No Nobel Prize for Music: Dylan in the 1970s moving out of the darkness

By Tony Attwood

In the last article in this series I commented on the most curious year of 1971 in which Bob wrote six songs, only two of which are remembered.  The original articles on this site reviewing them are here…

• When I paint my masterpiece
• Watching the river flow

So here was a man who as recently as 1970 had written 16 songs, over half of which most serious Dylan fans will immediately remember, now just one year later writing six songs, half of which I suspect most of us would not be able to name, let along recite the lyrics of or sing along with.    Bob had come to a stop – but a curious stop because the two songs we really do remember were absolute winners; songs that I am sure many of us would still happily listen to.   One of which has been played 456 times and the other 772 times on Bob’s constant touring.

I looked again at When I paint in the last article and as this series looks at Bob the musician rather than the lyricist, I can’t move on without giving some time to Watching the River Flow.

The fact that it is a great piece of music is revealed by this version.   Yes it based around the traditional threee chords that dominate so much popular music.    It also has a “middle 8” that that follows the traditional pattern of adding the sharpened super-tonic.   But Bob was able to write and re-write it over and over again.

And indeed it even survived into the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour with a revised musical version.

So Bob most certainly could still write interesting and varied songs in his year of not writing much.  He was still using rock music as his basis, but musically showed us that he could take the form into all sorts of spaces even if he only wrote two songs that we remember in one year.

But if 1971 was a slowing down of Bob Dylan the composer, 1972 came as close as possible to being a dead stop – without actually stopping.

For in 1972 Bob wrote just two songs: Forever Young and the theme music for Billy the Kid.  And just to hammer home the point this is the man who just two years before wrote 15 songs,

Of course numbers are not everything – 15 songs that we don’t ever remember after the first hearing are not to be compared with one song such as “Forever Young” that I suspect most of us could still hear in our heads over 50 years later.   But this really was a curious slowing down for Bob, coming as it did just a few years after the incredible outpouring of the Basement Tapes.

The single version really does give us a clue as to his feelings however.

Interestingly there is as much emphasis on speaking the words as there is on singing them, but it still comes across as a piece of music.

The song uses Bob’s favourite alternative to the strophic (verse, verse, verse) approach by having a “middle 8” that modulates to another key – the dominant again as usual and then quickly returning to the original key.

Musically the verse is slightly unusual in that it modulates to the dominant at the end of the fourth line, by adding the chord of G which takes us to C major.  The song then, in typical style of popular songs that have done this, then instantly goes back to F, and sounds like a regular rock song.

But interestingly, and I think this might actually be the first time Bob did this in a song, there is a second modulation in the middle 8.  In the third line we get the chord of G major which is not part of the key of F major in which the song is written, and this then takes us to C major – a chord which exists both the keys of F major and C major – into which the song has modulated.

C
People disagreeing on just about everything
F
Makes you stop and all wonder why,
Dm                                       G
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
                           C
Who just couldn't help but cry.

This is not great innovative musical form, but it is a little different, and it is (at least in a small way) suggestive that Bob was still looking for ways to vary his songwriting.

So what are we to make of these two years of 1971 and 1972 – the years immediately following Bob’s receipt of his honorary degree?

From 1971, we remember “When I Paint my Masterpiece” and “Watching the River Flow”.   With 1972 we have “Forever Young” and the music for “Billy the Kid”.

Yes, maybe for any other singer-songwriter that would be three great songs written in two years, as I find it hard to count “Billy” as a great song.  Of course it is difficult to link the level of Bob’s live performances of a song with its quality, at least for me, as there are so many songs I would rate as “brilliant” that Bob has rejected along the way, but try as I might I don’t find much in Billy, and so across these two years I feel there are just three songs of merit: “Masterpiece,” “River Flow” and “Forever Young”.

And as I have noted before, for almost any other songwriter this could be seen as a high point in the composer’s career: three eternally magical songs in two years.   But this is Dylan, and we have grown to expect more.    The very best we might say is that he was giving us hints of what might come subsequently, and more to the point he was experimenting with the music.  Not dramatically, but from time to time, primarily with modulations and middle 8s.

Thus fortunately for all of us, Bob had not given up.   The following year, 1973, Bob did write more songs that were not only songs that most of us who have followed his career will still instantly remember, but he moved away from the one or two songs a year into a more regular rhythm of writing at the very least seven songs in a year, and for the most part, in the years to come, around 14 or more songs in a year, many of which most of us will instantly remember.

Bob had tried to find a way forward musically, and this had proven to be singularly difficult for him – but listening to the songs of these last few years, and those that were to follow in the years to come, it seems clear to me he was seriously trying to find new ways forward.   There was to be one more stop in the decade – the year in which Bob wrote “Seven Days” and nothing else, but by and large, just as the river flowed, so the song writing now flowed again.  Not every song was a winner, but enough were to make us all quite sure that Bob had not lost his ability to compose music we wanted to hear.

And although it is true that these years had given us a range of experiments with the music that really hadn’t worked, there was now a greater variety in Bob’s music, as well as in his lyrics, which certainly made for good listening.

Thus what Bob did show us here is that he was still experimenting musically.  Admittedly, he was staying within the constraints of the genre, but even so…. the opening chord sequence of D, F#m, Em, G, D for the first four lines allows a beautiful melody to evolve above the chords.

But then of course the temptation is to repeat the sequence, and here Bob almost does what we expect but not quite, offering, for “May you build a ladder to the stars….” the sequence

D, F#m, Em, A, D, A, Bm, Dm, A, D

This is not revolutionary, but is a significant step forward for Bob,  and gives the song the great feeling that makes us remember it.  As a composer of music, he was indeed still evolving.

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
41: A sign on the window tells us that change is here
42: One more weekend and New Morning: pastures new
43: Three Angels, an experiment that leads nowhere
44: An honorary degree nevertheless. But why was Bob not pleased?
45: When Bob said I will show you I am more than three chords