Bob Dylan: Sometimes More Legend Than Musician
This post isn’t supposed to be quite as portentous as the title might imply. It’s actually more of a casual observation: basically there are some songs, and quite often they are early Bob Dylan ones, where all I hear is the legend, and I can’t really hear them as songs any more.
The two most obvious ones are both on the same album: With God On Our Side and The Times They Are a-Changin’. I think it might be because my parents talked such a lot about the importance of these two songs in particular when they were introducing me to Bob Dylan, and consequently I actually have no idea whether or not I like either track. I actually think that as pieces of music I am not that keen on either.
I’ve always thought, in fact, that I just didn’t like that entire album all that much but that is, or at least should be, nonsense. It sounds so much like so much stuff I love, and is pretty much an anti-folk album, despite the fact that he was considered by many to be a folk singer. Mind you that boundary is so fuzzy anyway that it makes very little difference in the first place. In any case though, you get the point: given what I else I love, I really should like it.
And looking at the tracklist before writing this I realised that actually, maybe I do. When the Ship Comes In and Hattie Carroll are two of my favourite Dylan songs, so maybe it really is just their status that puts me off those two tracks. Maybe they really are so famous and such iconic songs that I just can’t hear the song anymore. Maybe it’s similar to the way some actors become so famous that you can’t watch them as characters anymore, and simply see someone so famous that they have actually transcended any artistic achievements they might manage by virtue of being such powerful symbols in and of themselves.
Bob Dylan – The Times They are a-Changin’
Bob Dylan – When the Ship Comes In
Bob Dylan – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
And here’s something of a surprise cover, from the Pogues last ever album. This was two albums after the departure of Shane MacGowan and pretty much sank without trace, but there were some good things on it, like this Dylan cover.
The Pogues – When the Ship Comes In
Interesting thoughts Matthew (yeh, I finally realised there should be two t’s).
Something similar happened to me recently listening to Stevie Wonder’s cover of Blowin In The Wind – it became a song in itself, nothing to do with the legend of the song.
And I have to say it almost literally brought a tear to my eye.
Blowin’ in the Wind would actually be a perfect example of another song which I hear, but have great difficulty actually listening to, for all the reasons mentioned above.
You’ve made a good point; there is definite confusion between what’s “legendary” (the stories about the tune, the experiences and memories being passed down through the years) and the songs themselves. I grew up listening to Dylan in the 60’s, and I’ve never found “Blowin In the Wind” that interesting. Wheras “When The Ship Comes In” is still very solid and inspiring. There’s a scene in the 1966 Dylan documentary “Don’t Look Back” where Joan Baez describes watching and observing Dylan writing “Ship”, which was inspired by his indignation at being refused a hotel room when traveling to a gig. She said he worked on it for a couple of hours, and then..bang..it was done.
Good for you for trusting your instincts. Thanks for posting the tunes.
“There are two schools of thought:
1) Bob Dylan is a genius.
2) Bob Dylan is a man with an annoying voice.
I had always held the latter to be true, until the day that someone pointed out to me that I myself had an annoying voice.
It was only then that I surmised that Bob Dylan must be a genius.”
Two schools of thought on Bob Dylan? Only two. Right.
Actually Bart, that comment would quite annoy me if it didn’t lead to the bizarrely brilliant ‘Bob Dylan’s voice proves I am a genius’ argument.
i have this issue with The Beatles…….more so than i do with Dylan or say the Stones……i started listening to Dylan without really knowing who he was….so i guess i escaped all the bullshite around him.
There are definitely a lot Beatles songs I would put in this category – particularly the more lyrically simplistic ones from the early days.
i’d put the all of them in……well apart from Revolution (no 9) cos that still blows me away……the rest just come across as trite background music…..which is a bit of a shame i guess
Oh I don’t know. There are some great bits on Abbey Road, Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album and a few others. Mind you, my parents never played the Beatles when I was a kid, so maybe like Bob Dylan with you, I was able to approach them on my own terms later.
nail hammer head hit on
I can understand the blinkered attitude of non-believers because I grew up listening to my dad playing Dylan songs in pubs over in Ireland, and I hated his stuff up until I was about 19 years old because of a need to rebel, but then suddenly it clicked for me and I had a bit of an obsessive period of listening to his stuff. (It was the same with Leonard Cohen)
The album The Times They Are a-Changin’ was Dylan pandering to the people who wanted him to be a protest singer. It’s a pretty humourless album and my least favourite of his. it seems to me that he was never happy in this role and his next album, Another Side Of.. was more fun, though pretty uneven, but it paved the way for the holy trinity of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and the untouchable Blonde on Blonde.
As you say Mr Toad, songs like blowin’ in the wind have become a part of culture to the point of cliché, they’re quoted (too often), used by soulless entities like the Conservative party as a promotional tool, and overplayed to the point of extinction in that it’s hard to be surprised by their subtleties ever again.
That’s why uber-fans lap up all the bootleg (official and unofficial) versions/demos or what have you because it allows you to hear it with fresh ears.
I believe anti-folk was directly inspired by the likes of Dylan’s amusing songs whilst in equal measure being a reaction against the influence of his humourless protest period on vast swathes of unimaginative folkies… (phew, rant over)
Well Dylan himself hardly got an unconditionally warm welcome from the NY folk community when he turned, if I remember correctly. It was similar to the frosty reception afforded Lach so many years later, only I suppose that the market was closed enough and Dylan was special enough that they were almost forced to embrace one another eventually, although I may well need a history lesson on that.
I’d agree that apart from some of his 80s and 90s material, which I’m not at all familiar enough with to comment on, that this is probably my least favourite of his albums. Humourless is never a word that had occurred to me, but it sums it up nicely, doesn’t it. With God On Our Side is pretty humorous, but only in the blackest, most acerbic way imaginable. It’s a sort of joyless wit, which I suppose doesn’t really count. It’s certainly not going to lift an album. Again, though, get beyond the really famous ones and there are a good few songs on this that I really do love, particularly the two posted above.
Yes true I wasn’t thinking about his 80s albums which I just couldn’t get into for the most part. Has anyone heard Dylan and the Dead? Unlistenable!
I guess no-one really likes being preached to, and that’s what this album is doing, though you’re right it’s still worthwhile for those songs.
Preached?
Only if you over analysis it…
Analyse i meant…
Bob Dylan is one of the figures that, whether or not you enjoy listening to their work being performed, make up the very fabric of musical history.
His influence is vast and immeasurable in the field of musical composition and performance; and simply in those terms, disregarding the personal taste of the listener, he sits comfortably alongside the great classical composers, Guthrie, Johnson, Presley, The Beatles etc.
His personal canon includes work which; had it not been performed and recorded precisely in the manner in which it was, then music would quite simply sound different today.
It also includes a great deal of work that has been performed vastly better by other musicians. All Along The Watchtower, anyone? Or even Sophie B. Hawkins’ version of I Want You (A victim of its era in terms of production values, granted; but still dripping with a dirty, lascivious sexiness Dylan would never be able to achieve himself, and frankly, who would want him to?)
Nevertheless moments remain that only Dylan the performer could achieve. Can you imagine anyone else delivering the line “Don’t get up, gentlemen. I’m only passing through..” from the magnificent Things Have Changed with the same wonderfully derisive sneer?
Effectively it doesn’t matter how much we all like Bob Dylan as individual listeners. The fact is that each of us, as music fans, owe him and his work a debt; and we each enjoy listening to something that wouldn’t exist without his influence.
Well the only reason I brought it up was because I love Dylan, just for some reason not that album especially, not because I am in any wider sense dissing his stuff.
And for the record, I heard a dozen versions of Watchtower before I ever picked up a copy of John Wesley Harding, an album my Dad for some utterly inexplicable reason, did not own. I don’t know of one cover version that comes close to Dylan’s, although there are so many I could easily have missed one.
Knocking on Heaven’s fucking Door, on the other hand…
I like this thread.
It says things like
and
Dylan bores me
Ooh harsh!
Is that just a comeback for the Kate Bush gag yesterday?
….maybe yes or maybe no….
Which versions of Watchtower are even comparable to the original, then? Go on. A gauntlet has been thrown down, get to it.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YEXMU711y0
And he’s only 10.
fucking david fucking matthews fucking band…….
actually i;ve never heard their version….it’ll be MOR pish i bet
i just wanted to say the rude words
This one has to be a contender.
take your choice from this list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Along_the_Watchtower#Others
Well judging from that list only one – Giant Sand – looks at all likely to be anything other than shit. And I haven’t heard the Giant Sand one.
The rest have absolutely no chance.
You don’t fancy the Chris De Burgh version then?
Um… let me think…
…er, NO!
De Burgh is one of the figures that, whether or not you enjoy listening to their work being performed, make up the very fabric of musical history.
His influence is vast and immeasurable in the field of musical composition and performance; and simply in those terms, disregarding the personal taste of the listener, he sits comfortably alongside the great classical composers, Guthrie, Johnson, Presley, The Beatles etc.
Moments remain that only De Burgh the performer could achieve.
Effectively it doesn’t matter how much we all like Chris De Burgh as individual listeners. The fact is that each of us, as music fans, owe him and his work a debt; and we each enjoy listening to something that wouldn’t exist without his influence.
My old man thought Dylan was creatively/musically frigid & so wouldn’t play anything by him in the house (much the same with The Beatles, bar Rubber Soul, as it happens). So I came to his music, late-ish, sitting with friends who were students (I was not), stoned off our tit sticks, all singing along like we understood stuff.
I’ve never been a fan of him, per se, or his voice, but I think musically he has some very intelligent & curious arrangements. Which, I suppose, is why I like him more through other people’s interpretations of his songs. One of those songs just happens to be When The Ship Comes IN (& I do like his original quite a bit – possibly even my favourite song of his) & Idlewild (not the best band in the world, nor name for one) do, for me, a cracking version.
Idlewild do a version of When the Ship Comes In? Blimey, this I have to hear.
I have played it on a previous Drunk Covers… just not sure which one right now.
Hmm, I’ll have a poke around. I love both versions here though. You can tell a songwriter whose stuff is really robust when it stands up to multiple cover versions.
If you can’t find it I’ll whizz it over on email.
Did you like the Anna Ash album, btw? Fancy doing a review? I can fill in some background stuff if you wish. She’s sending me some more/new tracks shortly that they just recorded in the Uni Michigan studio.
I like it, and I will indeed review it, although maybe early next week I would have thought. Any background would be much appreciated.