No Nobel Prize for Music: Everybody must get stoned

By Tony Attwood

The 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.”  As such arises the thought that maybe we should start spending more time looking at his music, alongside his lyrics, rather than just the lyrics on their own.

So in this series, I am dealing with the music in Dylan’s songs, as much of the lyrics, and taking the songs in the order they were written, and we have reached a period in which Dylan was dealing very strongly with the theme of “lost love”.  The last song reviewed in the series, “Temporary like Achilles,” and most of the nine compositions leading up to its creation were focused on this theme of lost love, while those that did not appeared to move into a consideration of the notion of disdain, which I guess is a side effect of lost love.    In case you are keeping score, here’s the classification list I’ve used on this site in the listing which attempts to put Dylan’s songs in the order of composition….. I think the date sequence is right, but you may, of course, disagree with the theme in each case

1. Tell Me Momma (farewell to folk music; moving on)
2. Fourth Time Around (love, lost love, moving on)
3. Leopard skin pill-box hat (randomness)
4. One of us must know (lost love)
5. She’s your lover now (disdain)
6. Absolutely Sweet Marie (surrealism)
7. Just like a woman (lost love)
8. Pledging my time (love)
9. Most likely you go your way and I’ll go mine (lost love)
10. Temporary Like Achilles (lost love)
11. Rainy Day Women (rebellion)

In this song “Temporary” Dylan has reverted in his musical approach to ternary form, this time giving us two verses (the “A” section),  a middle 8  The B section) which runs…

Like a poor fool in his prime
I know you can hear me walk
But is your heart made out of stone? 
Or is it lime or is it just solid rock?

and then two more verses.

There are no repeats, and there is no chorus, but the structure of Verse, Verse, Middle 8, Verse, Verse, holds the song together and gives it a real sense of unity.  While folk music was often written as verse-verse-verse-verse – etc (known as strophic form) a lot of pop and rock music is written as verse-verse-middle 8-verse-verse-verse (ternary form)

There is a clear distinction between the verses and the middle 8 section above, through the chords used.  The verses just use the primary chords of the key of G major (G, C and D), but in the classic approach of using a “middle 8”, the chords here, as well as the melody, are quite different – although very much the chords we can find in the key of G major.    This is how Dylanchords writes it out

       Em
Like a poor fool in his prime,
                    Bm
Yes, I know you can hear me walk,
            Em
But is your heart made out of stone, or is it lime,
Bm              D7    D7sus4
  Or is it just solid rock?

Thus, in very many ways, this is a classic popular song, although with more lyrics.  (The absolutely classic pop songs using this form would have just one verse after the middle 8, followed often by an instrumental break created around the music of the verse, then the middle 8 again, and the last verse repeated once more.     And to take the point a bit further, that “D7sus4” is probably a bit too adventurous for most pop and rock songwriters, although it is very Dylan.

But in essence, Bob has used a classic pop format, which he most certainly didn’t use very much in his earlier writings, where he would either just use the strophic form of verse-verse-verse or would have the middle 8 turn up in a quite unexpected position.

It is very, very interesting (for me at least), therefore, to note that having written what is in essence a song which if not a pop or rock song, is in the style of a pop or rock song, Bob then moved on to “Rainy Day Women”

The Cutting Edge recording gives us a real insight into how this came to be performed, as we find it on the record.

What is so interesting is that what we have here is a classic 12-bar blues working its way through the basic three chords in the standard way.

The song is obviously in strophic (verse-verse-verse) form, because anything else would suggest a higher level of organisation, which the lyrics, the instrumental arrangement and the musical performance all deny.

Listening to this today, I am struggling to think (at least off the top of my head) of another song in which Bob used the instrumentation to express what is in the lyrics, in this way.  Quite possibly, you’ll think of one at once, and my excuse is that I have been playing this song for a while this morning as I write this piece, but at the very least, I would say playing this song in this way is unusual for Bob.

In the live performance with George Harrison, below, the music starts at 2’10”, with the song is performed as more of a straightforward 12-bar blues.  We can also see from the interaction of the two stars that what they were going to do was most certainly not rehearsed.   For them, this could be the gang playing an introductory workout in a studio, as much as something in front of ten thousand fans.

This is of course, simply fun and in many ways, we can argue that to have the music in any form other than this bouncy 12-bar blues could lose the effect.   But listening to these two versions one after another does show me the power of the arrangement of the first recording, with its slower beat and the central part the percussion plays in the song – something that was completely lost in the live version.

Now, if you are kind enough to be a regular reader of my meanderings on these subjects, you’ll know how much I value the work of Old Crow Medicine Show, and I think here they do show us just how important that percussion part is in holding our interest in the song

Now of course, it may be revealed in someone’s reminisces as to how that beat came about – maybe the percussionist just played it and Bob liked it.  Maybe he told the drummer what to do.

But what is also interesting is this cover version, which I originally featured a few years ago in the Cover a Day series.    And I’m including this again because it does make the point that a key essence in Bob’s songwriting is the flexibility of the songs he composes.   Not every song, by any means, can be translated into other forms and still have a meaning, but so many of Bob’s songs can.  Indeed, we only have to think of what Hendrix did to the Watchtower to understand and feel that.

My point, therefore, is that not many composers can create songs which can be reworked successfully in so many different ways.   That is a particular measure of Bob’s songwriting, and one which, in my opinion, should not be ignored.   Thus, my regular interest in this site in the cover versions; they are not just other performers doing the song in a slightly different way, they are revelations of the depth of possibilities within the songs – depths which most folk, pop and song songs do not have.

Yes, of course you can take any song and perform it differently from the way it has been recorded by the composer or the performer for whom it was written, but Bob has this extraordinary ability to compose songs which are ideal for such transformations.

That doesn’t mean each transformation is a work of art – obviously not, but some are – and for a songwriter to write so many songs which can be transmuted in this way, is one of the key elements of Bob’s musical talent.   Time and again Dylan creates songs that can be performed in utterly different ways – ways which are intriguing and well worth listening to.   By no means has every songwriter ever been able to do that.  Just listen to this recording….

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 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: The best ever version of “Where are you tonight sweet Marie?”
32: Just like a woman
33: Most likely you go your way