Details of the previous articles in this series which focusses on Dylan’s music, rather than his lyrics, is given at the end of the article.
By Tony Attwood
My last article in the series “No Nobel Prize for Music” took us to the period of the Basement Tapes and if I may be allowed to quote myself, I concluded that…
“The fact is that having written “I Want You,” which is a pop song (and nothing wrong with that) Bob clearly wanted a change of direction, but whereas such musical changes of direction had come to him naturally and easily in the past, this time it didn’t happen. He was writing songs, and these songs that we now see as a prelude to the Basement Tapes were songs that many singer-songwriters would have happily added to their repertoire. Yet they were not satisfying Dylan.”
There are a couple of facts that come out of this. One is that, as we have long since realised, Bob Dylan has, from the moment he started writing songs, by and large found it incredibly easy to write songs.
I have not tried to catalogue all the songs written by all the other famous composers in their chosen genre year by year, but the few I have looked at, have not been producing the number of songs Bob Dylan was doing in the era 1962 to 1967. By my reckoning, totalling up the number of songs that appear on our review on this site, Bob’s total number of compositions was
- 1962: 36 songs
- 1963: 31 songs
- 1964: 20 songs
- 1965: 29 songs
- 1966: 22 songs
- 1967: 21 songs
- The Basement tapes: 63 songs
So that is 159 songs across six years before the Basement Tapes – maybe a bit more than six years if Bob had a few of those 36 songs from 1962 already in his mind, but even if it is a total accumulated over seven or eight years, that is still an amazing output. And it averages around 26 songs a year.
Now it is generally agreed that George Gershwin (who composed Rhapsody in Blue, Stairway to Paradise etc) wrote about 500 songs across 20 years – so, averaging that out it is about 25 a year, and during the period noted above, Bob Dylan was exceeding even that number, which for a songwriter of universally recognised genius was utterly extraordinary. Then came the Basement Tapes: recordings of just over 100 songs.
Of course, we each have our own opinion of the Basement Tapes and the quality of the songs, and mine is that many of them are not of the standard either most of us, or indeed Bob himself, would consider to be good enough to release onto the wider world, in normal circumstances.
But these were not normal circumstances, in my view (and from now on I won’t keep writing “in my view” etc because you’ll appreciate by now, this is just my view) Bob realised that the songs he was producing from the time of “Rainy Day Women” were not up to his normal standard. They were often good songs, but the standard he had set was so high he couldn’t now always reach that standard.
1966 did indeed include some great works, such as “Sad Eyed Lady”, “One of us must know”, and “Just like a woman” but some others, while better than most songwriters could do, were not at Dylan’s own high standard, and after the jollly but plaintive “I want you,” there are few songs even the most ardent Dylan appreciation band will want to perform. Indeed, “I want you” itself could be criticised. It has some interesting images in the lyrics, not least opening with a guilty undertaker and a lonesome organ grinder (leaving us wondering what sort of area he was walking through) but the chorus is a repetition of the most simple of ideas with three words repeated three times. Not very Dylan at all!
Yet, I would suggest, he desperately wanted to show that he could indeed keep on writing songs that were of significance and importance exactly as the greatest song writers of the past had done.
And here I think that we should remember it was only in the previous year or two that he had composed a dozen utter masterpieces such as…
- Chimes of Freedom
- Mr Tambourine Man
- Gates of Eden
- It’s all right ma
- Farewell Angelina
- Subterranean Homesick Blues
- Love Minus Zero
- She Belongs to Me
- It’s all over now baby blue
- Like a Rolling Stone
- Desolation Row
- Visions of Johanna
Now of course, I can’t read Bob’s mind, and worse, I am one of those people who feels that even when he does write or say things by way of explanation, he does not always tell us exactly what he thinks or how things have gone. So this piece of mine is indeed just an interpretation, but it is one that says, Bob went to the Basement and recorded everything he could think of to try and find his way through a period of what we often call “writer’s block”. Not the form of writer’s block in which he couldn’t write anything – clearly the opposite was true. But a form of block in which he was dissatisfied with what he was writing. Where was the next song of the quality of those dozen amazing songs listed above? Worse, these were not all – I am sure you could add another dozen songs from the early days that are above, at, or at least approaching, the quality of those masterpieces.
Thus, my interpretation of that Bob was clearing his head of all the songs swirling around in it, and particularly trying to think how to write interesting music as well as lyrics. Just as I have occasionally met an author who speaks of writing out all the plots he has thought of but never used simply to get them down on paper, so he can dismiss them and start again, so I think in the basement Bob was clearing his mind.
For indeed “start again” was exactly what Bob did, for in 11 of the 12 songs on John Wesley Harding, Dylan was on a new track. If you are kind enough to be interested in what I think Bob did musically, then the best I can do is refer you to my article JWH: the meaning of the music and the lyrics. I wrote that ten years ago, and on re-reading it today for the first time since publishing it, I’m still pretty much of the same opinion.
Bob had delivered masterpiece upon masterpiece, extending the musical and lyrical form of pop and rock music as far as it could go, until he was left at the end of 1966 writing a series of love and lost love songs which are fine, and indeed above the average, but which do not have that unique quality which made Dylan one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
And then he wrote the dozen JWH songs which, when I reviewed them before, and listening again now, I find to be very Auden-esque in the lyrics. But what of the music?
The first song he wrote for the album “Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” uses a repeated chord sequence that I don’t think Bob had ever used before (G, B minor, A minor, G). But more than that it goes on for 11 verses. across five and a half minutes.
So to be clear, we have about five and a half minutes of song made up of four rhyming couplets sung against the same chord sequence. To be clear….
1: Frankie Lee and Judas PriestThey were the best of friends2: So when Frankie Lee needed money one dayJudas quickly pulled out a roll of tens3: placed them on a footstoolJust above the plotted plain4: Sayin', "Take your pick, Frankie BoyMy loss will be your gain"
So we get in each verse that chord sequence of G, B minor, A minor, G, four times without any variation. And there are 11 verses, so we have the same chord sequence of chords a total of 44 times.
And if this all sounds rather sweet and plaintive and friend helping friend, etc, don’t forget that it all comes with exactly the same music, and the same accompaniment. Thus we have a verse that says
Well, up the stairs ran Frankie LeeWith a soulful, bounding leapAnd foaming at the mouthHe began to make his midnight creepFor sixteen nights and days he ravedBut on the seventeenth he burstInto the arms of Judas PriestWhich is where he died of thirst
And all the while we have the gentle four-chord sequence being repeated over and over again – 44 times indeed.
I have to admit, when I first heard this, I really was puzzled as to what Bob was saying here, except maybe that he wanted to prove that you can tell a story with the most violent images in it, but without expressing any musical emotion. If that was his intention, he certainly got it right.
Bob played the song 20 times in public between 10 July 1987 and 17 November the same year, and then it was put to bed forevermore. And I for one, can’t imagine what else one could do with those lyrics except throw them away and start again – for music and lyrics here seem to have absolutely no connection. For one is bouncy and jolly and the other about insanity.
In fact, Bob doesn’t seem to have been that impressed by his own work as being translatable onto a live performance as with the exception of Watchtower, most of the songs got little or no exposure. “As I went out one morning” was performed once, “Dear Landlord” six times, “Down along the cove”, which really is a total outlier on the album and seems to have no connection with anything else, was played 83 times. The Hobo remains unplayed, St Augustine had 39 performances, the poor immigrant 17, Frankie Lee 20
In contrast, “I’ll be your baby tonight” which seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the album, has been played 684 times – an interesting contrast indeed with the title track, which has never been played in concert.
So what are we to gather from this? Most obviously that Bob quickly realised that writing a song with the same line repeated over and over and over doesn’t actually help one when it comes to a performance.
In essence, although this set of songs produced “All Along the Watchtower” which was performed 2338 times on stage up to September 2025, the set also included I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight with 684 plays, and Drifters Escape with 252 outings. Half of the tracks on the album were performed 20 or fewer times in concert.
These numbers are interesting since Bob has also suggested that he had wanted to make an album that was a distinct break from his past. If we take that to be so, we might also consider that musically, he was somewhat dissatisfied with the dominant musical approach as now many of the songs are stripped down to one or two lines of music. We may all enjoy “Watchtower” in its electronic version, but musically it is just one line (two if you are being generous) – as is the “Drifters’ Escape”. It can work, but for the former of these two songs, had not been the source of Hendrix’s re-write, I wonder if we would remember it at all. Or would it just be another song with the same musical line repeated four times?
As it is “All Along the Watchtower” is the song Dylan has played 2338 times on stage (as of 20 October 2025). – more than any other song. Although, as he would admit, he wrote the song, not the arrangement.
One musical line, performed 12 times to 130 words. And performed 2338 times on stage, always to tumultuous applause. And yet we all value Bob as a lyricist. But surely this needs a rethink, for surely there must be something in the music that keeps us keeping on.
Mind you, the Elvis Presley hit “Hound Dog” contains just 40 words (75 if you count the repeated lines) and that sold over 10 million copies. So maybe simplicity sells.
But what was Bob, the man who wrote “Sad Eyed Lady” and “Like a Rolling Stone” doing with these very simple songs? Maybe the answer comes with the following year, in which he only wrote a single song. Maybe he really was thinking about 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 35: Obviously 5 Believers 36: I Want You Creativity dries up 37: Creativity dries up - the descent towards the basement.