An index of previous articles in this series is given at the foot of the page.
By Tony Attwood
My argument in this series is that Bob Dylan faced two major issues as he evolved his form of writing. One was how to express in lyrics the feelings and emotions he wished to put across, and the other was how to evolve the music of his compositions in a way that reflected these ever more complex lyrical forms without the music falling apart.
In relation to the lyrics, there seemed to be not too much of a problem, because it quickly appeared that his fans welcomed the diversion away from the traditional love, lost love and dance format that popular music had embraced for decades. Thus, the different levels of complexities expressed within songs such as “Tambourine Man,” “Gates of Eden”, “It’s Alright Ma,” etc etc, were welcomed, even when the meaning of the lyrics was far from clear.
But Bob’s early musical experiences had been with Woodie Guthrie, Hank Williams, and Robert Johnson, and while there is no denying the expressiveness and innovation of these composers, equally it must be admitted that they generally did not evolve or develop the musical form they used. They established the form, rather than took it forward.
Thus Dylan’s early musical evolutions were modest – we may note, for example, the addition of the extra lines in the last verse of “Visions of Johanna” and the evolution of more interesting melodies as with “Desolation Row,” even with the song itself is based on just three chords. The lyrics were changing in terms of the topics covered (love, lost love, moving on, randomness and even surrealism (with Stuck inside of Memphis), but musically it seems Bob was finding it harder to take things forward.
But I suspect that Bob felt that while for many fans it is perfectly acceptable to have lyrics that they can’t make absolute sense of, (not least because it is such a relief to get away from the lyrics of “She loves you yeah yeah yeah” and the simplicity of life that such lyrics express), the music presents a different problem.
For many of us, the world is not the simple world of love and lost love that we find in pop songs, and Dylan indeed took us far further away from that than most other composers. And of course, for that I think we were all grateful. But I feel that although Bob realised that the fans of pop, rock and folk music all wanted to be able to hang on to what they knew, he could take them further still.
Certainly, as we saw later with John Wesley Hardin Bob was perfectly able to go back to shorter, simpler songs, and still come up with some magical moment, but for now, he wanted to push on, not least with the form. And so we got”She’s your love now”.
This is a song that, on first hearing, sounds utterly impossible to put into any format at all – although this version does contain a lot more musical sense than the earlier versions, which have now been released.
What we have here is Dylan trying to take the variation in musical form that was so successful in “Sooner or Later One of Us Must Know”, and extend it even further, lyrically, with far more vitriolic lines. The trouble with it is that while we are carried through “Desolation Row” by the contrast between the lightness of the music and the horror of the lyrics, and while “One of us Must Know” has a more distinct set of melodies thorugh its different sections, “She’s your lover now” seems to go so far without a reference to a succint form that it is very easy to lose track of where we are.
And given the utterly depressing nature of the lyrics, that means we have virtually nothing to hold on to. I’m printing them all out below, with the musical breaks as I perceive them, in case you have eight and a half minutes to spare and are not subject to bouts of depressive illness.
O how the pawnbroker roared Also, so, so did the landlord The scene was so crazy, wasn’t it? They both were so glad To watch me destroy what I had Pain sure brings out the best in people, doesn’t it? Why didn’t you just leave me if you didn’t want to stay? Why’d you have to treat me so bad? Did it have to be that way? Now you stand here expectin’ me to remember somethin’ you forgot to say And you, I see you’re still with her, well That’s fine ’cause she’s comin’ on so strange, can’t you tell? Take off your iron chains Somebody had better explain I’d do it, but I, I just can’t remember how You talk to her she’s your lover now I already assumed That we’re in the felony room But I ain’t a judge, you don’t have to be nice to me But please tell that To your friend in the cowboy hat You know he keeps on sayin’ ev’rythin’ twice to me You know I was straight with you You know I’ve never tried to change you in any way You know if you didn’t want to be with me That you could . . . didn’t have to stay Now you stand here sayin’ you forgive what do you expect me to say? Yes, you, you just sit around and ask for ashtrays, can’t you reach? I see you kiss her on the cheek ev’rytime she gives a speech With her postcard and her pyramid And her snapshots of Billy the Kid they're all so nice why must everybody bow?) Explain to her your You’re her lover now Oh, ev’rybody that cares Is goin’ up the castle stairs But I’m not up in your castle, honey It’s true, I just can’t recall San Francisco at all I can’t even remember El Paso, honey You never had to be faithful I didn’t want you to grieve Oh, why was it so hard for you If you didn’t want to be with me, just to leave? Why must you stand here now with your finger’s goin’ up my sleeve? An’ you, just what do you do anyway? Isn't there anything you can say? She’ll be standin’ on the bar stool With a fish head an’ a harpoon An’ a fake beard plastered on her brow You’d better do somethin’she’s your lover now Oh, why must I fall into this sadness? Do I look like Charles Atlas? Do you think I still got what you still got, baby? Her voice is really warm It's just that it ain't got no form But it's just like a dead man's last pistol shot, baby Oh, your mouth used to be naked, your eyes used to be so blue Your hurts used to be so nameless and your tears used to be so few Now your eyes cry wolf while your mouth cries: "I'm not scared of animals like you." And you there's really nothing about you I can recall I just saw you that one time and you were just there that's all But I've already been kissed, I'm not gonna get into this I couldn't make it anyhow You do it for me You're her lover now
I personally find the song extraordinarily hard going. Indeed before I set out all the lyrics with the breaks into the sections shown above, I found myself losing track of where we were.
In short, I think with Desolation Row, and indeed Sooner or Later, Tambourine Man and the other long songs of the era, Dylan this time went beyond the limits of what the listener could cope with. In pop, rock and blues, we are guided through a song by conventions as to how the sections of the song appear and what the melody and pulse could do, in relation to a long song. “Sad Eyed Lady” just about works because the descending “Warehouse has my Arabian drums” is so distinctive musically that it gives us a sense of the overall structure of the song. “Visions of Johnanna” has a repeated structure which is musically very clear from the start. This song has neither of those musical “signposts” to help us feel where we have got to, and what comes next.
Worse, the “You’re her lover now” has to be sung low, because of the lyrics, but it makes the whole thing seem so depressing that we really don’t want there to be any more verses. Johnanna starts with the challenging “Ain’t it just like the night,” and Desolation Row opens with selling postcards of the hanging. But the music in each case carries us through. Here it doesn’t.
Of course, the song reflects what was on Bob’s mind. Three of Bob’s next five compositions were lost love songs, one ventured into surreal concerns as to where the lover had gone, and one said he would wait. I’ll come onto what these songs did musically next time, but it does seem to me that with “She’s your lover now,” Bob found that there was a limit to just how far down one could go in a song musically and lyrically. There are limits, he found, just as there are limitations to what could be done with a song in the pop/rock range. He was trying to change the music and extend the song, but in this case, it ended up sounding too much like “One of Us Must Know”, but with so much gloom, with a far less attractive and memorable melody, and so many repeats of how awful everything was, it became impossible to take.
But although I believe most of us can hear this on one or two listens, Bob undertook something like 16 recordings of the song. He wanted it to work – and by this stage, no one was going to tell him, it really wasn’t going to work, no matter what. It might be possible to be that negative lyrically and that gloomy musically for that length of time, for the song to work, but it is not going to be easy, and even then, you can’t expect your audience to appreciate what you are up to.
Maybe ultimately Bob could have made this song work as something we all wanted to listen to, just like “One of us must know” and “Desolation Row”, for it was not the fact that this was a song of disdain that caused all the problems. Indeed, this song is in the same subject area as “Like a Rolling Stone”, and was written around the same time as “Why do you have to be so frantic,” “Can you please crawl out your window?” “Positively Fourth Street,” and “Ballad of a Thin Man”. He could write songs of disdain – but like any other subject matter and style, that doesn’t mean that every song is going to work.
Previously in this series….
1: We might have noted the musical innovations more
2: From Hattie Carroll to the incoming ship
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
10: Black Crow to All I really want to do
12: Dylan does gothic and the world ends
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
19: The conundrum of the song that gets worse
20: Add one chord, keep it simple, sing of love
21: It’s over. Start anew. It’s the end.
22: Desolation Row: perhaps the most amazing piece of popular music ever written
23: Can you please crawl out your window
25: Where the lyrics find new lands, keep the music simple
26: Tom Thumb’s journey. It wasn’t that bad was it?
27: From Queen Jane to the Thin Man
28: The song that revolutionised what popular music could do
29: Taking the music to completely new territory
30: Sooner or Later the committee will realise its error
A fine sounding “She’s Your Lover Now”, that works, is on the TMQ bootleg “Seems Like A Freezeout” (1971)
On balance, just the phrase “expecting me to remember something you forgot to say” is enough, to make this one of my favourite Dylan songs!
Thanks Tony,
I have to mostly agree with you about this song. For me it doesn’t make it to the summit. As for a song it has a beginning and an end but it doesn’t have the same magic of Bob’s only partially written songs. Grant it, it does have some great lines but it seems disjunctive as a whole both lyrically and musically. It is not clear who the protagonist is addressing; switching between two people: the “She” and the “Lover.” Perhaps Bob was frustrated with this song not really flying or landing the same way as his other songs. It might have been somewhat cathartic but it seems like a nearly finished puzzle with a few remaining scattered pieces tossed instead of placed.
Wow! I could not disagree with you more.
I love “She’s Your Lover Now” and I think it came very close to being another masterpiece.
Dylan’s ability to write very long well formed verses in his songs is one of the things that sets him apart from other songwriters.
“She’s Your Lover Now” consists of 4 verses of 15 lines each, with an
AABCCB DDD EE FFGG rhyming pattern.
He uses the longer lines of the rhyming triplet in the middle of the verse to slow the pace of delivery and set up the song for the climax of emotion in the second last line which them rhymes with the wry tones of the title line at the end of each verse.
(Dylan uses this triplet of longer lines in some of his later songs too, such as “Where Are You Tonight?” which repeats the AABCCB three times before the DDD which sets up the final couplet of each verse, finishing with the title line)
To me, this song beautifully captures the chaos of the sadness and confusion behind the anger of the narrator whose partner has left him for another man. And, as Dylan often does, he manages to take a different angle on a “break-up song”, addressing the new boyfriend instead of the ex-lover is a brilliant move.
I have listened to this song many, many times over the years and do not find it “hard work” at all! Perhaps it sounds a little unfinished (in every sense) but I am eternally grateful that we have this song – definitely one of my favourites.
Of course nobody would tell him it doesn’t work, because who knows when the inspiration will come to transform it into something that satisfies him? And, of course, sometimes he is not quite satisfied but other people think the result is outstanding.