Black Rider – Dylan’s most complex song ever

DISCLAIMER: To some extent, this text is still a draft, in that there may or may not be too much or too little music theory in it. I intend to revise it, so if you have comments that may be useful in that respect, I would be very grateful. Use the comment section or send me a mail

From a musical perspective, there is one song on Dylan’s recent album, Rough And Rowdy Ways, that stands out: Black Rider. One may not initially notice it: on the surface the song fits nicely in with the rest of the album: rather slow, melodically nothing much more than a monotonous recitative, a nicely sounding canvas for a fairly wordy set of lyrics. But harmonically speaking, it is in fact probably Dylan’s most complex song ever (that is: if he has written it himself, which obviously can’t be taken for granted these days, given his track record of musical thievery. But for the sake of argument: his most complex song).

Among the candidates for “most complex song” – In The Garden is the most obvious one, but Ring Them Bells and Dear Landlord also come to mind – it is also the most interesting one in this respect, since the very nuanced harmonic progressions are not immediately perceptible as complexity – they feel very natural, and yet they contribute very strongly to the expression of the song. A comparison with In The Garden underlines this: there, the complex harmonies sound slightly contrived – interesting, but in a way that draws attention to itself and not to the song. Here, one hardly notices them. And yet, they are an important aspect of why the song seems to suck the listener in. I’ll try to show how.

The material description

If one follows the traditional division of the musical material into melody, harmony, and rhythm, Black Rider is all about the harmony.

Rhythmically, the whole song consists of a sequence of chords with no fixed rhythm, just calmly strummed, two chords for each line of text, from beginning to end, with no change, no development. Just the chords.

Dm       A/d       Dm      A/d
 
      Dm                 A7
Black rider, black rider, you've been living too hard
     D7                    Gm
Been up all night, have to stay on your guard.
    E7/d                          A7/c#
The path that you're walking, too narrow to walk,
D7/c                    Gm/bb
 Every step of the way, another stumbling block.
Dm/a                           A7
 The road that you're on, same road that you know,
Dm6/a
Just not the same as it was
A'         Dm       A7/d       Dm      A7/d
 a minute ago.

The melody to which the lyrics are sung is not really a melody. It is more like a recitative, basically with one tone per chord, repeated with a consistency that is surprising given Dylan’s incapability of sticking to one note (at least when he’s supposed to – unlike the unbearable one-note samba impersonations he used to do back in the day, whichever song he was singing). So no melody to speak of, just the words.

Which leaves us with the harmony.

In the following I will go through the song, chord by chord, verse by verse. There will be some music theory; I’ll try to make that as brief as possible.

Verse 1: Same road, just not the same that it was a minute ago

The song begins with the four chords

Dm – A7 – D7 – Gm

(In the following I use bold for chord names, Uppercase Italics for note names, and Bold Italics for the abbreviated functional harmony names that will show up here and there.)

Bar .1-4, with the chords Dm – A7 – D7 – Gm

In these chords lies the seed of all the developments that lie ahead. Here is why:

The three chords in a “three-chord song” are the keynote (also called the tonic), together with the chords on the fourth and fifth steps above the tonic (the subdominant, and the dominant, respectively). In a song in D major, these chords would be D, G, and A.

Minor keys differ from major keys in some important aspects. One is that the dominant is almost always a major chord, even though a minor chord might have been expected. The reason for this is that we absolutely want that halftone-step leading from the third of the dominant chord (c# in this case) back up to the keynote of the tonic. That halftone is the glue that keeps all western harmony together.

Going from Dm to A7, then, is expected, since these are the main chord functions of any key: the tonic and the dominant. Returning to a D chord is also expected; after all, the A7 is there to build up tension so that the return to the tonic feels even more satisfactory.

But here, we don’t return to a regular tonic. Instead, we get a D7. What difference does that make?

Quite a lot, actually. The added seventh transforms the chord from a tonic – the bringer of rest and stability – into a dominant – the bringer of tension and trouble. That tension needs to be resolved, and in principle, the resolution of a dominant always happens the same way. A7 resolves to Dm because of the halftone step from c# to d and the step from g to f in the lower voice. And, correspondingly, D7 resolves to Gm, which is exactly what happens here.

Resolution from Dominant to Tonic.

And Gm is not a stranger in a song in Dm. In fact, as indicated above, it is the subdominant, the last of the main functions in any key, together with the tonic and the dominant.

The core of traditional functional harmony is the progression T-S-D-T, and the notion that these chords represent different functions in a musical narrative. We begin and end with a Tonic, the stable foundation; the Dominant is where the action takes place; and the Subdominant is a preparation to get away from the calm quiet of the Tonic.

It could be likened to the Lord of the Rings: the Tonic is Hobbiton and the Shire, the Subdominant is Frodo’s first hesitant steps on the road that leads from his cozy hut with the round door, out into the wide world; and the Dominant is Nazguls and orcs and Mordor and all that; and in the end, we’re safely back in Hobbiton again. In other words: T-S-D-T. You have heard that progression thousands of times. It is e.g. the first line of Blowin’ in the Wind.

This means two things for the story of the Black Rider: after Dm–A7–D7–Gm, we have been through all the narrative steps in the story, so we might in principle be ready for a return to T again. The problem is that we have gone the wrong way. Which means: we are not done yet – we have only just begun: what we thought was Mordor back there in the second bar, turned out not to bring us back to Hobbiton after all; in hindsight we can see that it was really part of the preparation to get to Bree, the little village just outside of the Shire, or in more technical terms: the subdominant (Gm) in the fourth bar.

Thus: (a) only now are we ready for the real Dominant step, and (b) we may not have traveled very far, but we’re already a long way from home. (Or as Sam expresses it: “If I take one more step, I’ll be the farthest from home I’ve ever been.”)

Exactly how long, is determined by several things. It would have been perfectly possible to continue: Dm-A7-D7-Gm-A7-Dm:

In other words: tack on the two remaining functions, in the correct order, and be done with it. As we have said: A7-D7 is just an inserted preparation for Gm, so the longer progression is just a slightly embellished version of the plain Dm-Gm-A7-Dm.

There are two problems with this. One is that after such an elaborate preparation just to get to Gm, it would seem a little anti-climactic with just a sudden return to the tonic. We are led to expect more than that.

The other is that most music in most musical traditions organize phrases in groups of four. If we perceive our first four chords as one unit, we would expect things to happen in similar groups. The suggested, longer sequence only adds half a unit. With the added preparation to Gm, the short option Dm-Gm-A7-Dm is no longer an option; and adding -A7-Dm at the end disrupts the four-unit phrasing. Apparently, we’re in for a longer haul.

To understand what is happening here, let’s have a look at the bass line of the whole verse:

Verse 1, bass line and chords

In the first four bars we oscillate between the tonic and the the keynotes of the D and S, respectively. Bar 5 brings us back to the keynote d again. Then follows a mostly chromatic descent from D down to A, which looks like a slowed down and stretched out echo of the first two bars, as if to say: “Whoa! You were going way too fast there, buddy – we weren’t ready for Mordor just yet, but now we are! Bring on the orcs!”

Once a has been reached – the first chord of the third four-bar unit – the bass stays there throughout the whole unit, until the return to d and the end. This Dm chord is extended into a four-bar interlude, which brings the total chord count up to sixteen, divided into four regular units of four.

The harmonic “narrative” of the first verse could be represented like this:

Verse 1: four-bar units and phrases. The symbols below the music indicates the high-level functional analysis: after the initial t–s (lower-case letters denote minor keys, upper-case letters major keys), the whole second unit leads up to D, which is in effect all through the third unit.

We have a slightly elaborate way of getting from t to s; then a long build-up to an extended D; followed by a well-deserved rest on t.

But what about the chords? The bass line may return to d in bar 5, but that’s not a Dm chord, and the A7 that I claimed was dominating the whole passage from bar 5 to 12, is hardly there until the very end. What’s going on here?

First of all, if we leave out the bass tones, we may notice that the progression A–D–Gm from b. 2–4 is repeated in the second unit. This time it is preceded by E7 instead of Dm; this expected Dm instead follows after the progression.

To make a long story short: In the first unit, Gm was prepared by its dominant, D7, in turn prepared by its dominant, A7. In the second unit, the chain starts one step earlier, in that A7 is in turn prepared by its dominant, E7. In technical terms, a dominant that prepares for something other than the keynote, is called a secondary dominant. What we have here, then, is a chain of secondary dominants, and this whole passage, E7–A7–D7–Gm, is a way of saying, in music: “wait for it… wait for it … wait for it … Now!”

And finally we are ready for a real Dominant. One little detail emphasises its arrival even further: This second time, the Subdominant is not played as a regular Gm chord, but with Bb in the bass. As mentioned, its function is to lead up to the dominant, and the halftone-step in the bass strengthens this effect. Halftones do that, as we have seen: they are like magnets, pulling the chords on either side towards each other.

So everything in the second four-bar unit works together to fulfill the promise of the dominant that has been delayed for so long, and when it arrives it is only natural that it enters as strongly as possible: on the first beat of the third unit.

And yet: after all this fanfare and preparation, it may seem a little disappointing that what follows after Gm is not a straight A, but a D minor chord with an A in the bass – Dm/A. In music theory, this is called a “double suspension” – a sus4 chord on stereoids, where not one but two of the chord tones have been temporarily displaced.

In a regular Asus4 the third, C#, is replaced by the fourth, D, which dissonates with E for a while until the tension is resolved when D drops a half-step back to C#. In a double suspension, even the third tone E is suspended to F and released back to E again, all in the service of heightened tension. So while it would be notated as a Dm chord, it functions as an A chord – a prolonged dominant.

One last observation can be made before we continue the song. It is as if the bass line and the chords tell slightly different stories, or present different perspectives on the same story, so that we are made to expect one thing but get something slightly different. The bass line of the first unit leads us to expect a D of some kind, and we do get that, but “only” in the form of a twisted tone in an E7 chord. Then, after the second unit, we strongly expect an A of some kind; and again, that is what we get, but this time in the shape of a Dm – the chord we expected earlier.

This is in fact a recurring theme throughout the chord progression of the song: things aren’t always what they seem; we’ll get there, but in time, and not always in the time you were expecting. Same road, but different.

Verse 2: You fell into the fire
and you’re eating the flame

Which brings us to the second verse. It can be dealt with much more quickly, since the basics are now in place:

      Dm                 A7
Black rider, black rider, you've seen it all
       D7                  Gm
You've seen the great world and you've seen the small
    E7/d                          A7/c#
You fell into the fire and you're eating the flame
D7/c                    G/b
Better seal up your lips if you wanna stay in the game
Bb6                    F/a
Be reasonable, mister, be honestly fair
     E/g#
 Let all of your earthly thoughts
A    Dm       A7/d       Dm      A7/d
be a prayer

It begins just like the first verse, and one might listen through the whole thing without really noticing that something has changed – at least that’s what I did, until I sat down to write down the chords. When I got to “… if you wanna stay in the game” in the second unit, I had to go back to the first verse to check if I had misheard something or just made a typo, for clearly, that’s a B in the bass, right, and not a B flat?

Right. G/b here. And Gm/Bb in the first:

This is the first in a series of changes with long-reaching consequences. As we saw in the first verse, the bass Bb at the end of the second unit was a strong indication that next up would be the strong effect of a dominant, deserving to enter on a strong beat, i.e. the first bar of the unit.

But this time, we get a B instead in that spot. And this is not just any spot: we are in the middle of a pronounced chromatic descent, going slowly but steadily from D to A. So what to do?

Dylan does the only reasonable thing: insert the Bb anyway and prolong the descent, so that it now fills every halftone in the interval between d and a. Here’s what it looks like:

Verse 2 with four-bar units and phrases (audio from b. 5).

What this tells us is that since the descent has been prolonged, it disrupts the regular structure of four-bar units: the awaited A no longer enters on the first beat of the third unit where it belongs, and the descent actually continues past A.

Dylan’s solution is simple and consistent: the structure that was established in the first verse calls for a full unit of a. This has been prevented by the inserted B, but there are more ways than one to accomplish the goal. One can for example circle around the tone, so that its presence is felt even when it is not actually sounding, something like this:

How to fake a continuous presence of a tone.

This is of course an interpretation, but if we accept the bass tones Bb-A-G#-A of the third unit as a continuous presence of A throughout the unit, we may say that the chromatic descent in the second unit and the sustained A in the third overlap, as indicated with the slurs in the graph above.

The changed bass line calls for changes to the chords as well. G# is easy: it is the third of E major, which – do we notice a pattern here? – is the dominant of A. Thus, the last three chords (E-A-D) echo the beginning of the second phrase, just as the last three chords of the second phrase (A-D-G) echo the end of the first:

Verse 3: I’m walking away,
you try to make me look back

The third verse is remarkable:

      Dm                 A7
Black rider, black rider, all dressed in black
    Gm           Dm
I'm walking away, you try to make me look back
Bb                               F/a
My heart is at rest, I'd like to keep it that way
E7/g#               A7/g
I don't wanna fight, at least not today
D/f#                  Em7-5
Go home to your wife, stop visiting mine
Bm7-5/a                   A7        
 One of these days I'll forget to be 
Dm       A7/d       Dm      A7/d
kind
Verse 3, phrase structure with full harmonic analysis. “(D)” denotes a secondary dominant, i.e. a dominant to anything other than the tonic.

In a way, Dylan tries to cheat, but harmony strikes back.

The first unit does exactly what I hinted at in the discussion of the first verse: we have a t, a D, and an s, we’ve been through the main functions, so why not just go straight back to t again, and we’re done?

Because the Dominant needs to be the last thing that happens before the end. Here, we go Mordor–Bree–Hobbiton – A7-Gm-Dm – which is a strange narrative.

And sure enough: We have reached the tonic too soon, and payback is a bitch.

Dylan’s solution is quite advanced. If we look at the verse as a whole, we recognize all the elements we have discussed so far: the D-A-G-D oscillation in the beginning, the chromatic descent in the middle, and the prolonged A–D in the end. But things have changed: the oscillation is shortened, the descent no longer goes from D to A, but from Bb to E, and the quick and simple AD ending is now a two-step action EAD. What has happened?

First, we notice that the bass line Bb-A-G#, which used to belong to the third unit, as part of the circling motion around A, now instead is what sets the chromatic descent in the second unit in motion. The chords are the same, the bass line is the same, but the function is different.

We may also notice that just as the Bb in the second verse was “actually” sort of an A, insofar as it belonged to the circling around that note, we might consider it as an auxiliary to A even this time: we have established that the function of the second unit is to descend slowly from D to A; in the third verse, it seems, we descend from a to e instead, but the interval through which we are descending is the same in both cases: a fourth.

Everything seems to be logical – except: how did we get to Bb this time, and by the way: what is the E at the end of the descent doing there anyway? This seems to go against the narrative that we have established so far: we thought we had reached the height of action and tension in unit one, we then realised that we had only just begun, therefore the dominant, A, had to be carefully prepared, to make sure that the resolution of the tension was consistent and clear.

Now, however, if we take the descent to be doing the same thing as in the second verse, the role of the dominant seems to have been taken over by E instead of the real dominant A. But this would mean that we have built up tension – and our justified expectation of a resolution – around the wrong chord: if E is the dominant we’re preparing for, that means that we are anticipating a calm and peaceful return to … wait: to Mordor! to A, the dominant!

That seems wrong.

And it is. Not because the tones are wrong, but because we’ve been fooled. Here’s what is happening:

The Bb doesn’t appear out of thin air. Tonal theory operates with two central concepts: the three main functions that should be familiar by now (T, S, and D), and the notion that a major chord has a relative minor – a cousin with the same genes, but slightly more sombre (and vice versa). The easiest way to determine the relative chord is to look at the number of flats or sharps in the key signature: the relatives are the chords with the same configuration – of black and white keys on the keyboard, if you like. A minor and C major use no black keys, so they are relatives.

Relatives share properties, and one can sometimes stand in for the other. I discovered this for myself when as a kid I was learning to play the guitar and had serious problems with the F barre chord, which seemed to be used everywhere. I could not play it, because my index finger was only nine years old and unable to press down all those strings. I fooled around with the other chords I had learned, and I figured out that, miraculously, I could often use Dm or Am instead.

Only, it wasn’t a miracle: Dm is the relative minor of F – that is why.

G minor uses two b’s in the key signature, and so does B flat major, so they are relatives, functionally. Thus, when Dm enters prematurely after Gm and then continues to Bb, this is a way for the tonic to say: “Fine, I came in too early – I’ll let your cousin take over.” Bb corrects the “mistake” made by Dm, and since an important function of the relative is to indicate that we are not quite ready yet, it is doubly appropriate there, at the beginning of the second unit.

And since Bb has also already been established as a legitimate way of getting to A with emphasis, once we’re there, the progression that follows is unproblematic.

But what about the E at the end of that progression?

Let’s have a closer look at that chord. In the tab at Dylanchords I have written it as Em7-5, since that is the name and shape that is probably most familiar to most people, and since it also corresponds well with the bass note.

But as is the case with many of these complex chords, it can be spelled in many different ways. It consists of the tones E, G, Bb, and D (Bb being the lowered fifth, the -5, from E, and D being the seventh). Bb is not naturally a part of the Em chord – it has been violently, surgically altered from the B that would have been the natural inhabitant of the chord. Altered chords are strong medicine; you do that to them for a reason.

But look at the tones again: G is the keynote of the subdominant; Bb is the parallel of Gm as well as the third in that chord; and D is the tonic, as well as a natural member of the G minor chord – the very same chord that was carrying the protagonist’s hat for a moment back there. Let’s call it “Sam Gam-Gee Minor” (and recall the brief period when Sam was the Ring-Bearer). In other words: Em7-5 can also be spelled Gm6/e.

Em7-5 = Gm6/e

And then everything falls into place: the chromatic descent, which so far has worked as a preparation for the dominant, turns out instead to be a prolongation of the subdominant that was so rudely cut off a couple of bars earlier. The E that so far in the song has appeared only as a pseudo-Mordor (or as the theorists call it: a “secondary dominant”) to the dominant A, turns out to be nothing more than a colouring nuance of the subdominant Gm.

This in fact also means that the circling motion that was introduced in the second verse, as a way of accommodating the slightly longer chromatic descent and merging it with the sustained dominant, is now shifted forwards a couple of bars and down a couple of steps, just in time for the now extended subdominant to give way – subordinately, of course – to the dominant.

This gives the following simplified chart of the third verse:

Verse 3, simplified harmonic analysis.

The first unit really ends with the subdominant, Gm, which is in effect all the way through the chromatic descent until the Em7-5 chord, including the circling motion, where it gives way to the dominant for the last two bars before the end of the verse.

Verse 5: you’ve been on the job
too long

The fourth verse is mostly a repetition of the second verse, and the fifth verse a repetition of the third. Or is it?

Not quite. It begins the same way, with the Gm cut off prematurely by Dm, but there is one trick left up someone’s sleeve. First, have a look at the third unit:

Verse 5, phrase structure.

We are back where we started in verse one! The whole third unit is taken up by an extended A, which resolves, as always, to the final Dm.

Then have a look at the second unit: The circling is back where it started in verse two, as a prolonged A, but this time shifted one whole unit to the left. That is the price one pays for disrupting the natural flow of events, jumping in with a happy ending before it is due: Mordor – the dominant A – takes over the entire verse.

Or does it? Towards the end of the verse there really isn’t much of Sauron’s destructive force left. There is a limit to how long you can sustain dramatic tension, and now there is hardly any energy left. This is perhaps most clearly heard in the chord that now begins the third unit, at “some enchanted evening” (incidentally a reference to wizardry and magic – quite fitting, given the Lord of the Rings metaphor – but also to the song by that name, which Dylan released on Shadows in the Night, the melody of which begins, aptly enough, with a circling around the first note). It is not really a chord, in the sense that it doesn’t have a tonal function at all, it is just an A where the whole thing is shifted down a semitone while the bass tiredly hangs on to its A.

Other lines

So there it is, a complexity that is unheard of in Dylan’s oeuvre, consisting of a consistent manipulation of a few blocks and gestures, and exploiting the niceties of functional harmony.

The lines that I have singled out in the analysis are not the only ones at work in the song. Below is a four-part setting of the first verse – not to suggest to anyone that a choral arragement of Black Rider would be a good idea, God forbid, but to highlight these implicit lines in the other “parts”. Most prominent is the chromatic ascent in the beginning of the “soprano” part, but also the start of the “alto” part is clearly audible as a characteristic chromatic line. In addition I could also have pointed out the run of parallel sixths between soprano and tenor in the third unit.

Four-part version of the first verse, with the main outline of Dylan’s recitative as a solo part at the top.

Lyrics and Music

One final question: Does Dylan know all of this? Probably not.

Are the musical complexities reflected in the lyrics, and vice versa? Possibly. At least the first verse ends: “The road that you’re on, same road that you know, / Just not the same as it was a minute ago,” which could be interpreted as a parallel idea to the ever-changing harmonies which seem the same but aren’t (that it could doesn’t mean that it should, though). The second verse, which is where the harmonic complexities are most dominant-oriented, also has the most dramatic lines, such as the one quoted in the heading: “You fell into the fire / and you’re eating the flame” (and again: the topical similarity with the Lord of the Rings is completely unintentional). And the last verse ends “Black rider, black rider, you’ve been on the job too long,” a quotation from Duncan and Brady, a song that Dylan used to sing, about a guy whose dominant powers are waning.

There is no doubt that such connections can be made, but this is no surprise: the greater the complexity, the greater the opportunities to find parallels and correspondencies, even unintended ones. Dylan has always been lauded for the complexity of his lyrics, open to a wide range of interpretation. Harmonically – not so much. There is only so much one can do with three chords in fixed patterns. I have made some attempts at harmonical analysis of Dylan songs over the years – Dear Landlord, Just Like a Woman, and Mr Tambourine Man come to mind – but I readily admit that they have been made to a large extent out of spite, in opposition to the tendency in popular music studies to study everything but the music itself.

It is therefore unavoidable that part of the conclusion must contain an opening towards suspicion. The sudden appearance of a song like Black Rider, where harmony takes centre stage for the first time in his 60 years as a song-and-dance man, at time when Dylan has spent a decade deep-diving into the repertories of the highly skilled harmonicists of the Sinatra era, must make one wonder if there isn’t a sheet of music somewhere out there among the millions of songs from the first half of the twentieth century with a complex chord sequence in D minor which changes from verse to verse. The fact that there is one verse which is simply repeated, without any change, actually points in that direction.

We may never know. If someone does indeed dig out the original, I will not be surprised. Until then, I am going to enjoy Black Rider, more and more each time I play it.

Another Self Portrait — a review in sonata form

Self Portrait
Self Portrait

Another Self Portrait
Another Self Portrait

Slow intro, setting the theme

One reviewer of this latest release in the Bootleg Series asks: “Remember the first time you heard Blonde On Blonde, or John Wesley Harding?” He is somehow implying that Another Self Portrait is the same kind of experience, having to do somehow with reinvention, recreation.

Well, what can I say? Yes, I remember very well.

When I first heard Blonde on Blonde, I had already read so much about the album and how great it was, that my first reaction was: “Oh Was THAT it?” I didn’t think it was a bad album by any means, but I was definitely underwhelmed. Compared to Highway 61 Revisited, for example the first album I ever bought, before my expectations had been contaminated by public opinions Blonde on Blonde seemed to be a light-weighter.

As for John Wesley Harding, I just didn’t like it, mostly because of the title track, but that’s another story.

HWY61, however. And Freewheelin’. And BOTT. And GAIBTY. And TOOM. And Planet Waves. And New Morning. etc. Those are albums that struck me. Not because they complied with any notion of Dylan recreating himself (maybe they did, maybe they didn’t), but because they combine immediacy of expression with conscious attention to musical detail.

And even though Another Self Portrait pales to most of these albums, it does have some really bright moments – including, perhaps most importantly, the long “moment” that stretches from June 1966 to, say the 1974 tour with the Band.

The Artist as Creator: What’s Great About Another Self Portrait

And what’s striking about the songs on Another Self Portrait is precisely the immediacy of expression that I mentioned. The new tracks from the Self Portrait sessions are perhaps the most exquisite examples in Dylan’s entire catalogue of one of his most spectacular abilities, which with unironic bathos can be called: to blow life into dead clay.

His ability to take a simple tune, twothree banal chords, and a cliché-filled text, and make you feel that you’re listening to the most important thing anyone has ever told you, and to make you love the people that he’s creating, right before your eyes and in this case even using borrowed words; this ability is demonstrated to its fullest extent in the ”throwaways” from the Self Portrait sessions.

To Play in Prose

This is not Dylan the storyteller. Nor is it Dylan the interpreter or Dylan the truth-teller (or Dylan the genius, the Bard, the Voice, etc.). I’ve been searching for a phrase to describe that particular aspect of Dylan’s art for a very long time, and ASP has given me a decisive clue. It’s Dylan the inflector, Dylan the variator, Dylan the prose musician.

A song is a strange construction. Part fixed structure, part fluid language, part ineffable mental images, part sensory enjoyment. On all these points, the interpretation can vary from the loose to the fixed. Hearing a song can sometimes be like watching someone solve a sudoku or read from a do-it-yourself handbook – other times, it’s like hearing someone mumble in their sleep. And sometimes the performer hits the soft spot between rigid pattern and loose boundlessness.

There is nothing magical about this soft spot. We all hit it, all the time – because that’s how language works. Any communicating human being is so skilled in this wondrous art, that we don’t even think about it. But it’s really amazing, how good we are at detecting and interpreting even the slightest inflections in the tone of a voice when we’re talking. And how little it takes for us to detect any interruption of the free flow of spoken sound. That’s what good actors are good at: either to make us forget that everything they say comes out of the rigid framework of a manuscript, or to make us disregard that fact or even turn the rigid boundary that we perceive, e.g. in a poetry recital, into an advantage, by drawing attention to its character of not being ordinary language, despite appearances.

This is what Dylan does in Pretty Saro and in Annie’s Going to Sing Her Song, in Thirsty Boots or in These Hands. We are aware, of course, that this is not just a person talking freely to us – there is a melody, a fixed metre, rhymes, etc., all fairly obvious giveaways – but through small variations and inflections, imprecisions and oversights, we are led to forget this, without even noticing.

Take These Hands as an example: the first strums and words are so square and inflexible that it’s almost parodic the way he sings ”gentleman”, for example, sounds almost tongue-in-cheek. He seems to exaggerate the corny character of the song, holds it up in the listener’s face as if to say: ”Yes, I know it’s a corny song.” And by that admission, the issue is out of the way.

Jump a couple of minutes in, and it’s a completely different song. It happens through tiny little details, which are futile to describe in analytic detail: the slightly off-key ”people have power”, the downward figure on ”grieve”, the three or four different ways he fingers the G chord and how he never plays the same figure the same way twice, the little vocal ornaments that resemble both the pitch-variations that occur in ordinary speech and, well, little vocal ornaments – that kind of things. Sometimes there’s an expressive purpose behind them, but it’s just as much a way to create fluidity and variation – the same kind of ”purposeless” variation that we use when we speak (as opposed to when we recite a sonnet).

I’ve described this almost as if it were a conscious thing that Dylan does. I don’t believe it is — on the contrary, its effect depends on the technique and style to be entirely automatic, effortless.

That’s why we can endure four minutes of Dylan strumming slowly to a simple chord sequence we’ve heard a million times before: he plays prose, and by playing prose, he overcomes the obstacle to direct communication that the artfulness of a song – even the most artless song – brings with it.

Self Portrait redeemed, then, or what?

With the new songs as a key, the songs that did end up on Self Portrait open up as well, once they are stripped of the stale coating of overdubs reeking of commercial record industry that the original Self Portrait is dripping with.

So, does this mean that Self Portrait itself, in perspective and in context, wasn’t such a bad album after all?

Well, I hate to break this to you: if for some reason you’ve always loved Self Portrait, and you see Another Self Portrait as confirmation that you’ve been right all along, despite what people like Greil Marcus (“What’s this shit?”) and myself have said … then no, you were wrong then and you’re still wrong: Another Self Portrait does not redeem Self Portrait as an album.

What’s great about this collection is not that it proves Greil Marcus wrong (it doesn’t), nor that every single track on it is a cherishable gem from a genius (it isn’t), but that it adds to the perception of an artist in development. It allows us a more nuanced picture of the project (or less pompously: the development) that Self Portrait is a witness of.

This means two things in particular. One: the fascinating merge of delta blues, rock, and country that is evident on House Carpenter, but also on the entire Isle of Wight show. In addition to the stylistic developments he goes through, it also involves a reshuffling of fixed and fluid elements in a melody (more on this in a later post).

Two: an artist willing to go into development when he was standing on top of the world. The album, together with all the outtakes, demonstrates that he wanted to get to something great, perhaps even (but nobody knew, not even himself) greater than what he had already accomplished. Even at the cost of pissing off a lot of fans. Even at the cost of abandoning, yet again, a well-tried recipe for success (and there is no doubt that Dylan has always kept an eye on the bottom line).

But when a father-of-four who probably hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in four years goes into a studio and fools around with some oldies, that may be a sign of an urge for greatness, but not necessarily of greatness per se.

Self-annihilation: What’s not so great about Self Portrait

Thanks to Another Self Portrait, we can now ask the correct question to Self Portrait. Not “What is this shit?” but “Who on earth thought this album was a good idea?!”

This question can actually mean two very different things, both of which, in each their way, are central to the failure of Self Portrait: ”Who on earth had the idea that THAT could be a Dylan album in 1970?”, and ”Whose brilliant idea was it to add slick orchestral arrangements to rough and intimate demos?”

Many commentators have compared Self Portrait to the two acoustic cover albums from the early ’90s, Good As I Been to You and World Gone Wrong. The comparison is apt, not only because of the similar character of the songs that are on these albums, but also concerning the singing and playing style, the way to use the musical an textual language in order to create a ”prose” feeling, that I have indicated above (and, incidentally, also in my review of World Gone Wrong).

Productions like these could work in 1992, when we had just come out of the dreadful 80s and everybody was longing for the Golden Age of acoustic Dylan. They can also work today, when we have a better view of the process in general – we know what happened next, both the Rolling Thunder Revue, the Never Ending Tour, and everything in between. We have the Basement Tapes and the Harrison and Cash sessions. We’ve heard the hotel room clips from Eat the Document, which prove that Dylan was using the mellow crooner voice already in 1966.

But in 1970? Even after John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, the general audience would have been unprepared for a World Gone Wrong-like album. Imagine the best possible version of Self Portrait, containing the best recordings, presented in all their low-key and bare glory — I find it very difficult to see how even such a hypothetical album would have found an audience in 1970.

That’s the first point, which may be of a mostly a commercial character.

The second point takes it from there: What’s apparent from the tracks on Another Self Portrait is that whatever he’s up to, his project is not commercial: he’s not out there to sell us something – no used cars, no snake oil, no “the first joint is free” enhanced escapism – he’s just having a good time with some friends, playing songs that he likes – or perhaps just enjoying a couple of days away from five screaming kids back home.

Whatever the reason, the stew that he mixes depends entirely on the prose-like looseness that the small combo can provide; where Dylan spontaneously can say: ”Let’s just take this one” and start singing ”Little Sadie” with little or no preparation for his co-musicians, who just have to do their best to tag along, to add a lick here and a wrong chord there, and thereby create all the uneven edges that give the final recordings surface and character.

But this is precisely where the released Self Portrait fails capitally: to add overdubs to these tracks is like trying to mix oil and water.

An orchestral arrangement requires everything that the original tracks don’t have: precision, regularity, focus on the musical element.

That’s also one of the things the Nashville musicians Charlie McCoy and Ken Buttrey, who did some of the overdubs, have complained about: Dylan just sent a tape to Nashville for them to add some tracks to, and ”the tempos didn’t really hold together real well, and he wasn’t real steady with the guitar […] he wasn’t even there.”

And that’s the main problem with the original Self Portrait: it sounds, well, as if someone has added a lot of overdubs to a simple tape. The regularity that the overdubs impose on the final mix makes the original tracks seem unfocused and untight rather than loose and leisurely, prosey. In other words: the very thing that we can now perceive as the greatness of the originals, is annihilated and contradicted by the overdubs.

These hands and Thirsty Boots are to Another Self Portrait what Belle Isle and Days of ’49 fail to be to Self Portrait. The former illustrate that “conscious attention to musical detail”, which I started by calling the other leg of what makes a great Dylan album; the latter are proofs that this attention has been neglected, somewhere in the process that ended up with Self Portrait. Thanks to Another Self Portrait, the attention can now return to where it belongs.

The Obligatory “Another Self Portrait — First Reactions” post

Another Self Portrait

I thought I’d make the “First Reactions” post short and sweet:

1. Time passes slowly #1 & 2 are definitely keepers.

2. The new piano version of Spanish Is The Loving Tongue is nice too, but nowhere near the circulating solo piano version. It’s a step in the direction of its consummate cousin, but it comes nowhere near it on any scale.

3.  does not redeem (“What’s this shit?”) as an album, but the new tracks do add to a more nuanced picture of the project (or less pompously: the development) that Self Portrait is a witness of.

4. The Isle of Wight concert is the first and probably the most radical re-invention Dylan has made in his entire career. Going electric was nothing in comparison.

5. Who will be the first to find the source from which Dylan has stolen the cover image? A flickr account? An underrated b/w photographer from the 30s? A Barnes & Nobles commercial delivered to the tour bus in Stirling Castle during the 2003 2001 tour?

More to come. Tabs too.

Another Self Portrait

Just a quick note to say that I’m looking forward to the release of the Bootleg Series vol. 10, Another Self Portrait, which will highlight the very interesting period around 1970, seeing the controversial releases of Self Portrait and New Morning.

Since I consider this to be one of the two, perhaps three most interesting periods in Dylan’s career (the others being the gospel years and the early 90s) (not that I don’t like the early and mid 60s), while at the same time having previously sided with those who said: “What’s this shit?” about Self Portrait when it came out, I’m especially looking forward to setting thing straight concerning why I consider SP a bad album.

Which I do.

And for the right reasons.

Stay tuned!

Christmas in the Heart (2009)

I love this album. It’s a perfect follow-up, not to Dylan’s trilogy of albums vacuum-cleaning the American song tradition for inspiration, but to his Theme Time Radio Hour. (And for the record, my negative evaluation of his latest studio albums does not stem from indignation over ‘theft’, should anyone have gotten that impression, but from a number of lacklustre performances of material of declining quality.)

It’s hilarious. Finally, the ‘wolfman’ voice has found a home where it belongs: as a counterweight to the saccharine, a way to scare the living soul out of the unsuspecting innocent, and perhaps – just perhaps – blow some meaning into these songs again.

Because surely it’s hilarious. But that’s not the main reason why I’ve played this album more than any Dylan album since Time out of Mind. The reason is simple: the way he sings ‘ad Bethlehem’ in Adeste fideles sends shivers down my spine; his demonstration of Santa’s laughter in Must be Santa is the funniest thing since ‘Talkin’ WWIII Blues’; the sombre tone of Do you hear what I hear? is stunning and a perfect counterpart to the angelic serenity of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, perspectivizing both qualities and leaving us, not somewhere undefined in the middle, but somewhere where there is room for both sombre and serene, hilarious and breathtakingly beautiful.

Of course, it’s a brilliant idea of Dylan to make a Christmas album, because it’s the last thing anyone would have expected (and, for that reason alone, perhaps not at all surprising). But Christmas in the Heart is much more than a funny idea, a joke, or, for that matter, just a nice way to do charity. It’s obvious that he loves this stuff. And somehow, amid the croaking and the frolicking, he manages to communicate that love, at least to this listener.

And when love is communicated, what more can one ask?

Have yourselves a merry Christmas!

*

[Update:] But wait, there is more. Two things more: “Dylan and tradition” and “Dylan and religion”.

Dylan and tradition

Quite a lot has been made out of the fact that this is a 1950s version of the American christmas song tradition. Someone pointed out that seven of the songs are from Frank Sinatra’s 1957 A Jolly Christmas album; others that Dylan secretly wants to be Dean Martin, another source for many songs.

I won’t repeat all that has been said about that. Here, just a brief remark about harmony. If there is one thing that runs through Dylan’s entire production, all period included, it is his consistent avoidance of the plain dominant, especially the dominant seventh: the strong harmonic tension generator, which is resolved to the key note, e.g. G7 ? C. Even when he plays covers, or when he relates to fixed genres, such as the blues, he usually finds ways to modify the dominant relation.

Not so here. In no other Dylan album will one find as many chains of dominant seventh as here. Just a sample:

Christmas blues has F#7   B7 E7  A7 Dmaj7
I’ll be home for christmas has Bm7-5 E7 Am7 D7 G
Here comes Santa Claus A7 Dm7 G7 C
Have yourself a merry Iittle Christmas, B7    E7 A7  D7 Gmaj7

This is not in itself surprising — that’s how the songs were written, and the room for taking liberties is smaller in this genre than in folk and blues. What is interesting about it, is the degree to which (and the ease with which) Dylan has subordinated himself to the style, without feeling the need to make a statement about it, the way he did on Self Portrait, the only album which is comparable in this respect (but not in many other).

The same can be said about the way he treats melody: he actually sings the tunes, straight up, with none of the trademark “you couldn’t even recognize the melody” treatment. And he does it wonderfully. He takes his mastery of vocal delivery into this — for him, as a public persona — foreign territory, and does it convincingly.

Dylan and religion

This one is inevitable when Dylan chooses to make a Christmas album. What does he mean with it? Is it a clear sign that he’s still a Christian, or is it a just as clear sign of the opposite; that it’s all “just” heritage?

Coca Cola SantaI have no idea, and I don’t care (there is only one song that has made me wonder what he thinks in this area, but it’s not on Christmas in the Heart). What I do know is that the lyrics to “Here Comes Santa Claus” in the version that Dylan sings is a most fascinating mix of symbols. From the “jingle bells” intro with the smooth, soft jazz choir, and through the first two verses, it’s classic American pop culture Christmas all the way, with reindeer, stockings and toys.

But then, in the third verse:

[He doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor]
for he loves you just the same

Oh, that was Santa, was it? For a moment there, I thought I was in the wrong song — I thought that was Christ or something.

[Santa knows that we’re God’s children]
and that makes everything right

St Nicholaus
The real Santa: St Nicholas

OK, so it was something in that direction after all. From here to the end of the song, it is quite clear that this has something to do with God, but it is delightfully unclear if it’s Santa or someone else who comes as God’s gift to Man on Christmas day.

This is emphasised by the arrangement: the alternation between the slow, solemn “Let’s give thanks to the Lord above” and the jinglebellsy “Cause Santa Claus comes tonight” is … Well, I have no idea what to call it. Hilarious? not quite. Blasphemous? Not at all. Devout? Get out of here!

At the same time, it’s all of those, and more. The best way I can describe this album is as a balancing act. A balancing act that you can only perform if you’re enjoying yourself and what you’re doing, perfectly unaffected by the 70,000 fathoms of thin air between you and total disaster. Dylan seems to have been staring into that abyss for quite some time, ever since he first tried to shake off the yoke of being some Generation’s Voice. Christmas in the Heart is a sign that he is finally free.

Saved (1980)

While there is general agreement that no matter what one thinks about the lyrics on Slow Train Coming, musically it is one of Dylan’s strongest, the general verdict is not equally lenient with Saved. With its ghastly cover — rivalled in tackiness only by Shot of Love — and its unequivocal title, it has proved to be an even bitterer pill to swallow than the precursor.

Which is understandable, but not quite fair. Saved is an excellent album, provided one can endure the obnoxious born-again evangelization. It may be a far cry from Slow Train Coming in the areas of polish and commercial appeal, but it has an energy, a punch, and a new approach to communication and message that is quite unique in Dylan’s production, and, as such, quite refreshing.

It should be said, however, that this more positive verdict is only partly true about the published album. Saved is unique in connection with Dylan in consisting only/mostly of songs that had already been tried out on stage for a long time before they were committed to vinyl. There is critical and historiographical consensus that the album suffered from this: by the time of the sessions for the record, the band (the same band that had played the songs on tour — another Dylan rarity) was already tired, and the spirit of the live renditions, which even the staunchest critics could not deny, did not translate well into a studio production.

There may be something true in this. Many of the songs are exuberant numbers of praise and thanksgiving, which  come better into its own from a stage, where extatically jubilant confession seems more natural than on a record.

This applies to the title track, a born-again statement if there ever was one, slightly too over-eager to be taken quite seriously (unless one shares the sentiment), perhaps, but a powerful and driving gospel rock number all the same, which I don’t mind listening to.

The same could be said about the brother-in-arms, “Solid Rock” (or, as the full title goes when it is presented during the shows: “Hanging On To A Solid Rock Made Before The Foundation Of The World”); and, to an even higher degree, to  “Pressing On” og “Are You Ready?” — the intensity that grows out of the slow build-up of these two songs during the live concerts can make even the hardest of heart jump to his feet and rejoice: “Yes! I’m ready! Take me, Bob! Take me with you!”, but that is mostly lost in the album version.

It probably couldn’t be any other way. None of the songs I’ve mentioned are among his strongest — from the gospel period or any other — but their effect depends on presence — the physical presence of the person and the band producing a sound of wall to bang one’s head against, and the temporal presence, exploiting the contrast between the indefiniteness of not knowing where this is going to end, and the inevitability of the process set in motion by the first “on-an-don-an-don-an-doon”. In the absence that the record medium necessarily entails, some of that is naturally lost. But some remains (and five bonus points for trying).

Besides, it doesn’t matter: there are strong songs left that do make the transition from concert stage to recording studio. Partly, perhaps, because they are stronger songs altogether, but mainly because they don’t depend on the live situation to the same extent.

“In The Garden” is easily Dylan’s most harmonically complex song, and although it shares some traits with the likes of “Saved”, such as the escalating intensity and the lyric repetitiveness, it depends more on the harmonic meandering to hold our attention.

Both “Covenant Woman” and “Saving Grace” are harmonically interesting, although not as wild as “In the Garden”. They are also touching, introspective reflections on the role of faith and salvation in the trials and tribulations of everyday life (at least that’s what a theologian might say about them). Especially “Covenant Woman” stands out in this respect, in a way which transcends the religious sphere. Lines like:

He must have loved me so much to send me someone as fine as you.

and

I’ll always be right by your side — I’ve got a covenant too.

work well with or without God in the equation.

This leaves the two real gems. “What Can I Do For You” gives us Dylan’s best harmonica solos ever — for once captured better on an official album than in any live rendition, at least among the ones I’ve heard. It is inventive, it is raw, and it is fragile, all at the same time. (It may be to go way beyond what kind of metaphors are appropriate for this particular album to say so, but there’s good sex in those two solos.) The sound of the mix in general comes across to me as a bit on the hard side, but the harp sound is unsurpassed.

And last but not least, and the opener, “A Satisfied Mind”, which in my book is one of Dylan’s crowning achievements as a singer. It’s not powerful, it’s not showy, at times he breaks like a little girl, but there is an intimacy in the delivery which gives the message credibility and urgency. The interaction with the backing singers is exquisite all the way through, and my mental image of the song is that of calm deliberation, there is actually an intensity which just grows as the song progresses. There happens remarkably much in a little less than two minutes.

Have I made my point clear enough? Damn, this is one hell of an album. If you’re a godless heathen, don’t let the cover scare you away from this album. And if you’re a true believer, don’t let your benevolence and agreement prevent the album from grabbing hold of you in ways and places you might not have expected.

World Gone Wrong — A Body in Sound

World Gone Wrong (1993) is a body. Not just a great body of work, but a body.

The greatness of this album of folk and blues classics is that there is one voice speaking on it and one person speaking with this voice, whether he speaks guitar, harmonica, or English.

I’ll try to make it a little clearer. Continue reading World Gone Wrong — A Body in Sound