Recently on this site
- Bob Dylan – the greatest song of 1961: five versions of “I was young when I left home”
- Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour: Father
There is an index to our current series on the home page.
By Tony Attwood
In the last episode of the series, “No Nobel Prize for Music,” I looked at “Tangled up in Blue,” surely one of the greatest songs that Bob has ever written, and most certainly in terms of music, one of his most innovative works. It was a song that took rock music into a dimension which no one had really considered before and which very few composers have been able to copy or develop since.
Consider this one tiny detail: in the released recording, we have eight bars with a very gentle backing from the musicians as the music alternates through two chords.
But then, suddenly, as the song develops and reaches the line “I was standing on the side of the road…” where there is the extra emphasis from the percussion, as the music encapsulates the impatience and despair of the lyrics, before we get to “Tangled up in Blue”. It is a masterpiece of linking the music with the lyrics and their meaning.
But of course, writing a masterpiece immediately brings with it a problem, because everyone will compare what you do next with the last work, and no one can write utterly brilliant and wonderful pieces one after the next.
However, Dylan’s songwriting, although waxing and waning over the years, did not stop, and after “Tangled up in Blue”, Dylan must have known it was worth persevering with each new song just to see how far it could be taken and quite often how much it could be improved. So he took time to re-write You’re a big girl now and obviously liked where the song had gone as he performed it over 200 times over the next 30 years.
And here, I feel, we find Dylan determined to continue his new, unique approach to songwriting. For a start, the piece starts with an instrumental introduction. But that’s only part of what makes this song so different. For indeed, even without any musical knowledge or explanation, we can tell there is something very, very different in this song musically, from what Dylan normally does.
In fact, what Bob does is start with a musical introduction, which is in effect the accompaniment without the vocals. And although now, after hearing it hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, of course, we accept what it is; which is the chord sequence from the song. And what makes this particularly different is that the song is written in D major, but Bob doesn’t start playing in that key. Instead, the introduction (which is in fact the music of the verses) starts on B minor7 and is followed by A minor 7.
Now those two chords are not found in the key of D major, so even if we don’t know anything about music, we are, for a moment, misled as Bob is doing two completely unexpected things here. First, he’s starting with an instrumental introduction, and second, that introduction includes a chord that is not related to the key the song is played in. And even if the listener knows nothing of the technicalities of music, it does feel slightly odd, slightly unusual, slightly unbalancing.
Now of course, this stuff about starting with a chord that doesn’t exist within the key, may well sound incomprehensible if you don’t play a musical instrument, but I suspect everyone can hear that opening as unusual for Dylan. In fact unusual for any music in the pop / rock / blues / ballad genre.
So my point here is not to labour the issue of exactly what Bob has done (and apologies if that is what I have done through my explanation above), but rather to make the point that Bob, at this moment, was continuing his deliberate attempt to write music that was different both from what he had done before, and indeed from what virtually all song writers had done before.
And this was very much Bob’s theme of the moment, for just consider the three songs we have had so far in this amazing year of 1974:
- Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
- Tangled up in blue
- You’re a big girl now
Each is musically breaking completely new ground. The first is a totally strophic song but one which lasts nearly nine minutes and contains 15 verses (far more than normal) of five lines each (very unusual – we normally have four or eight lines to a verse).
The second has a rotating pair of chords, one of which has nothing to do with the key that the song is performed in. Additionally, there is a verse which seems to be in two parts; the second part is a six-line response to the first eight lines of the song (beginning for example, “I was standing at the side of the road”).
So, having started to tear up the traditional framework of popular songs, and in terms of musical construction, travel in a very unusual direction, Bob was clearly striking out on both a new musical track and a new lyrical track.
And yet in the midst of this revolution, Bob’s next composition was Shelter from the storm Here we are still in the land of songs with multiple verses, but we have travelled so far along that road. Consider for a moment, “Blowing in the Wind”, wherein we find just three verses. In “Shelter from the Storm” there are ten verses – a total that keeps the song in line with its predecessors in terms of Bob’s compositions (Lily and Tangled). He was very much into big songs.
Now the musical approach is still strophic (ie, verse, verse, verse etc) but there is a difference with “Shelter” for these verses are of the conventional four-line construction – something which Bob had very clearly diverted away from in the previous compositions.
'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."
But more than this, we are also back to three chords – and not just any three chords but the three chords that are always associated with each particular key – in this case E. The chords of the song are E B A E. And not only is the chord sequence repeated over and over again, but the final line of each verse is identical. This is still an extremely enjoyable and interesting song, but it is musically the exact opposite of the two previous compositions of the year. It is as if Bob was saying, “Yes, I can write these long and complex pieces as I have been doing this year, but I haven’t forgotten the simple stuff…”
Of course, it could be that Bob just happened to write this. Or it could be a deliberate reaction to the complexities and innovations of the two previous compositions (three chords in one musical line repeated over and over again). And yes, of course, the melody line does change from line to line, but in essence, the structure of the song is the same throughout, as it is determined by the chord sequence.
Obviously, I don’t know how Bob came to write these three songs, but I do think we should note how different they are from each other, and how successful they have been as compositions. And I would add these are not just three songs of the type we have seen him write across the years – songs written, recorded and then abandoned, neither performed on stage nor put onto an album. No, these are utterly stunning masterpieces, each brilliant, and each completely different both musically and lyrically. This was indeed a moment of Bob Dylan, the composer, being completely at the top of his game.
——-
If you would like to write an article or indeed a series of articles for Untold Dylan please do drop me an email either attaching your article or setting out your idea. All emails get a reply. Tony@schools.co.uk