A list of previous articles in this series is given at the end. If you have an article you would like published on this site please write to Tony@schools.co.uk
By Tony Attwood
This series contains a totally personal set of reflections about how a few Dylan compositions have had a profound impact on me, not just when I first heard them but for many years thereafter.
And my point in taking on this series is not just to wallow in my own history, but also to encourage anyone who wants to think along these lines to consider the long-term impact a Dylan song can have. This is not to say “I like….” one or other particular song, but that a song has actually influenced the way one thinks.
In this case, I am focused on a song that turned up on Bootleg 1-3 and has never been performed by Bob.
So what grabs me about it?
Musically, Angelina is a simple piece based on three chords running through the whole song: IV, I, V, I, IV, I, V. The chorus rotates chords IV, I, V, twice, then off we go again. In short, it is musically incredibly simple.
I only know one version other than Bob’s of this song, and that too is a work of utter magic…. and as I listen to it again I am struck by what an incredible opening line Bob gave us: “Do I have your permission to turn the other cheek?”
Both Bob’s version and this cover are, for me, extraordinary. But the bar in this series is set higher – to be included, these songs have to be (for me if no one else) “life changing.” Is this? After all, I certainly have never known anyone called Angelina. Here are my previous choices in this “life-changing” category…
And nowhere is this more so than with “Angelina”. And let me be clear from the start – I don’t know and have never known a lady called “Angelina” or indeed any name like this. So when I listen to this song, I am not thinking “that is about…” and relating it to my life. To me, this is a lesson on life.
So what makes this song (which Bob never played in public) affect me so much>? And what makes it go on affecting me so much that quite often I will sit down at the piano to perform it to myself. And indeed, what is it in this song that affects me so much, while seemingly the rest of the world, including Bob himself, doesn’t seem to care about the song at all?
Musically, I do admire the ability to find something new in the three standard chords of the major key (F, C, G), for like the 12 bar blues, this has been used so many times. But that is just the start, for there is something else here that perhaps some commentators have missed.
The very opening line (“Well, it’s always been my nature to take chances”) puts me in a quandary. The “chance” taken in this song is to use a really well-know three chord progression throughout the whole song, and yet it gets the audience to feel that the energy created by the slow pulse of the piece will keep us focused on it throughout.
And yes, I am grabbed by both the music and the lyrics, and I find that opening line (“Well, it’s always been my nature to take chances”) is itself a reflection on this view of life and the world. Writing a slow song based around just the three standard rotating chords is taking a huge chance. What will hold our attention? What will keep us listening?
What keeps us there is not just the lyrics, which show us we are indeed in a strange place that can’t quite be understood at this point, but also the resignation in the voice. Bob tells us he has always been a chance taker – but the voice suggests he is weary and lost, as done the line, “My right hand drawing back while my left hand advances.” “One step forward two steps back,” indeed.
There are no connections in this first verse : a chance taker (yes that’s me), going in two directions at once (oh yes), a world I don’t understand swirling around me (the monkey, the concertina, the current – I was brought up in my teenage years by the sea), it’s all there. It is me.
And without saying anything that remotely recognises my teens and 20s, Bob is reflecting the chaos I felt as a wanna-be folk singer, a wanna-be writer, a wanna-be jazz pianist…
So when Bob moves on to, “I go from shore to shore,” I felt that was my mind not being sure what I wanted to do with my life, folk singer like Bob (don’t laugh, I’m trying to be honest), author, poet, pianist…
And that line, “I know what it is that has drawn me to your door,” was not about a literal door, but rather all the possible lives I felt I could lead but couldn’t settle down to. Plus that desperate desire in my writing of music and text to create something new….
Thus, as I hear the song, it no longer is about a girl called Angelina – for I didn’t know and I don’t think I have known anyone called Angelina – it was about a mythical person, or maybe every person, as I felt myself not just beyond the realm of one woman, but outside of all existence.
Of course, these wild and hopeless thoughts about what I could do with my life made me wonder more and more not just what I would actually do, but also about why no one seemed to understand what I wanted to do, and there was another line from Bob, “If you can read my mind, why must I speak?”
I won’t go on with all the links, but the fact that the song ranges over so many images gave me one of my first real artistic insights – that there was no point worrying about whether anyone else understood what I was writing about… it was much more important just to explore what I could do, and then gradually move to my own understanding of the song. We are, after all, made up of a million influences from a thousand different people.
But in that, certain lines stayed with me, such as that extraordinary verse near the end that starts… “I see pieces of men marching; trying to take heaven by force,” and I gradually got the thought that I could have my own ideas and find my own expressions, and if no one was interested, well ok, that’s how it goes.
In the end, I realised most powerfully of all, the metaphors don’t have to be about anything – the words are not there to describe the world, they are there to be windows that open our minds onto other worlds.
That was the message that Angelina gave me, and of course, it doesn’t matter at all if Bob meant something quite different or indeed if he meant nothing at all. Part of the brilliance of Bob’s songs, I realised, is that they can open the doors of perception for anyone who wants to look and see. What we see can be something utterly different from what Bob sees, but that doesn’t matter at all. All that matters is that he did something to help the process get going.
“Angelina” did indeed get me going, and encouraged me to keep writing articles and songs, and go on later to writing books and advertisements. It worked, I enjoyed it, and eventually I made enough money to live on. None of my songs ever got recorded by anyone else, but I still write songs for my own pleasure and force recordings on my daughters and a few of my friends, and anyone who asks.
But really that has never been the point – although I am not really sure what the point is.
The penultimate verse of Angelina reads
I see pieces of men marching; trying to take heaven by force I can see the unknown rider, I can see the pale white horse In God's truth tell me what you want and you'll have it of course Just step into the arena
I feel that song enabled me to step into my own little arena and somehow get what I was after. Maybe it is the music of this song that reminds me of that fact, which is why it gets played in my house so often.
Can a Dylan song be a life-changing experience?