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By Tony Attwood
About a week ago, I started to write a review, “What did you hear: the music of Bob Dylan”, in which I opened up the idea that the author was, if not on the wrong track in his approach to reviewing Dylan, then he was, in my view, examining the wrong topics in the wrong way.
This, of course, is just my opinion, and of course, no one has to take any note of anything I say at all. But as this is “Untold Dylan,” and thus far I have not seen anyone take on these points, it is an issue that seems to fit here. A view of Steven Rings’ book, which so far no one else has put forward.
I have found the book to be not something that I want to read across a day or two, so a week later I am still only halfway through, but I have begun to understand why I have difficulty with the author’s position on the music of Dylan.
I think I get the point that understanding and appreciating the live performances of Bob Dylan’s music by Dylan and his band is fundamental in gaining an appreciation of Dylan the composer.
And that seems fair since we have recordings of many of Dylan’s performances. Of course, this argument takes no note of the fact that Bob has particularly asked that recordings are not made of the concerts, and the fact that, certainly, at the concerts I have been to, there have been rigorous attempts to stop people from making recordings.
Now of course, on this website, we have made extensive use of such recordings, but that is not my concern here. It is because the concert organisers have asked us not to do this. So there is a dichotomy here: the book says that to understand Bob’s music fully, you have to do something that either Bob or his concert organisers don’t want you to do.
But then, given that the recordings exist, how do we interpret the evidence? Self-evidently, music is not language – it does not take a proposition and then explore the argument to see if it is consistent, rigorous, logical, thought-provoking, or original. But still, the author draws conclusions from the way Dylan handles music and creates his compositions. Not just in the sense of “the melody goes up a fifth” but rather what that melodic leap actually implies or means, and then what Dylan’s handling of that leap in the vocal line, on this occasion, actually tells us.
So then I have to ask, does this debate by Rings actually matter? My view is that 99.9% of the audience at Dylan concerts have not been understanding the importance of the musical evolutions that Steven Rings perceives, and have not been appreciating either (for example) the nuances of the way Dylan plays the harmonica, or the clashes between the notes of a chord and the notes on the harmonica or in the melody. And even if they have, they have not drawn the same conclusions as to the implications of such musical events as Rings does. And I don’t think that matters either.
So this is not to say that the book is wrong, its exploration of Dylan’s compositions, or that it serves no purpose. In fact, Rings offers us a series of interpretations of the way in which Dylan’s re-workings of his own music happen, and what it implies. And this is indeed interesting, and I must fully admit I had not appreciated just how many variations there can be in the different performances of certain songs.
But where I really differ from Rings is in the implication of this. I think that in rehearsing his songs, and indeed in hearing his compositions in his head, Dylan explores multiple ways in which the song can evolve and develop. Or to put it another way, finding out what is the best or most interesting way this song can be made to work. I am not sure he always reaches the right conclusion, although that, of course, is an utterly pompous conclusion on my part, but I’ll moderate it a bit by saying I am sure I haven’t either.
But to defend myself, I think there are two issues. Quite often, there is no one “best” way of performing a Dylan song, and thus multiple re-arrangements of songs can each have their own merits. And second, because what makes many of these songs so wonderful is that they can be made to work in different ways.
Where Rings is absolutely right is the fact that Dylan bends language and music in each song in multiple ways to make it fit the composer’s needs. But where I differ is that I am not sure we ever really know what these needs are. Indeed, I am not sure Bob knows what the needs of the song are, which is why he goes on playing songs in so many different ways.
Besides, changing how the music sounds, so that every performance is different, is how music was performed in its earlier days. Indeed, we don’t really have much idea of how the composers of the great works of the classical-romantic era actually intended their works to sound. Certainly, we don’t even know how fast or slow JS Bach intended the 48 Preludes and Fugues to be played. There is a sort of consensus reached today by the most experienced and brilliant performers of the works, but whether this bears a relationship to how Johan Sebastian Bach played them or heard them in his head as he wrote them is a matter of debate.
And yet here the author extracts information from the way Dylan breaths while playing the harmonica at one concert and what it means, while the alternative vision could be that this is just how it came out this time, and that has far less particular significance.
What we can agree is that Dylan likes to change his music or “mess with it” as Rings puts it as in (page 120) “can’t help but mess with the contour eventually.” We can all hear that. But that is not the same as suggesting that any changes Bob invokes in different performances actually give us a new understanding of what the song is telling us emotionally or lyrically. Does the way that the line, “Birds fly high by the light of the moon,” changes across different performances of Joker Man actually tell us anything, or should we not just accept it as a fun bit of variation in the melodic line?
For me, the point is that the music of each song generally doesn’t have to have a meaning as such. The lyrics might, or might not, and the music might help emphasise (or sometimes question) that meaning. And the fact that the music changes from one night to another or from one tour to another, might help us feel a new meaning, is part of the fun of Dylan’s life’s work. But going down to the level of examining how some notes change doesn’t actually give us more insight into the changing meaning or the artistic value of the song.
Now the author seems to admit this sometimes, as when he says (page 124), when discussing the way the music from Desolation Row is presented, is puzzling (“seemingly incongruously operatic” – page 126).
What seems to be explored here is the theory that every change in the music has a meaning or a reason, beyond it simply being a change because Bob likes changing things. The author then continues…
“We struggle to make sense of these undercoded gestures and puzzle at their meaning. And yet the crowd cheers. Why?”
Rings explains this away by assuring us (with of course, no evidence whatsoever, because he rarely gives us evidence,) that “for every transported witness there was surely at least one other who was quietly befuddled.”
Now, how does he know that “surely” this is true? Sadly, he doesn’t tell us how he knows, although he assures us that “the befuddlement is pretty easy to understand”. And this is the problem – it is easy for him to understand; we know that because he says so. But for all those who were delighted at the change in the song, maybe there actually was a deeper understanding, an understanding without befuddlement. And the author didn’t realise this, because he didn’t ask us.
Indeed, maybe there was an understanding that they (the majority in the audience) had all along, and now they felt Dylan was recognising their understanding. Or maybe they just like change. Maybe they had always felt that this variation was how it ought to have been performed from the start. Maybe they, the people like me who pay their hard-earned money to travel to the concert and be part of the show, felt within this line there is a sympathy expressed by Dylan for their position in the world.
Or maybe they all felt that this verse….
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood With his memories in a trunk Passed this way an hour ago With his friend, a jealous monk He looked so immaculately frightful As he bummed a cigarette Then he went off sniffing drainpipes And reciting the alphabet
tells us that all these famous people from history, with their great deeds, are no better than, and indeed no different from, the rest of us, and that our views, interpretations and understandings of our world are just as valid as those of the pompous teachers and lecturers who tell us that they are right and we are wrong.
So maybe, as Rings tells us that “writer and astute Dylan fan”, Adam Selzer puts it, “in this era it often seemed as though he wasn’t really thinking about the words he was singing so much as he was thinking about the noise they made.”
And one might say, well, maybe, and if so, why not?. But one might also take the possibility that to the audience, who had been forced to queue for hours to get in, sitting so far away from the stage that Dylan can only be seen through binoculars, that Dylan is saying, “all these great geniuses from the past who you hyave been told are the people who created our civilisation, are really just the same as you. You can be like them. Just don’t let the powerful elite hold you back.
Now of course, I don’t know if Dylan is saying that, or anything remotely like that, but since Dylan doesn’t tell us what inspired those lines, there’s nothing to stop me thinking that is what it means. And certainly, the way the music works at that point in each rearrangement that Dylan used in his live performances of the song could mean that.
Which overall is my point. Rings puts forward interpretations of what the music is telling us, and those interpretations could all be right – but there is no proof or even evidence to be found. Those of us in the audience can be just as right at Rings, and that makes us happy, so we cheer. And as I said, a couple of paragraphs back, “And why not?”
What I heard was Dylan telling me I was right. In my view, the problem with Rings is that he doesn’t realise that, in terms of meaning, I could be hearing something so very different from what he heard. So he goes into great detail in interpreting the meaning within the music. And maybe he is right, but really there is no proof, and by and large, scant evidence.