No Nobel Prize: “Isis” – set the lyrics aside, this is the utter triumph of music and a single word

By Tony Attwood

The essence of this series of articles is that the emphasis in analysing the work of Bob Dylan over the years has been that of considering Dylan as a lyricist, not as a musician, although it is of course perfectly evident that he is a composer and performer of songs.

And I think nothing expresses the brilliance of Dylan the musician as much as “Isis”. Because at first hearing the complex lyrics across 13 verses are hard to follow and the meaning difficult to grasp. But if we take a metaphysical step back, we can appreciate that everything, musically and lyrically, builds up to that one gigantic moment of

“She said, ‘you gonna stay?’ I said, ‘if you want me to, yes’.”

Now, when I have put forward this point, I have occasionally got the reply that Bob turns his literary work into songs simply to get them to a wider audience. The crowds of admirers, it is said, would not turn up to hear Dylan read his lyrics. They come to hear his songs because popular music is the cultural side of modern contemporary life.

That, of course, is probably true, but it ignores the point that Dylan started out not as a poet but as a performer of other people’s songs, and then, in terms of being a recording artist, was a performer of folk songs. And although some of his compositions have been in the format of the 12-bar blues, much of the time, he has worked as a composer who takes such songs in a new musical direction as much as a new direction in terms of lyrics.

In doing this, Bob Dylan has evolved a new approach to the music that accompanies his songs, an approach which had, as one of its high points, “Idiot Wind” where the opening (which is based on a chord that has no relationship with the music of the rest of the song) is unique.

Now it is quite true that Bob holds a deep affection for the classic format of the 12 bar blues, and it is also true that he has continued to create songs which can sound to the average listener as simply variations on the forms of rock music. Indeed, the last song I focused on – “Abandoned Love” – is in many regards, a pop or rock song, but it has within it variations in the form of the music that other composers would never include. Indeed, if one listens afresh to that song, one appreciates the way that the last of each four-line phrase in each verse is quite different rhythmically from the earlier three lines.

Of course, it is possible that another composer had done this previously, but for the moment, I simply can’t place who, what and when that was. And there are so many songs of this nature in which it appears that Bob has done something quite different from other composers, that I retain the view that even if I have mistakenly heard a few “borrowed” approaches in Dylan’s music as unique to Dylan, they can’t all have been borrowed.

In short, I retain the view that musically, once he has stepped outside the restrictions of the 12-bar blues format, Bob has been creating not just original lyrics but also original musical forms. However, it is the lyrics that most people focus on, for fairly obvious reasons.

In this review of Dylan’s music (as opposed to lyrics), we now come to a song which is based around a repeating pattern of three chords. And perhaps because of this simplicity, or because of the attractiveness of the notion that the song was somehow about Bob’s wife, (conveniently ignoring the fact that the opening line is “I married Isis on the fifth day of May” whereas Bob married Sara Lownds on 22 November), discussions of the music tend to be short and simple.

And so as a result the debate about the song is taken away from thoughts about the music, which is a shame, for what Bob does in this song is use a repeated three-chord sequence about which there is not much to say.

But therein lies the brilliance of this song with its 13 musically identical verses – and most particularly that utter musical explosion after three verses – which is of course, the music repeated but with complete extemporisation by everyone involved. Indeed, now we know the song so well, we are eternally waiting for the moment of sheer brilliance in the penultimate verse.

She said, where ya been? I said, no place special
She said, you look different, I said, well, I guess
She said, you been gone, I said, that's only natural
She said, you gonna stay? I said, if you want me to, yes

I imagine that the vast majority of people who listen to Isis don’t consider what the song is telling us – for the overall package of music and lyrics is effectively all-consuming – what it tells us is that songs don’t have to evolve musically, and lyrics don’t have to make that much sense, so what we can do is appreciate the complete sound.

Now it can also be argued that this was where rock music started. Thus, the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller classic “Hound Dog” originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1952, only contained two verses because the 78rpm record format couldn’t take recordings that lasted beyond three minutes without seriously reducing the volume of the recorded track.

Of course, I have no idea if Bob was celebrating the liberation of rock n roll from the restrictions of the 78rpm record in Isis (and that does seem unlikely), but the fact is that “Isis” generates a huge level of excited emotion, even though the level of repetitiveness in the music is very high.

So, although we might have fun trying to work out what the weird lyrics are about, we can later continue to have fun because of the brilliant violin part, and the hypnotic nature of the song means we simply have to go on. We quickly ignore the tedium of the repeated musical form because of the lyrics and the relief provided by the violin. We are on a journey of repetitiveness sustained by hope and expectation, and as such, the song is an absolute triumph.

Indeed, what we find in this triumph is that any thought of the meaning of the song can be cast aside. We don’t care any more – we are taken along by the music, and we can listen to the song over and over again because we know we are being taken to that absolutely uplifting “Yes” at the end.

Bob has given us an utterly exciting and uplifting piece of music, even if we never bother with any of the lyrics except that exclamation of “yes”.

The lyrics and the music: the series…

No Nobel Prize: “Isis” – set the lyrics aside, this is the utter triumph of music and a single word

Leave a Reply

Blogroll

Meta

Recent Posts

Archives

Indexes and reference pages

Recent articles