“The Love that Faded” by Hank Williams and Bob Dylan.

By Tony Attwood

“The Love that Faded” is a song with the music composed by Bob Dylan around the song notes that were found after Hank Williams died.  It appears on “The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams” album, which is available on Spotify.

Bob has written the song in the style of Hank Williams – indeed to my ears, not particularly tutored in this type of music it could well be Dylan singing a Hank Williams original.  But I’m not at all an expert on this.

The whole album is in a respectful style – and if you want to wander through the whole album you might particularly enjoy Jack White singing “You know what I know” which is quite a bit of fun.

For the story behind this album I have to rely on Wikipedia which tells us that Hank Williams died aged 29 while travelling to a concert that was due to take place on New Years Day in Ohio.  It is said that in the car was a notebook of lyrics to songs that the artist had not yet recorded.

The lyrics then (if I have got this story right, and I am not sure that I have) were lost but turned up again in 2006 and were found by a janitor working for Sony.  Dylan wrote the music to one song, and the others were completed by Alan Jackson, Norah Jones, Jack White, Lucinda Williams, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, Patty Loveless, Holly Williams, Levon Helm, Jakob Dylan, Sheryl Crow and Merle Haggard and were released as ‘The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams’.

Jack White said later, “I did a project with Bob Dylan: he put together 20 or 25 people to finish writing Hank Williams songs that only had lyrics and didn’t have music.

“I looked through all the piles of lyrics, and one of ’em just kept speaking to me. Sometimes you think it’s gonna be really hard to find my spot, and then it picks it for you. You don’t even have to choose it; it just picks it for you.”

Here are the lyrics to the song that Bob wrote the music for…

The love that faded left me only tears
Days that were happy turned into lonely years
Vows that we made turned into lies
My life is empty, my lonely heart cries

I tried to forget that we’ll never be
Nothing left for me but dust in the breeze
My way is lonely but I think I’m lost
My love was wasted, I’m paying the cost

Brown eyes, blue eyes they’re all the same
None are for me, I’ve lost their game
Tomorrow has nothing but worries and cares
The love that faded left me only tears

Just like the rose your love faded away
Now my lonely heart must break and pay
Nothing now but heartaches through years
The love that faded left me only tears

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