By Tony Attwood
This series looks at the way in which Bob Dylan’s compositions have evolved both musically and lyrically over time. An index to previous articles is given at the end.
In the last article, I suggested that, suddenly in 1970, seemingly having got all of his past compositions and current ideas out of his head during the Basement Tapes days, Bob Dylan wrote one of his most musically innovative songs to date: Time Passes Slowly. A song that makes it quite clear that as a composer he really wanted to go along new pathways, but do it without alienating those who had so loyally followed his every move through the 1960s.
If you are not convinced by this argument, and don’t have the time or inclination to plough through all of my previous articles as I get to this key moment in Dylan’s life as a composer (and of course I can well understand it if that is the case) you could take a sahort cut and look at the subject matter of the 15 songs writtein in 1969. The details are set out at the end of the article on that year – just scroll down the page – but here is a quick summary in case you don’t fancy that.
There were 15 Dylan compositions that year of which we have recordings, and by far the most popular in terms of subject matter are love and lost love. But three of the last four compositions of the year take another turn: Wanted Man in on the theme of being on the run, Champaign Illinois celebrates the city, and Ballad of Easy Rider concerns being world-weary.
And as has been noted in this series, when Bob changes subject matter, he changes his musical style too. Which leads us into the 1970s and the question of whether this change in 1969 into songs that deviated from the obsessions with love and lost love, continued, and where it did, what effect did it have on the music? Certainly, as we have seen, when Bob moves away from love and lost love, his musical approach becomes much more adventurous.
In my last piece in this series I wrote about the way Dylan started using chord sequences quite differently from what he had before. So the question here is, given the adventurousness of the lyrics, did he also change his musical style. And the answer surely is yes for as I have noted in previous articles, “Father of Night” represents one of Dylan’s most adventurous pieces musically, in that it is written in two separate keys, flowing neatly from one to the other but without the conventional simple techniques of modulation being employed.
So my conclusion is clear. The time spent recording the Basement Tapes helped clear many of the standard approachese to songwriting from Bob’s mind. 1968 then became Bob’s year off as a songwriter, but on his return to this work in 1969 he found himself writing about virtually nothing other than love, and probably as a result, his music followed the standard lines for love songs.
But then in 1970 it all changed: which is to say the subject matter of the songs changed and so did the music. Of course it could be argued that the change in musical style and the change in lyrical themes at the same time was a coincidence, but I think that is pushing matters too far. Bob was already a very experienced songwriter by 1970, and he knew as well as any songwriter, that the music and the lyrics need to be united in their style and approach.#
I have also previously mentioned the discussions between Archibald MacLeish and Dylan around the idea that Dylan should contribute to MacLeish’s latest dramatic project. And it is certainly possible that in relation to this the notion came about the Dylan should explore moving away from the lyrical and musical approach that had become central to his work in the previous decade. After all MacLeish had been associated with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker… Not the sort of people that musically we would associate with the 12 bar blues.
Dylan mentions his meeting with MacLeish in Chronicles, but we don’t know much about what the two thought of each other. But as I have suggested before I feel Dylan was no influenced in the sense of seeing these artists are having useful thoughts on the way forward for art. Indeed as I have mentioned in the past I’ve always felt “Too much of nothing” written in 1967 was a criticism of Eliot.
But at the time Bob was looking to the possibility of co-operating with other artists such as MacLeish on “The Devil and Daniel Webster” came to nothing, althoguh some suggest that “New Morning”, “Father of Night” and “Time Passes Slowly” were sketches for the collaboration.
But even though the collaboration idea came to nothing, the notion of Bob taking his music in a new direction both musically and lyrically was clearly part of his thinking, after a considerable spell writing songs about love and music based around 12 bar blues.
At the same time Bob spoke about his desire to be with his family, and his frustration with all the ludicrous stories that were being publsihed about him and his life each day. And he really did want people to focus on his songs.
Indeed in one interview I have previously quoted on this site Bob said, “I wanna do something they can’t possibly like, they can’t relate to. They’ll see it, and they’ll listen, and they’ll say, ‘Well, let’s get on to the next person. He ain’t sayin’ it no more. ”
And so we have the recordings made for New Morning were made between June and August 1970 which in many take us down a completely new musical road.
If I may, for example quote from the Dylan Chords site once more for the start of “Sign on the window” we can see the difference
E C#m D E Sign on the window says "Lonely," E C#m D A Asus2 Sign on the door said "No Company Allowed," E C#m D Asus2 Sign on the street says "Y' Don't Own Me," E *) C#m E/b E/a /g# F#m7 *) 2nd verse G#m Sign on the porch says "Three's A Crowd," E G#m C#m E/b F#9 A E Sign on the porch says "Three's A Crowd."
But beyond that if you now listen to the song, you can surely hear that this is Dylan going down a completely different route in his songwriting.
This is not only a song using completely different chords in the accompaniment, it has a melody unlike anything Dylan had produced. Indeed have we ever heard Dylan do a suddden jerk of a change of keys as he does between “Brighton girls are like the moon” and “Looks like nothing but rain”. The chord sequence is something like
A, E, A, E, A, E, A, E, F, G, C, Bm, A
Songs such as this show Dylan as being an experimenter – keeping within the genre of music that he has been associated with, but seeing exactly how far the music can be taken, while still using his vast experience of song writing to hold the song together but determined musically to travel in completely new directions.
And we do have to realise just how difficult that is going to be. Bob wants and I would say needs to keep his multitude of existing fans happy. But he also wants to travel new pathways musically and this undoubtedly is what he is doing at this point.
But… Dylan was also as ever, very critical. He liked the song enough to put it on the album, in order to say, “look, my songs are more than just a few chords and some lyrics.” But he also realised that performing something as radically different as “Sign on the window” live with his band was going to be problematic. “Sign on the window” remains one of the songs never ever performed live.
Of course it is in good company. Nine of the 12 songs recorded in the summer of 1970 and released on “New Morning” were never performed publically in all the years of touring. It seems Bob felt that these were songs that would need listening to several times in order to be understood and appreciated.
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. 38: One musical line sung 12 times to 130 worlds 39: Bob invents a totally new musical form 40: There is a change we can see and a change we can't see