In a recent thread Townsman dickbonanza asked, “Why do I like Dylan’s melodies more than his lyrics?”
Has anyone else ever felt this way? As much as I love some of Dylan’s more direct, personal lyrics, I’m sometimes so mystified by his more impressionistic ones that I’m happy to sit back and enjoy the melodies. For instance, I love the song “Visions of Johanna,” but I’m not able to begin to contemplate the lyrics. I have a friend who’s spent so much time analyzing and appreciating the lyrics to that song that he wants to wrte an essay on the topic. He’s a lot smarter than me.
Think of all the relative “lightweights” with conventionally great voices who’ve sung their hearts out on Bob’s music. Some of them must be as confused as I sometimes am by the words. In fact, perhaps as much as 40% of Dylan’s lyrics hold little interest for me; those songs are carried by the melodies. How about you?
Dunno about all that, but I will say that the only Dylan albums I can stand are the early, melodic ones. Between, say, “Another Side of…” and his later 60s stuff, I can appreciate the wild, vivid imagery well enough, but I choose not to endure the music that accompanies it. A lot of the much later stuff has neither musical nor lyrical interest for me. I continue to believe the fawning praise he gets for the music he’s released in the last 30 years is the greatest suspension of disbelief in rock music history.
And before Saturnismine insists that I post 256K audio clips and trigonometric proofs to back up my opinions, I admit to only dabbling in the later stuff. It’s just that every single time I dabble, it’s awful. Like the man once said: you don’t have to eat a whole egg to know it’s rotten.
It’s about time you’ve come around and acknowledged that his great stuff is at least pretty good, in your book. Bravo!
When I tried to think ‘Melodic Dylan’ the first thing that ‘just popped in there’ is ‘If you see her say hello, she might be in Tangier’ from my go-to album BOTT. Then Nashville Skyline – ‘Lay lady lay’ – which has one of his great two chord melodies – ‘Whatever colors you have, can you see them shine…’
It’s hard to separate Dylan from his lyrics though. I wonder if he EVER wrote anything with a melody first and later fit in the lyrics…outside of Rainy day women.
I’ll do more than that. I adore “Freewheelin’…”, and am rapidly falling in love with “… A-Changing.” Like I said, the early melodic stuff is aces in my book.
HVB, I’ve never asked anyone on RTH to “back up an opinion”
I’m the one who always extols the value of SUBjectivity on these boards.
I have NEVER told you you were wrong for not liking Dylan. Meanwhile, when I was last a regular to these boards, you were fond of claiming, as misterioso did last weekend, the misguidedness, the incorrectness, of those who disagreed with you.
Where “melodic Dylan” is concerned, I’m pretty much on board with you, especially regarding the last (doing the math in my head…) 30 years. I get off the Bob train just before Desire.
And, yeah, it depends on the tune. “Maggie’s farm” isn’t melodic, but it’s a great concept with great words and it’s not meant to be melodic.
“Just like a woman,” on the other hand, has a lovely melody, which he exploits and plays with to great ends, even while talking some of the parts.
One of the things I like the most about Dylan is that the line between talking and singing gets blurry on many of his tunes. He’s just trying to do the lyrics justice when he really has something to sing. And he doesn’t necessarily sing the whole thing, but there’s a melody there anyway. It’s cool when it works. It’s not so great when it doesn’t.
There are plenty of Dylan tunes that I love because of the melody. I have no idea what the lyrics are supposed to mean on quite a few of them, and I really don’t have the time to seriously study them, but if the melody draws me into a song, then I’m OK with the meaning being a mystery to me.
I also think what a lot of self-important (and failed) singer/songwriters forget about early Dylan is that he had a sense of humor and seemed to be having FUN on quite a few of his tunes–a foreign concept to way too many singer/songwriters. Something like “Maggie’s Farm,” which isn’t very melodic, is still damn catchy and you can tell Dylan is having a good laugh over the whole thing. It definitely has a lot of rebellion in it, but it’s not preachy or self-pitying.
Let’s hear the dichotomy on Dylan’s performance of Maggie’s Farm on the Grammys tonight. I can hear the howling from the nay-sayers but this long time Bobcat will say this performance is why I am a Bobcat as Dylan proves once again – 50 years into the game, 45 years after he premiered Maggie’s Farm electric (and isn’t it classic Dylan to choose this song for this tribute to acoustic music), and with a voice ever more like sand & glue – why he is head and shoulders above anyone else.
Just when you think he has no voice left, you find Dylan’s able to have even less.
I rather enjoyed it, even though the mic seemed not to be turned on at first, but while not put off by his growl I would nonetheless like to see him rest what’s left of the voice before it is gone forever. He should tour less and perform with quieter backing. This is reality of his age and the condition of his voice.
Ah. Too bad. Lots and lots of good stuff since the 70s! And as for fawning praise, until Time Out of Mind, he wasn’t getting much praise of any kind. Retroactively, I think, some people have (correctly) reassessed his output since, say, Desire, and have begun to find the virtues and the greatness in much (though by no means all) of it. He lost his way in the 80s, for sure: no one makes records like Empire Burlesque or Knocked Out Loaded–each of which have their moments–if they are in command of what they are doing. But Oh Mercy, the early 90s acoustic records, and everything since: solid stuff, and some nice melodies, too, for those who are drawn in by those.
I’m curious, though, Mod: when you say that 40% of Dylan’s lyrics hold little interest for you, is that in general, or within specific songs or lines do you just block out 2 out of every 5 words?
Good question, misterioso, you wiseass! I mean that I have so much trouble following the imagery, in most cases, that I stop thinking about it and just enjoy the songs for what they are. There are cases when my inability to understand the lyrics are a benefit, such as “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” which fascinates me on every level. “Visions of Johanna,” on the other hand, is a song I love but don’t feel much over when I focus on the lyrics. This morning I was listening to that one that begins “She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist, she don’t look back…” I love that song but the lyrics don’t move me at all. I’m just thankful for the AAB structure of the verses, so I know what the second line of each verse is when I’m singing along.
It’s hard to know where to start on this subject. To me Bob Dylan in the greatest musician of our era, no contest. One problem with talking about Dylan is that when you try to focus on one thing, you have to acknowledge that, whatever it is, it’s only one aspect of what he does. He’s likely done the exact opposite of whatever you’re trying to talk about.
So certainly there’s lots of Dylan that is melodic. The early songs that seem to have captivated hvb are ofter rewrites of very specific traditional songs. I don’t have the background to cover this in any detail, but there are whole books about it. Just sticking to Freewheelin’, Oxford Town comes out of Cumberland Gap, Hard Rain is based on Lord Randall, and Bob Dylan’s Dream is a reworking of Lord Franklin. Blowin’ in the Wind is partially a rewrite of No More Auction Block (of which there’s an awesome version on one of the Bootleg Series albums). So the melodies are there, but he didn’t write them.
Later he showed himself fully capable of writing his own melodic songs. I Threw It All Away from his countrypolitan period is a good example. And his most recent records have had some pure Tin Pan Alley type pop songs, like Life Is Hard (from Together Through Life) or Beyond the Horizon (from Modern Times).
I personally think melody is over-rated, and Dylan is just as interesting when he plays less melodic, blues-based material. And I don’t really like singers with ‘good’ voices, so I can’t really explain why he’s one of my favorite singers ever. Is it too easy to say he’s probably done more with less than anyone that comes to mind? I haven’t heard the Grammy performance yet, but his recent albums show that he still knows how to use his voice to great effect.
If you can’t take his voice, so be it, but I don’t think you’re going to get much out of his music if that’s true. He’s a package deal — I don’t think it works to try to isolate one thing, whether it’s lyrics or melody, and enjoy that without reference to the rest of what he does.
The whole “Dylan can’t sing” thing mystifies me, at least through Infidels. I always think he had one of the voices most in need of emulation. Even Leonard Cohen tried to sing like Dylan.
The guy sings like he has a stoma.
What he said.
Meaning BigSteve, that is.
Whatever works for you, brother! I’m with BigSteve: it’s a package deal. I have little interest in the Christopher Ricks approach which is to treat Dylan’s lyrics largely in isolation and as poetry. Doesn’t mean they aren’t poetic; they usually are. But that’s just part of the picture.
I miss his twang, even if that was an affectation.
Also, I’m the guy who LIKES the Byrds versions of his songs better.
I don’t think it’s a big deal, I get the same feeling when I hear Burt Bacharach sing his own songs.
BigSteve has it right, you can’t separate things. But having said that, I often feel that it is Bob’s singing which is what makes him transcendent. Yes, he is at the top of the songwriting list but there are lots of others on that particular Mount Rushmore. But there’s only Sinatra and Dylan on the singing Rushmore.
As far as resting his voice, that ship has sailed I fear. At this point he hasn’t toured since late November so if his voice wasn’t “rested” for the Grammys, it never will be. Unless he’s been recording over the last 10 weeks (he said hopefully).
I’ll admit to not having given enough time to the stuff from Desire on, and Dylan’s work leading up to that point certainly suggests that he deserves it. But what I have heard (and I’ve heard, and even purchased a LOT of that stuff, hoping for songs that move me) just doesn’t move me. And with dylan, I want to be moved.
I don’t think it has anything to do with melody or lack thereof. As I suggested above, I think there’s more than ample evidence throughout his body of work that he can uncork a gorgeous melody when the song he’s writing calls for it.
But I’m not in it for the melody.
And by the way…are we talking about songwriting or singing here? The points we’re all making seem to veer back and forth between both with no sustained focus on one or the other.
Since I know you now have 100% faith in my judgment, first and foremost I unhesitatingly recommend Oh Mercy (and all accompanying released outtakes and alternates), Love & Theft, and Time Out of Mind (and all accompanying released outtakes and alternates).
But in a weird way, the 3rd cd of the first Bootleg Series collection and the more recent Tell Tale Signs bootleg series collection may be the best overview of this era, since nearly all the material is first rate.
I downloaded a half dozen or so songs from those two more-recent albums and they’re solid. I still don’t like the fact that Dylan lost his voice, but on the songs I downloaded he makes what he has left work for him. Infidels is the last album by Dylan that I like and that – to me – sounds like him.
I have “oh Mercy.”
You have terrible taste.