a 12-bar blues is, there is an explanation from the Open University here)
But to return to the list of songs Bob wrote, and their musical content, if “Outlaw Blues” had no original musical content, then what followed that song in terms of Dylan’s composition most certainly was the reverse. Love Minus Zero / No Limit indeed has a gorgeous melody based over a four-chord accompaniment, and through a number of rearrangements it has evolved in several different ways.
And this is really where we can see Bob finding his own way of playing with, manipulating, and indeed re-inventing a work of his own, as it takes the notion of the song as something that is never fixed but is eternally re-written (as of course all songs are as the instrumentation moves further and further forward. In fact, for me, I think it goes too far as the accompaniment between each sung line removes the feeling of continuity within the lyrics. The song stresses the constancy of the woman, not her changeability, and thus I now simply get nothing out of “There is no success like failure and failure is no success at all” in this version. But that’s probably just me.
And this leads me to think it is worth immediately jumping back to see how Bob did perform it at the very start. There are one or two minor melodic changes but beyond that only the harmonica part is really different. But now Bob just seems (to me) to be extending the song for the sake of extending the song before the four verses he originally created.
However, this is interesting because it shows how Bob will experiment with a song in various directions, perhaps just to see where it goes, and emphasises yet again, that not every experiment works.
If you return to the Never Ending Tour Series and look at 1996 you will find remarkable changes happening to this song. Indeed as I noted when I wrote about this version before in the “Never Ending Tour Extended”, series, it sounds “as if Bob finally found a tape of the original song and remembered what he had originally meant the piece to be. The addition of the double bass and second guitar helps enormously to add a certain stability to the performance that was perhaps drifting away previously. Now once more there is love, desire, dedication, and indeed worship of the lady.
“It is as if before, Bob was singing to a picture of the lady. Now he has been reunited with her and wants to tell her about his feelings while also telling us all about what she is, and about his love of her.”
Was she real, or was she fictional, or indeed was she fictional but became real to Bob through the creation of that song? As I said before, I don’t mind, because this recording makes me feel despite everything there is still beauty in this world. And I feel that extra today since I spent yesterday with friends at a church in London honouring the memory of a man who meant a lot to all of us there. When emotions like this pour forth, they can stay for quite a few days.
These moments are indeed part of life, and somehow even though we were paying tribute to a deceased hero of ours, and Bob years before was singing of a woman he loves, the feeling and the warmth of Dylan’s song still shines through and intertwines with my feelings from yesterday.
But, and I think this is part of the point here, Bob’s endless drive to experiment and change can, on occasion, lead him away from the beauty that he has created. For example, I only played a recording from 2012 once in my house when it was included in the Never Ending Tour series.
In my originial version of this article I included a copy, but then the file corrupted totally. Maybe even the internet doesn’t like it, so I’ve now cut it from this piece.
Of course, not liking one version is just me and my personal prejudice of wanting this still to be the beautiful love song it originally was, a song of devotion, a song of saying “there really is no one else like you anywhere”, while this revised accompaniment and arrangement strips all that away.
Obviously it is not Bob that is wrong, I am the person who cannot adjust to this re-worked version. But to save myself from taking to drink to quell my displeasure, thankfully I have that 1996 version above, which now, having written this piece, I shall play once more
Is it sacrilege to say that some of Bob’s arrangements can actually destroy the beauty he previously created? No, I don’t think so, because to argue otherwise puts Bob in the ludicrous position of being a creative giant who can never do any wrong. But if you agree with me that sometimes Bob can make awful mistakes in the way he re-arranges his own music, that does raise a different point: for Bob seems to value the act of re-creating his work, over the question of how good each new version is. That is, that the act of re-working his songs is more important than the resultant music that comes from the re-write.
Of course, you can disagree over this piece and say that the 2012 version (which of course you can find on the Never Ending Tour series of articles is as good as the previous ones. Or it could be argued that Bob has done so many re-writes that he has lost the ability to judge his own work. Either way, I think the issue needs exploring, and I am not too sure that many people who write or talk about Dylan’s work are looking at this issue. I am arguing both that Bob can take something that was beautiful, and make it less beautiful, and that sometimes he doesn’t seem either to know that he has done this, or how to find his way back to the beauty he once found.
Here is the link to the article containing what I think is the best live version.
Never Ending Tour: The Absolute Highlights: Love Minus Zero – 1992
Other articles in this series…
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)
- 16. From “It’s all right” to “Angelina”. What happened?
- 17: How strophic became something new: Love is just a four letter word
- 18: Bob reaches the subterranean