by Tony Attwood
This series of articles takes the songs that Bob Dylan discussed in his post-Nobel Prize book “The Philosophy of Modern Song” and looks at those songs individually, rather than reviewing Bob’s comments upon them. And, just in case you have not had a chance to listen to the songs in question, at least one recording of each song is included in the article.
What is interesting for me, as the author (even if for no one else) is that in a number of cases, the songs are new to me, and so I am starting from the outside when trying to understand why Bob chose each particular song.
But here, with “Pancho and Lefty”, I felt it immediately I heard the song, and I really would say, even if you don’t listen to the other songs in this series, I do hope you have a moment to listen to this song as performed by the composer, and then by the composer with Bob.
In fact, in one sense, this song is almost Dylanesque in its composition, a connection amplified by the fact that it is nine verses long with just one of those verses repeated. And yet it only lasts a little over three and a half minutes.
Indeed, even though I am not a country music fan, I do love this song. I love it for the music, which uses all the usual chords but in a new way. I love it for the harmonies. I love it for the accompaniment. I love it for the vocals. I love it because with all its originality and novelty, it stays in the genre throughout and still has me close to tears. And I love it because Bob persuaded the composer to perform it with him in concert. How big an accolade does a songwriter want or need?
I have to say though, that the very first time I heard the song, it was the chord sequence that drew me to the song first off. The point is that in pop music, there is a limited number of chords that are normally used, and an even more limited number of sequences, and one would have thought that everything that could be tried and made to work has been tried to death. But this song takes us another step on.
Indeed so clever and effective and yet effortless is this song that even though I have for much of my life been the guy that some people kindly turn to when there is a question as to “what exactly did the songwriter do here,” I had to go back and listen again to hear exactly how the composer did get that extraordinary effect at the end of the verse with “She began to cry when you said goodbye and sank into your dreams.” And when I realised I just thought, “Oh that is so clever – and so moving,” and played it over and over on the piano.
OK maybe you are not as easily moved to emotional outbursts as I am, but even if that is the case, I do hope you can hear just how unusual that moment is.
And so good is it, that I have double-checked what my ears tell me with the website Ultimate Guitar. Now the point is that the song starts of with a very bouncy positive C major and the lyrics start in a positive way matching that, but by the fourth line we are getting some negatives, yet thye chords are still major, and thus positive, until suddenly the chords go to A minor with its negative feel and the lyrics take that negative turn – which is doubly negative as it is held…. It is very cleverly and beautifully done…
C Living on the road my friend G Is gonna keep you free and clean F Now you wear your skin like iron C G Your breath as hard as kerosene F Weren't your mama's only boy C F But her favorite one it seems Am / F C / G She began to cry when you said good - bye F Am And sank into your dreams
And if you look at my little description and the lyrics and chords above and think “so what?” I can’t blame you because yes, “so what?” is what I would have thought on seeing the above text and chord sequence published by someone else. But here, with this melody, this works magnificently. Goodness knows how many pop / popular / rock songs I have heard in my life (and although not as old as Bob I am getting on a bit) but I’ve not heard these chords used so superbly in this way with this type of melody. The song deserves its place on Bob’s list just for that.
“Pancho and Lefty”, was written by Townes Van Zandt of whom I know nothing because I really know very little of country music, but I am told it was his most famous composition. Indeed apparently Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard also recorded it.
Indeed 2021, Van Zandt’s version was placed just in the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
But also in this, there are lyrics of a type I am not sure I have seen or heard before, such as, “All the Federales say they could’ve had him any day/ They only let him slip away out of kindness, I suppose.”
And what makes all this even more surprising is that really nothing is new here. The character at the heart of the story goes off to find his fortune and becomes an outlaw – it is not the most common of themes, but it has been used, just as the contemporary version has been used in terms of mamma’s boy coming to the big city to make his fortune.
There is also an interesting twist from the composer who is reported as saying, “I realise that I wrote it, but it’s hard to take credit for the writing, because it came from out of the blue. It came through me, and it’s a real nice song, and I think I’ve finally found out what it’s about. I’ve always wondered what it’s about.”
And yes, those of us who write and write do get that feeling very occasionally, writing a song that just somehow takes on a life of its own and becomes more than one ever imagined it could become.
But of course, originality does not guarantee any sort of success. Reports say the song (and here I quote the Wiki )”went largely unnoticed at the time of its release on the album The Late Great Townes Van Zandt in 1972. Neither it, nor its parent album made any music charts. In 1973, Lonnie Knight played with Van Zandt for a week at the Rubaiyat in Dallas, Texas. He brought this song back to Minneapolis with him and recorded it on his first album, Family In The Wind, in 1974.”
And then it began, as Emmylou Harris recorded it, and Willie Nelson heard that and recorded it with Merle Haggard, and well, you get the idea. It took off.
As a single, it went to the top of the country charts. And indeed Bob Dylan played the song on TV with Willie Nelson at his 60th birthday concert in 1993, And perhaps this is the bit you have been looking for….
Sorry I can’t get it to load automatically, but click on it – it is there.
Emmylou Harris performed it too…
The song got to the top of the Billboard country chart in 193. The Willie Nelson version has sold two-thirds of a million copies in the USA alone. The Western Writers of America chose it as the 17th-greatest Western song of all time. Rolling Stone had it as 41st in the greatest country songs of all time.
I have not been able to understand exactly why Bob has included each song that he has in his “Philosophy” book, but on this occasion, I have no doubt.
And just to end, while we are mentioning Willie Nelson, here’s something else you might not have heard for a while. (There is a link, honest).
Previously in this series
- Cheaper to Keep Her
- CIA Man – the Fugs
- Detroit City
- Don’t let me be misunderstood
- Dirty Life and Times
- Detroit City
- Dirty Life and Times
- Don’t let me be misunderstood
- I got a woman
- I’ve always been crazy
- Jesse James and Po Boy
- Keep my Skillet Good and Greasy
- Money Honey
- My Generation and Desolation Row
- Nellie was a Lady
- Old Violin by Johnny Paycheck
- On the road again (save a horse)
- Pancho and Lefty
- Please don’t let me be misunderstood
- Poor Little Fool
- Pump it up
- Saturday night at the movies
- Strangers in the Night
- Take Me from This Garden of Evil
- There stands the glass
- Tutti Fruiti (A wap bop a … etc)
- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
- When
- Where or When
- Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me
- Without a song