By Tony Attwood
Previously in this series.
- Restless Farewell
- Long and Wasted Years
- Mississippi
- Foot of Pride
- Things have changed
- Angelina
- Visions of Johanna
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, many years thereafter.
This is in contrast to the way music normally affects me – I hear a song, enjoy it, and keep it in my head for a while before another song comes along and takes over. The “life-changing” songs, however, are different in that they stay with me, as a part of my life, for months and can be recalled – or will come back unbidden – for years and years later. They are an expression of what I perceive as a chaotic life of changing directions and multiple experiences of utterly different types.
But the reason behind a song becoming a life-changing experience for me has not been the same with each song – and that is something that has truly struck me in writing this little series as noted above. The seven songs covered have each changed me in a different way and reflected the changes that I have experienced in life. But the one thing they all have in common is that even where I have not heard a recording of the song in years, I can run it through completely in my head, and still know what change it brought about, or reflected, or both, in terms of my existence, or my personality, or my well-being … or indeed something else.
Nothing in the Basement Tapes had any such effect on me, but one song from the John Wesley Harding album did take me over totally. And looking back on that song now, I am somewhat bemused, because it is such a simple song. Although I am still perfectly aware of the changes within my life that the song was reflecting.
Of course, “Drifters Escape” exists in two utterly different versions – that simple version recorded for the John Wesley Harding LP and then the Jimi Hendrix version recorded in 1970. They are of course completely different versions of the same song.
The song has one chord throughout, although the melody implies that there should be a chord change at the end of each line, and indeed, there is the slightest hint that the chord might change at the end of the fourth line.
So what on earth could attract me, and indeed affect me so deeply, in a song with one musical line and no chord changes?
Obviously, all that is left are the lyrics. And what we have are three very simple verses in which the drifter is tried and found guilty of a crime he doesn’t remember and doesn’t understand. The judge is exasperated by the convicted man’s lack of comprehension of the process, and basically gives up on trying to explain it to him.
The people at large – the crowd – are unsympathetic and are calling for the drifter’s punishment, but divine intervention (or at least a bolt of lightning without warning) allows the drifter, totally improbably, to escape.
Written out as an explanation of the very simple set of events, one can see why Bob kept the song on one chord and with just one melodic line – it is a continuity of life, until the moment of divine intervention – or at least a chance event.
Jimi Hendrix took the central theme of the song as the chaos of life existing around the difter but expanded the feeling of its impact.
And indeed kept on emphasising the chaotic nature of life ever further…
I knew the Henrix versions from the time of their performance and release but it was the Dylan recording that always came back to me, and did in fact influence my life.
I think the key issue for me was clearly the fact that the Drifter existed in a world beyond society, not through some intellectual choice, but either because he simply didn’t have the knowledge or experience that allowed him to exist within society, or because he did have that extra knowledge but the people around him couldn’t see it.
And it was that second option – that it was the multitude around the drifter who didn’t get it, that really came to influence my thinking. Could it be that it wasn’t that I simply saw the world in a different way from others, but rather that somehow the other people I knew, couldn’t really understand the alternative explanation of why the world was as it was, that I had worked out?
Now, having studied sociology as well as psychology, such thoughts truly fascinated me: the way the power of an institution swamps many individuals’ understanding of life – but a few really do see the world around them in a different way. However, there is always massive resistance to the notion that life, and the explanation of why life is as it is, is not the explanation that the majority hold on to.
More than anything, to me, the song puts across the feeling that life is out of control, while everyone else around the individual thinks they know what’s going on, but really, they don’t have a clue. And worse than that, those other people can’t understand how it can possibly be that someone can be bemused by everyday life. For them, it is there, it is obvious. WHY CAN’T YOU SEE IT?
It is, in fact, the quandary of the person, of whatever intellectual capacity, who sees the world in a different way from that of the majority of people. Parents, teachers, and the like tend to assume that the way they see the world is obvious and natural, and that any other vision of the world is either an excuse for deviant behaviour or is simply a person deliberately causing difficulty.
But Dylan’s “Drifter” just doesn’t know what is going on around him, so every decision he makes is likely to look odd and strange to those who come into contact with him.
Yet more than that, through the two different versions of the song – that of Dylan’s original and of Hendrix later (which to some degree Dylan appropriated in his own live shows) – we appreciate two separate visions of the world, each different from that of the majority view. In the Dylan version, the drifter is a simple man living a repetitive life, in the Hendrix version, he is taking on the world, going about things in his own, we suspect, aggressive, way.
And that two such different versions of the song could come from such a simple piece of music set primarily on one chord with one melodic line sung over and over, is quite extraordinary.
I think Dylan appreciated this fully as we can hear in his performance from 2005
I feel tremendous empathy with this song, feeling I have experienced the changes in life that are described here. I might seem fully settled and calm living in a small village in Middle England, but looking back, my life appears to have been chaotic. Somehow, however, I escaped various earlier attempts at travelling in different directions and survived. Listening to that live performance from 2005, I find myself totally surprised that I made it.
I don’t recall the bolt of lightning, but certainly something jolted me along my way.
Oh, help me in my weakness I heard the drifter say As they carried him from the courtroom And were taking him away "My trip hasn't been a pleasant one And my time it isn't long And I still do not know What it was that I've done wrong. Well, the judge he cast his robe aside A tear came to his eye "You failed to understand", he said "Why must you even try ?" Outside the crowd was stirring You could hear it from the door Inside the judge was stepping down While the jury cried for more. "Oh, stop that cursed jury" Cried the attendant and the nurse "The trial was bad enough But this is ten times worse" Just then a bolt of lightning Struck the courthouse out of shape And while ev'rybody knelt to pray The drifter did escape.
My life is thus portrayed not as a progress through the normal events of life: education, exams, jobs, family, but rather as an erratic zigzag in which the peace and quiet that I am now in later years able to experience each morning looking out at the trees and my garden in a village that has sat here at least since 1086 AD (there is a map of the cottages and the Maor House in the Domesday Book), is in utter contrast to everything that had gone before in my life, including living in post-revolutionary Algeria, the heart of London, the isolated countryside of England’s south west…
In short, it is not a journey that makes any sense. And that I think is what the drifter found, and what Hendrix, and latter-day Dylan expressed in their concert performances.
And thus my point, to get to it finally, is that Dylan was writing about how life changes and how we often can do nothing but live where we find ourselves, and be observers. Not always, but a lot of the time.
Yes, “Difter’s Escape” changed me, and has repeatedly changed me until finally I found comfort living in a village that has been here for over 1000 years. Which, for me, at least, is quite a feeling. But I never quite understood the journey I’d undertaken until I heard “Drifter’s Escape”.