By Tony Attwood
Returning to the songs Bob wrote in 1967, in the era of the Basement Tapes, in my last post I considered Dress it up, Better have it all – a song which I explained through the phrase “Maybe nothing has to make sense” but I also described quite simply as “a mess.”
And indeed these songs from this era are very strange. “I’m not there” is surely the most depressed and depressing song that there is from Bob Dylan’s repertoire and yet it was followed by the upbeat (or perhaps one should say the falsely upbeat) You ain’t going nowhere . It is not a song of Dylan’s that I would choose to play for my own amusement – not indeed the amusement of anyone else but it is in the repertoire so needs to be considered…
The lyrics seem to be uplifting….
Clouds so swift Rain won’t lift Gate won’t close Railings froze Get your mind off wintertime You ain’t goin’ nowhere Whoo-ee! Ride me high Tomorrow’s the day My bride’s gonna come Oh, oh, are we gonna fly Down in the easy chair!
And yet the performance by Bob, both in his singing and indeed in the way he is dressed, saying nothing of the kind.
Ostensibly it appears to be positive – but in reality it sounds as if he’s still got bits of I’m not there – left over. As I have noted before that song ended
Yes, I believe that it's rightful Oh, I believe it in my mind I've been told like I said one night before Carry on the cryin' And the sole gypsy told her Like I said, carry on I wish I was there to help her But I'm not there, I'm gone
Could Bob really be serious in writing in his next song when he jumps from that to
Whoo-ee! Ride me high Tomorrow’s the day My bride’s gonna come Oh, oh, are we gonna fly Down in the easy chair!
Or was he just pointing out how depressed he was? Or even having fun at our expense (although it doesn’t look that way in the video above!)
It may well be that the song does have a meaning but I really can’t find it myself. Consider…
Buy me a flute and a gun that shoots
Tailgates and substitutes
Strap yourself to the tree with roots
You ain’t going nowhere
Things are crashing down She's all too tight In my neighbourhood She cried both day and night I know it because it was there
Whoo-ee! Ride me high Tomorrow’s the day my bride’s going to come Oh, oh, are we going to fly Down in the easy chair!
And I mean that apart from anything else that just doesn’t sound like Bob Dylan musically or lyrically.
But of course, “What do I know?” as I have asked several times before. Because the fact is that over the next fifty years Bob performed the song some 110 times on stage – which is round about the same number times as he performed “Wiggle Wiggle” and “If Dogs Run Free”. Somewhere in that there is a message that I most certainly have never got, and that “not getting” is most certainly a reflection of my lack of understanding of what was going on.
I have taken, in the past, a guess to the effect that Bob had said to someone, “I could write anything and the fans would run with it,” or words to that effect, and so he proved it with this song. But I don’t want to think of Bob that way.
And what makes Bob’s work even stranger (from my perspective of course, no one else’s) is the fact that after “I’m not there” he wrote “You ain’t going nowhere” which contains the lines
Whoo-ee! Ride me high Tomorrow’s the day My bride’s gonna come Oh, oh, are we gonna fly Down in the easy chair!
Was he still making fun of all of us, or have I got it all horribly wrong?
The fact is that “You ain’t going nowhere” was played 110 times across a 50 year period which rather suggests (or confirms) that I really don’t understand what was going on. If you know, please do write in and tell me.
Genghis Khan He could not keep All his kings Supplied with sleep We'll climb that hill no matter how steep When we come up to it Whoo-ee ride me high Tomorrow's the day My bride's gonna come Oh, oh, are we gonna fly Down in the easy chair !