No Nobel Prize for Music: The best ever version of “Where are you tonight sweet Marie?”

 

By Tony Attwood

(Prelude: my reference in the title to the best ever, does not refer to the above version of the song under discussion, fun though that is.  The “best ever” is a version from the Never Ending Tour, and that appears later).

My argument in this series is that Bob Dylan faced two major issues as he evolved his own form of writing songs.  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.

Now this might not sound too difficult, but it must be remembered it not only had to be achieved without the music falling apart through becoming too complicated, it also had to be achieved without alienating his many fans who did not have the benefit of the musical insights that he himself found through his own lifelong study of music.

And this brings us to an absolutely key point in understanding Dylan’s work.   Many people listening to his compositions will accept and enjoy them without fully understanding or even without correctly hearing all the lyrics.   But if they don’t understand what the music is doing, then they tend to be far less forgiving.   For some reason, most of us are willing to spend time deciphering the meaning of the lyrics, but we want the music to be instantly memorable.

After writing She’s Your Lover Now, and the failure to produce a recording that was felt (perhaps by Dylan, perhaps by the producer) to be suitable for the next album, Dylan entered a long phase of songs that lyrically further reflected on all the problems and issues that he exposed in that song – but while taking the music back to a form that was more immediately recognisable.

Now we should remember that by this time Dylan had written a lot of strophic (verse-verse-verse) songs and ternary form songs (in the style verse, verse, middle 8, verse).  He had also introduced songs, which had much more complex rhyme patterns for the music to reflect than the normal A, B, C, B approach.  And even had songs in which suddenly one verse would have more lines than previous verses (something I am not aware of other composers doing).  “Visions of Johanna” was an early example that I have mentioned before.

So the question now was, would Bob be able to find any other variation to his music, as he worked to bring the lyrics, which appeared to have run away from him in “She’s your lover now”) back under control, while still containing their essential Dylan-ness.

In many ways Absolutely Sweet Marie, sounds like a classic Dylan rock song.  And it has a rhyming pattern of its own (A, B, A, B, B) which immediately makes sense to the listener.

Well, your railroad gate you know I just can't jump it (A)
Sometimes it gets so hard, you see (B)
I'm just sitting here beating on my trumpet (A)
With all these promises you left for me (B)
But where are you tonight, sweet Marie? (B)

The only slight oddity is that it has five lines – but by making the last line a repeated “chorus” type line which is the same for each verse, everything seems to fit as we move on to the second verse the music being the same as in verse one.

Well, I waited for you when I was a-half sick
Yes, I waited for you when you hated me
Well, I waited for you inside of the frozen traffic
When you knew I had some other place to be
Now, where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?

 Thus Bob seems to have set aside his musical experimentation with “She’s your lover now” and returned to the essence of rock music albeit with five lines instead of four in a verse.  So it would seem that Bob must have recognised or been told that [although who would tell him?] even after a multiplicity of run throughs in the studio with the band, that song didn’t work as a piece of music.   Which is why it is interesting to consider what he did next.

And what we find is that aside from giving us a much more upbeat, bouncy tune, he simplified both the rhyme scheme and the musical form itself.   There are three different melody lines, with two of them repeated….

Melody A: Well, your railroad gate, you know I just can't jump it
Melody B: Sometimes it gets so hard, you see
Melody A: I'm just sitting here beating on my trumpet
Melody B: With all these promises you left for me
Chorus Melody: But where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?

What is clever about this is that the song is primarily performed over the standard three chords.  In the key of D. these are D, G and A.   But a couple of other chords – which are perfectly normal and natural for the key in which the song is performed – also find their way in.  And the effect of these is to emphasise musically that this is a straightforward rock song.

So the first three lines are accompanied by the three major chords that sound natural and obvious in the key, because they are made up of notes that appear in that key.   Thus in the key of D, we have the chords of D major, G major and A major, and that is what we get all the way through to “trumpet” – but then Bob throws in a B minor chord.

           D             G           A          D
Well, your railroad gate, you know I just can't jump it
G            D                 A
Sometimes it gets so hard, you see
         D           G        A     D       Bm
I'm just sitting here beating on my trumpet

But the point is here that this chord of B minor makes us feel that yes, we still know, musically, where we are, even if we don’t know anything at all about music.  This all feels right and natural.  All that B minor does is emphasise that the singer is still part of the show, but is a bit outside of everything being ok – as the ultimately meaningless concept “beating on my trumpet” feels out of place.

Now this move to B minor is subtle and we hardly notice it, because we quickly move on to another chord.  Again, not one of the three mainstream chords of a piece in D major, but nevertheless a perfectly regular and normal chord for that key: F sharp minor.  And then again, as quickly as we have arrived, we move on, back solidly into the key of D, which then is even more firmly established by the last line of the verse.

     F#m                    D        A
With all these promises you left for me
    G               A              D
But where are you tonight, sweet Marie?

So musically, we have a spot of adventurousness, but nothing that ever once leaves the mainstream of the key of D major or the well-recognised structure of a ternary song.

And I stress “ternary” because Dylan still does have something up his sleeve, which is what makes him a great songwriter as well as a prize-winning poet.   That is the middle 8 – which is a short section of music usually inserted after a couple of verses, and which does something different, although never leading us too far away from the mainstream.

Here Bob does stick to the tradition – the middle 8 comes indeed after two verses.  Lyrically, it doesn’t continue the narrative, but to emphasise the different nature of what is being said, it introduces a chord that we have not previously heard in the accompaniment.

This is the chord of B flat and it occurs with “Well, anybody can be like”.

Now, B flat major has nothing to do with the key of D major, in which the whole piece is played.  There is no B flat anywhere in the chords used or in the melody.  But here we get it – we bounce into the chord and quickly out again.   The chord of D that follows the Bb section each time, reminds us where the song is based.

      Bb                        D
Well, anybody can be just like me, obviously
    Bb                                         D        A   
But then, now again,nott too many can be like you fortunately.

and that quick resolution at the end from D to A, makes it quite clear we are still in the key of A and ready to take on board another verse.

So what Bob has done is introduced a middle 8 section which musically and lyrically is different from the verses, but not so different that we lose track of where we are.

Unfortunately, many websites that have printed out these lyrics have done so without any thought to the musical structure of the song, so this “middle 8” which appears between verses two and three, and also appears between verses four and five, but is often written out as if it is just another verse.  But it should be written as a separate section…

Well, I don't know how it happened But the river-boat captain, 
                                                 he knows my fate
But everybody else, even yourself They're just gonna have to wait

It is unfortunate that the structure of the music can be ignored, although  the reason the sites do this is not through any superior musical knowledge – the mistake occurs on the official Bob Dylan site.    Quite possibly, no one bothered to listen.

But to summarise the main point, Bob retreated completely from the utter complexity of “She’s Your Lover Now” and, seemingly for very good reasons, because musically that song becomes so complex that it does not work.  But it appears Bob did not want to return totally to the strophic song – and so gave us songs such as “She’s Your Lover Now” which in giving us two “middle 8” sections moves away from the strophic (verse – verse – verse) song into the strophic song which introduces a different section between a couple of the verses.

And it was a very good compromise.  It really works, and Bob realised the possibility because he featured this as a Never-Ending Tour song.  And indeed listening to where the song got to on the tour makes me think that Bob really has gone back and listened to his own work once more, and thought about both what he wrote and why he wrote it.   It’s no longer a throw-away piece, allowing latecomers to take their seats.   It becomes a song that demands attention.

As a result, for me, the NET version below is by far the best of the versions that we have here.   The changes are not dramatic and it would be easy to dismiss them, but the instrumental verse halfway through this performance really does give us an extra insight into the relationship between the singer and Marie – and that is something that I don’t think was there previously.

Also, it is an extended instrumental break going through three verses in different ways and this leads us into the “middle 8” perfectly, allowing for the reflective “forgot to leave me with the key” verse, and then another instrumental verse.

Suddenly, I do feel that the re-scripting of the song was completely worthwhile – that last, protracted instrumental break does give extra thoughts and insights into what the singer and Marie have been up to all these years.   And equally, the sudden end makes sense – Bob re-wrote the song, and re-wrote the end.   “Yeah! Yeah!” as the gentleman in the audience says.  And we can see why, after this Bob dropped the song.  Not because he was fed up with it, but because there really was nowhere else to go.

This recording below is from 2006. And as with other extracts in this series, it is one of my absolute favourite Dylan moments – this is the time when he realised exactly what was in this song created so many years before.  The song was performed 181 times.  This surely must be the best version of them all.

Previously in this series….

• 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
• 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
• 24: Positively Fourth Street
• 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
• 31: This song really does not work: She’s your lover now