By Tony Attwood
In 1964 Bob wrote the lost love song, “I don’t believe you” but then quickly moved on to a couple of songs on other subjects. Spanish Harlem which came next is a love song, Motorpsycho Nightmare is humorous.
But it seems that the songs of farewell that Bob created around this time became ever more themes that he wished to express himself through.
For then, farewell and lost love became his regular themes with It ain’t me babe, Mama you’ve been on my mind, Ballad in Plain D, Black Crow Blues… Then these were followed by the more ambiguous but still negative Denise Denise, Mama you’ve been on my mind , and the extended Ballad in Plain D.
This is not to say that Bob’s songs of this era are all ambiguous, but when the same theme keeps recurring in a sequence of songs, one begins to get the feeling that something negative is upon him.
And indeed the sequence continued with Black Crow Blues, Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, Tell Me Momma, Fourth Time Around, Leopard skin pill-box hat, One of us must know, She’s your lover now, Absolutely Sweet Marie, Just like a woman, Pledging my time, Most likely you go your way and I’ll go mine and Temporary Like Achilles.
To be quite clear, this is not Bob being utterly negative in every case, for sometimes he is clearly trying to find other perspectives, but the overall feel is one of a relationship break-up, sadness, and, to quote from Sooner or Later .
I didn't mean to make you so sad You just happened to be there, that's all When I saw you say goodbye to your friend and smile I thought that it was well understood That you'd be comin' back in a little while I didn't know that you were sayin' goodbye for good
Of course we don’t know exactly what went on in the relationship that caused him all the grief, but the lines reveal the classic lover’s problem – he thought he was the centre of everything, but it turned out she was perfectly capable of saying farewell.
And when we look at this sequence of songs from 1964 from this angle, and consider them in the order written, not in relation to how and when they appeared on albums, the issue does become clear – Bob was writing about the negativity of the end of an affair.
Indeed, it is sequences like this that for me, make it much easier to understand Bob’s music. If we keep focusing on the order in which the tracks were released, we get, I think, the normal desire of the rock music artist and his producers to give what they see as a classic balance to the songs on the album. Start with an upbeat piece which can be released as a single, then have a slow number, then take it up again, but not as much as the first song…
Bob was resistant, of course, as we would expect, and yet it is a set of “this is how you do it” instructions in terms of placing the songs on the album, which dominated pop and rock albums at the time. But this approach can not only lead to a misleading conversation between the artist and his audience, but also give the audience a totally false impression of where the artist is, emotionally, at this point.
It was for this reason that we took quite a bit of time resolving the order in which Bob wrote his songs – an order that is reflected in the “Dylan in Chronological Order” series of articles, where the order in which the songs are presented is not the order of recording but the order of composition.
Now, this is not in any way to say that all Bob’s lyrics are reflections of where he is at the time, but it is certainly my feeling that as he progressed through the 1960s, he became more and more able and indeed willing to write lyrics that portrayed his feelings at the moment of composition, and from there write music that matched those lyrics.
Of course, I also have no doubt that at various points there would be a record company executive, especially in the early days, putting in a comment from time to time about having a track that could “lighten it up a bit”, and of course as Bob becme more and more confident in his own abilities he would probably be inclined to listen to such suggestions less and less. But I think occasionally they would still have an impact, as a producer said, “We really do need something lighter here, Bob.”
I also suspect that Bob knew that in his shows, he also had to have some sort of balance between upbeat and slow songs, and that too would have influenced him.
But if we want to see this influence of the outside world at work, we might care to look at Mama you’ve been on my mind, which was followed in compositional terms by Ballad in Plain D . Two lost love songs composed one after the other, reflecting two sides of a relationship gone wrong but each with a unique musical approach.
And I think this insight into the order in which the songs were written does give us an extra insight into the emotional side of Bob’s work. Certainly for me, if I listen to “Mama” and then immediately after that play “Plain D” I get a set of feelings that move within me in a far more meaningful way than if I play the songs with other tracks in between.
In fact, we can take this issue a step further and expand our area of vision at this point by looking at the larger sequence…
“It ain’t me, babe” has Bob saying farewell, while “Denise” sees the break from a different angle. But then, with “Mama”, there is a feeling that maybe this break wasn’t right after all, before “Plain D” proclaims just how wrong that break was. And then finally, Black Crow admits that the love affair has been lost, and somehow he has to move on.
Of course, I can’t prove that was Bob’s thinking, although we can be pretty sure that the order in which the songs were written is that given in the sequence of articles including “Dylan songs of the 70s” and other articles in that series.
Indeed, there has been, through most of his compositional career, an ebb and flow to Bob’s creations, which is not reflected by the order in which tracks appeared on albums – nor indeed does it relate to some of the most magical tracks which have appeared on no album at all, as I have often argued.
And I think, in terms of understanding Bob’s work, it is worth going back and looking at Bob’s work in the order it was written, as from that we can get a deeper understanding of what was driving him at the time.