By Tony Attwood
The point I have been trying to make of late in this series is that after the breakup of his relationship, Bob got tangled up in writing about the breakup of relationships in general. And that gave him a problem of how to make each song sound different. This is in essence what I have been trying to explore in recent articles.
One way of doing this, of course, is by recognising that the songs are basically all going to be taking on a similar subject, and so one needs to change the format of the music. Otherwise, the audience members who are not going through breakups start to get bored.
But Bob’s approach to songwriting has evolved from his interest in folk songs, which normally had a strophic format of verse, verse, verse etc. The first, most obvious way of overcoming this is to insert a chorus which is heard after each verse, and is always the same each time it appears, but which doesn’t take the storyline or the emotional account found in the verses any further forward. It is a bit like having a background screen on stage which always stays the same, while the actors in front of the screen act out the continuing story.
The other way around the problem of the strophic song simply going on and on without any musical change, is to have t a “middle 8” – a section of music that is different from the verses, and which might appear between verse 2 and verse 3.
And of course, writers who wanted to be a little more adventurous could actually incorporate a chorus and a middle 8 – but there are two issues that then arise. The chorus makes the song sound like a traditional folk song, and the middle 8 makes it sound like a pop song, and obviously, Dylan didn’t want either.
In some cases, he got around the problem by writing extraordinarily memorable and unusual lyrics (we might note them as the opposite of moon and June lyrics) and at other times he wrote extraordinarily memorable melodies. I would nominate “Sad Eyed Lady” and “Desolation Row” among the early examples.
So we return to “Obviously 5 Believers”. Here Bob gives us a couple of repeated musical phrases. The first at the very start of the song is seven notes long, and comes twice. Then we get a five-note answering phrase, played four times.
Now a five-note phrase is itself, although certainly not unique, somewhat unusual – and particularly memorable because it doesn’t turn up in the main melody line.
The second, five-note musical phrase appears four times and as the final note of this second phrase occurs for the final time Bob starts singing
There is of course, a connection between the title of the song “5 Believers” and that repeated phrase. Whether the number in the song title was deliberately chosen, though, thinking about the musical phrases, of course we don’t know, but if not it is certainly a fortuitous discovery.
Then Bob starts singing a 12 bar blues. Except it isn’t 12 bars long – it is 16 bars long. But the chord structure is classic blues, which musicians will recognise at once.
But as we listen to the music, we find there are other oddities – such as the instrumental line after the fifth vocal line
Early in the mornin'Early in the mornin'I'm callin' you toI'm callin' you toPlease come home (Instrumental line)Yes, I could make it without youIf I just didn't feel so all alone
Of course, musically it all works, so no one notices the oddities of the instrumental line included to give us a classic eight-line song. And in part this happens because of the repeated harmoncia lines after each verse.
The bounce of the song and the unusual construction with the instrumental line partway through both help distract from the oddity of the lyrics. In the first verse, the woman is not at home. In the second verse, the black dog is barking for reasons not revealed. The third verse says the singer has been faithful to the lady and asks her for the same in return. In the fourth verse, suddenly the lady’s “mama” is introduced as being unhappy before we have 15 jugglers and five believers, for reasons we can’t understand. And then we get a repeat of the first verse, making the point that he’s still there late at night waiting for her to return.
Here Bob’s couplets are only ten bars long; the eight bars of vocals plus two bars of instrumental is quite unusual although not unique: “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” by Muddy Waters has a similar abnormality.
So this is indeed a straight strophic song (verse, verse, verse etc), but it is made interesting both by bizarre (or at least unusual, depending on your point of view) lyrics, and five and seven-beat phrases. It is as if Bob wanted to show us that 12-bar blues didn’t all have to sound like Robert Johnson. You could use the format, but there was so much more that could be done with the form.
Put another way, we could argue that the conventional way in which songwriters have given variety to their songs has been through modulation from one key to another. Dylan has created here a highly memorable song seemingly in the classic 12 bar mode, but into this he has also brought an unexpected instrumental line partway through each verse (after “Please come home” in the example above).
It is as if he is saying, “You thought you knew everything there was to know about the 12-bar blues, but you don’t.” At the same time as saying, “You’ve never heard a 12-bar blues like this.”
And he was right in both cases. It sounds as if it is a 12 bar blues, but also sounds as if it isn’t, which is the brilliance of the composition.
After recording the song, Bob played it just 40 times over a two-year period, but if anything that illustrates his unique ability to get more out of a 12-bar blues than anyone had ever imagined, it is this song. Below is the raw material Bob started with. I do hope you have a moment to play it, and then consider once more just where this song took both those of us who listened to it on the album, and the whole of pop and rock music. And in doing so, perhaps we may see again why so many people feel that focusing on the music not just the lyrics, of Bob Dylan, is important. Not because of anything I am saying, but because generally writers focus on the lyrics, when really they should focus on both lyrics and the music.
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 34: Everybody must get stoned