The full title of this series is “No Nobel Prize for Music” reflecting on the fact that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, not for songwriting, because there is no Nobel Prize for music or any aspect of music. And yet Bob primarily has written songs, not “literature” – thus arises the thought that maybe we should start spending more time looking at his music, alongside his lyrics.
By Tony Attwood
In terms of understanding what drives Bob Dylan to write particular songs at particular moments, (and maybe if we are having a really good day, at particular moments) it is important to consider the sequence of his compositions. At this point in our exploration of Dylan’s musical compositions (the full index of which appears at the foot of this piec), we get to “Pledging My Time.” And here we find what is in many regards a fairly standard but extended Chicago blues, which was recorded in a couple of sessions along with Absolutely Sweet Marie and Just Like a Woman.
At first, this is primarily in the “12 bar blues” format with a couple of the normal slight variations on the standard form. But the really big variant we hear in the original recording is the amount of harmonica work, and the several occasions in which Bob holds on to one note.
Lyrically, he is now thinking about the lady who has left him, rather than just thinking about himself, which I guess is a step forward in the recovery process. But Bob only played it 21 times on tour, but there is a real emphasis in the singing, suggesting both that he really is singing to one lady and he really means it.
But the message has changed, for he is now seeing her as the one who has fallen apart, not him. He’s telling her, he’s ok, she’s not – which is quite a change from where this long journey started with the line “Hoping you’ll come through too.”
https://youtu.be/m2Q4amVYP_A
One amusing factor in relation to this video is that everyone performing is playing left-handed. Did that really happen or did the video get reversed? There has been a lot of speculation about Dylan being left-handed, and maybe he was naturally left-handed but was forced by schooling to become right-handed. Certainly, I can relate to that – my father (a fine pianist and saxophonist who played in dance bands) was naturally left-handed but forced to learn to write right-handed by a school with medieval attitudes in the 20th century. But the whole band? No, I suspect not. Why would you bother? I’m a trained musician and a moderately competent right-handed guitarist, and I did try to learn to play left-handed, practising day after day, but after six months, the progress was still horribly slow, and my improvisations were very weak compared with those when I played the guitar right-handed.
But to return to the main point…. the message of “Pledging my time” is just that – he is waiting until the lady gets through her problems. Which is quite a contrast with his initial reaction to the breakup up but is in fact a development from saying that “sooner or later one of us must know that you were doing what you were supposed to do”.
And the point is that by coming back to the standard message of “you’ve gone, you’ve got troubles, I hope you are ok, and when you are recovered, do come back, I’m still here” Bob uses the classic 12 bar format. Both the music and the lyrics are telling a story that has been told many times before.
That does not mean it’s a bad song, but rather that there is not that much which is original either in the musical form or in the meaning.
But then, just as the song before “Pledging” had been a lost love song, so was the song after “Pledging” – which was “Most likely you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine.” And the contrast in the number of performances is interesting too. “Most likely” was played in concert 514 times over a 50 year period – a much longer duration than “Pledging” with 20 times more performances (roughly).
“Most likely” is also much more upbeat, but more than that, it has a unique musical form.
You will be familiar by now with Bob’s normal musical forms – strophic (verse, verse, verse) and the variant verse and chorus approach, with the occasional tip into ternary form (through the introduction of a middle 8). This at first sounds like a standard strophic piece with a chorus.
Yet there are differences. The first thing we notice musically is that the song opens not on the key chord (ie the primary chord of the key in which the song is written.) Now Bob has done this before – for example, with Tambourine Man which opens on chord IV, rather than chord I. That is to say if playing it in D, the opening chord for “Hey Mr Tabmourine Man” is G (chord IV) not D (chord I).
That variation is not particularly shocking or unusual, but here, if we are playing in G major, the opening chord is A minor. A minor is a perfectly acceptable and normal chord to use within a composition written in G major, but it is unusual for Dylan to open a song on chord II, and indeed not that common across popular music generally.
But that is not all that is unusual. For in “Most Likely”, we get a verse which is in two parts (each quite different).
So we have two verses and then what we might call a middle 8 (“Well, the judge, he holds a grudge”), which now makes us feel that we have a ternary piece. And when I say “makes us feel” I don’t mean that the average listener is sitting listening and thinking “Ah Bob is using ternary form” any more than when we listen to a friend talk, we think, “Ok in this sentence, that is the subject, and then this is the verb.”
We might guess what the middle 8 (“The judge he holds a grudge”) is all about, and we can maybe guess that the song is about divorce proceedings, but then it sounds very lively and bouncy for such a serious event. So perhaps a separation is now done and dusted, and life has moved on.
This was obviously an important song to Bob as it was the opening track on side 3 of Blonde on Blonde, and Wiki notes that Bob said he had “probably” written the song about the end of a relationship, although I think looking at the lyrics, the “probably” is hardly necessary.
Now, Wikipedia contains the comment that “Daryl Sanders, author of a book about the recording of Blonde on Blonde, wrote that the song was relatively tame for one tackling a breakup.” But the Wiki commentaries rarely, if ever, contemplate the music in remotely the same sort of depth with which they approach the lyrics, so it is perhaps not too surprising that they have nothing to say about the unusual construction of the song itself – a construction which gives the music a veil of entanglement.
If one wanted to set out a grid for the music, one would end up with something like this…
- Verse 1 section a): You say you love me
- Verse 1 section b): I can’t do what I’ve done before
- Chorus: The time will tell
- Verse 2: section a) You say you disturb me
- Verse 2: section b) I kept getting so hard to place
- Chorus: Then time will tell
- Middle 8: Well, the judge he holds a grudge
- Verse 3 section a) You say you’re sorry
- Verse 3 section b) You say my kisses aren’t like his
- Chorus: Then time will tell
It is by no means the most complex song ever written, but in terms of Dylan’s work it marks quite a step forward, and indeed is very different from the strophic (ie verse, verse, verse) songs and the verse and chorus line songs like “Blowing in the Wind” that he had written earlier/
It was as if he realised that a new message needed a new musical format. Not totally new, because he didn’t want to lose his fanbase, and besides, the lyrics contained the message, but still a step along the musical road, and a little bit further away from the strophic format.
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 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 appened? 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 end22: 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: The best ever version of “Where are you tonight sweet Marie?” 32: Just like a woman