Recent Posts
By Tony Attwood
So far I have selected as my Dylan song of the year ….
- 1961. “I was young when I left home”
- 1962: Tomorrow is a long time
- 1963: Seven Curses
and in my intro to the song I chose from 1963 – Seven Curses – I gave an explanation of my thinking in creating this series, which chooses one song from each year as my nomination to Dylan’s best composition of that year. And “composition of the year” is an important notion here, because for 1964 I am indeed selecting a song written that year, but not a performance from that year.
1964 was the year that showed us that “master songwriter” though he was, Bob still had limits. He had written and kept 36 songs in 1962, 31 in 1963 and now in 1964 he dropped down to 20 songs. Still a phenomenal number, but now it seemed he was slowly approaching the sort of number of compositions a year that other human beings might be ableto conjure up in one 12 month period. He was still beyond everything as a songwriter, but was slowing down just a little.
And although the number of songs is lower than before, the quality is still beyond belief. When writing my original review of the year as part of the early days of this site, with its aim of simply trying to list all the songs Bob had written and then put them in the order they were written, my notes tell me I did try to highlight the key songs, but ended up with seven compositions. And just looking at that list of seven now, it is as unbelievable then, as it still seems now, that one man could have written all seven songs in one year. Although of course, we know he went far, far beyond that.
But just in case you are interested my list of seven masterpieces from that one year was
- Chimes of Freedom
- Mr Tambourine Man
- It ain’t me babe
- Mama you’ve been on my mind
- I’ll keep it with mine
- Gates of Eden
- It’s all right ma
Any one of those songs on its own could have made this a year to remember, but Dylan wrote them all in one year – and of course many more beside You can see the full list for this year, and indeed each year of the 1960s and 1970s, in the order written, here.
But I have (perhaps rather stupidly, I am starting to wonder) decided to write a series which highlights one song from each year. “It’s all right ma” of course shouts out at me, if for nothing else other than that last line, “it’s life and life only” – a line that has helped in various ways guide me through my own life, which seems to me (although maybe not to everyone else) to have been fairly tumultuous. Yes, if I were writing “Dylan’s phrase of the year” it would be that final line: “It’s all right ma, it’s life and life only”.
However, no, after a lot of thinking and debating and staring vaguely out of the window onto my snow-covered garden contrasting with the giant trees just showing their first sign of leaves, I go back one song to Gates of Eden. I first heard it while still a city dweller, renting out and ultimately buying a pretty awful apartment, but working in the theatre in London, that’s all I could afford.
Looking back through, now sitting in a house in a really peaceful village, and considering this website which now has over 4000 articles on it, I’ve immediately seen there are well over 30 versions of Gates of Eden on this site – and not all with commentaries by me, thus showing that others too rate it at the very top. Indeed, Mike Johnson wrote for this site a series tracing the live performances just of this one song.
And thanks to Mike I cannot ever get away from what turned out, I think, to be the final performance of all. When I first published this recording, I was rather dismissive, saying that it didn’t add much to everything that had gone before. Well, if you are a devotee of the song that full article with all the recordings is still on the site of course but something profound has changed in my thinking, because this is the version I now return to… what I believe is the final version. The version I now cherish.
Bob gave us 217 live performances of “Gates”, and if the afterlife exists and they make a mistake and let me into heaven, offering me along the way a chance to go back and revisit a moment, it will be this performance.
So why does Gates of Eden mean so much to me?
Musically, it offers a chord sequence which I think is, if not unique, then very unusual, with the second chord of the song (D minor) having no natural relationship with the opening chord (G major). It is a brilliant way of musically setting up the contrasts that beset the whole song in the first and third lines of each verse. It makes us ponder and think when we first hear it. And now, hear that slow G to D minor, and you know what you are going to get. That contrast of early bemusement and later affirmation is within me each time I hear this, and I find it extraordinary. It’s like meeting an old friend not seen for years, and finding he speaks with a different accent. It is weird, and fascinating, and one wants more….
Perhaps what has always drawn me into this song from the very first moment I heard it (and had to play it over and over again) was the complexity of the lyrics, which I still doubt that I understand. But there are moments that have always reached out to me, especially with the lines about “Relationships of ownership” and how we are all “condemned to act” according to our place in society, what we own, what we earn, and that utter killer of a final line of the verse, “And I try to harmonize with songs, the lonesome sparrow sings; there are no kings inside the Gates of Eden.” As one who has spent his life (not particularly successfully) in the creative arts, that line still overwhelms me.
But also, as an athiest I don’t believe in life after death, yet if I am quite wrong and God exists, then yes, surely, after death, we must all be equal. Otherwise whatever was the point of anything? Or am I really to be punished for not believing?
Just as I have no idea how Bob comes to his lyrics, nor do I know how he reaches his later re-arrangements, does he just stumble on an idea and say, “hey guys, let’s do it like this” or is each carefully worked out and presented as a full new version to the band? I suspect the former – at least some of the time.
However, Bob did get to that version of “Gates” and from my revised perspective, it was worth the journey. And the fact that this was the last live edition, or at least the last one I know of (and don’t spoil it for me if he has done another one since), adds to my feeling.
Song of the year? Yes for me, but more than that, this final goodbye by Bob to this song sums it all up.
“Gates of Eden”…. thank you Bob for every song, but especially for this one.
If you would like to write an article about your relationship with the songs of Bob Dylan, or indeed anything else Dylan-related, do write to me. Tony@schools.co.uk