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.

18 thoughts on “Black Rider – Dylan’s most complex song ever”

  1. Mind-stretching. I’ve read through the whole piece three times now, and while the gist of it is clear, I believe I’ll be reading it a few more times before my comprehension level gets above the half-way mark.
    You say the song has ‘no melody to speak of’ and I’m puzzled, because what struck me first about it was the striving for higher notes at the beginnings of the fifth lines in particular. He sounds challenged. That seemed to me to be about trying to push the course of the melody into a modulation that would insist on an inventive resolution. And yet I’m now thinking that the note is the same – what’s changed, and what challenges the singer, is its place in the array of notes which make up the accompanying chord. So now I should check that out by going back to the song to establish what that note is, whether it is consistent, where exactly the notes in the sung melody are diverging and converging too. All of which would delay this reply to your posting…
    Anyway, to answer your questions: ‘Is it too dense? Too complex?’ It’s rich food for thought and takes a bit of digesting, but it’s got a truly exotic flavour. Perhaps such analysis is commonplace in academic circles, but to me it’s a unique insight into the scaffolding behind the architecture of emotion in music, or something like that.
    ‘Should there be more music examples?’ Not sure what you mean by this – examples of other composers’ use of the same tricks? Or more dot-by-dot observation? Whichever, I’m for it, even though it threatens to take my effort in following you to gruelling extremes.
    ‘Less talk about music theory? MORE talk about music theory?’ Seems to me that a fair proportion of your audience is avid for education in that subject. Your audience for the book is only going to be a fraction of the audience for dylanchords, but on the other hand, how many other people have your insight into the subject?
    Now I see that whilst I’ve been mulling my reply, you’ve posted what seem to be two more entire chapters – which I’m now going to read in preference to trying to refine this response any further.

    1. Three times?! That deserves a medal…
      Anway: thanks for your comments! Here are a couple in return:
      About the melody thing: of course there is a certain melodic outline in the verses, mostly also recognizable from verse to verse, but it’s no melody in the traditional sense. This is what I meant by calling it a recitative. It shouldn’t be taken to mean that there is no melodic motion at all; maybe I should revise that part.
      I wouldn’t say that this kind of analysis is very common in academic circles, unfortunately. Which is part of why I am doing it: to develope a language and a presentation style that would hopefully make the more discipline-specific insights accessible to a broader audience, but without dumbing it down. It will never be suitable for tabloid papers, though…
      Architecture of emotion: good term!
      Music examples: yes, I meant dot-by-dot, and I am going to add more of it: not just the full line at the beginning of each verse, but shorter snippets along the way, including sounding examples, to make it more specifically clear what I am talking about at every turn. It’s a dense text, and anything that could make it less dense will be a good thing, I think.

  2. I’m not a musician but the ‘plucked’ chords make me visualise a kind of lyre music which would accompany ancient Greek lyrics. If this is true, it would fit in with the songs ‘Mother of Muses’ and ‘ I’ve decided to give myself to you’, which I take as a love song to Calliope, the muse of poetic imagination.
    The chords seem to be deliberately placed between the half-lines, at the beginning and in the hiatus, and create a kind of ‘false’ retardation, where you expect a later climax , but none comes.
    The vocals and the music seem to suggest a kind of sad resignation, without real resolution.
    Anyway, sorry if I’m completely wrong, as I am no way musical, but just wanted to share my possibly errant thoughts.

    1. I think your idea of a “false retardation” in anticipation of a climax that never comes is quite good. Fits well in with the way I see the narrative too. (Funny, btw, how many Dylan fans claim to be “in no way musical”…)

      1. I also see the allegorical figure of the dark rider as being the opposing dark force to his muse (destruction v creation) and thereby cementing further the link to ‘I contain multitudes’ in the form of the fundamental contradiction of the human spirit. You don’t need the complex nature of religion and its terminology to understand this album!
        It’s always there, sometimes within him, as in verse 1, shades of 60s Dylan on a suicide trip before the motorcycle accident, and sometimes on the outside. Human experience., of necessity, gives it various names in various contexts: evil, the devil, death etc (as manifested in the different verses). Malignancy and morbidity are always in the background. You remain conscious of them but try to live a ‘meaningful’ life anyway!
        The Black Rider musical based on the folk tale ‘Der Freischutz’ has an alternative title: ‘the Magic Bullets’
        In this sense the malignant force of the Black Rider can be linked to the conspiracy theory concerning Kennedy’s assassination of ‘the magic bullet’

        1. Interesting insight. Carla Maria von Weber, composer of Der Freischutz, also has a connection to Wolfgang Mozart — a cousin to his wife, Constanze. There are a number of references to “Wolfman” in Murder Most Foul. Mozart was a Mason as well…

  3. Probably courtesy of Blake Mills aka “The Chord Fairy”

    Or maybe the complexity of those Sinatra arrangements rubbed off on his own songs a little.

  4. Hello Mr Østrem

    First and foremost I wanted to say that I am a long time fan of your activities. Bob Dylan is my favorite artist of all time and I’ve read almost all your analyses like this one on the old site Dylanchords, and I’m very glad you’re renewing it a little bit. I’ve learned almost all of the songs by Dylan I know from your tabs. I also try to dabble with playing the guitar, though I am by no means a professional, though I’m not going to drop training anytime soon.

    I study English literature at my university and I was wondering about what you said about academic circles, that they are not willing to take up analyzing such things.

    I was wondering if maybe you could recommend me some resources (books, textbooks, courses to take) that could help me at least learn the basics of music theory required to understand what’s going on in a pop song, so that I could perhaps “combine” these two worlds in my future papers. I am aware that I am an ignorant, because I assume what you have learned throughout your studies is accessible for a regular newbie like me to learn on the side. Still, I thought it’s worth a shot to ask if you know anything about such learning materials.

    I hope you carry on doing what you’re doing, because it’s nothing short of wonderful and I wish you good luck in the future.

    Kind regards.

    1. Nice! We need all the academics we can to focus also on the music!
      As for resources… My approach from the start has been to see how far one can get with the traditional tools of classical music analysis: focusing on functions rather than actual chords and tones — exactly the kind of analysis I’m doing in the Black Rider case, and even more specifically in the recent Dylan and the Dominant text.
      There are at least three aspects of popular music that fall outside of this approach: sound, groove, and non-functional harmony. The sound part I’ve written a bit about in connection with Dylan, such as the texts about Another Self Portrait, World Gone Wrong: about phrasing, the connections between the sounds of language and the sounds of music, etc.
      Rhythm is one aspect I have touched very little upon, and it’s a hard one too: it’s easy enough to decipher rhythms, but more tricky to decide what they mean.
      The third area is music that disregards the classical concepts of Tonic and Dominant. This might even encompass the “Four Chord Song” topic, but also the load of modern pop songs that completely disregard the dominant (but for reasons quite different from Dylan’s). https://flypaper.soundfly.com/write/where-have-all-the-v-chords-gone-the-decline-of-functional-harmony-in-pop/ has some very nice points in this regard.
      As for textbooks and courses, I’d say: any basic (and advanced, for that matter) course in music theory should do the trick. I’ve had students with a successful pop career, who, to their slight surprise have found a very classically oriented music theory course very illuminating and helpful also to understand what they themselves are doing, and to do it better.
      Hope this helps.

      1. Thank you very much, I will read these articles once again and I’ll try to find some online music theory course, while we’re still on the lockdown. I appreciate your time and your expertise. Once again, thank you and keep up the good work.

      1. I do love the idea that all your work on Dylan, the years put in, the careful transcriptions, the hard thinking about and advanced musical analysis of Dylan might only be motivated by your strong dislike of the guy. That thought will have me laughing for some time to come!

        And thanks for all you do and have done. It’s amazing work – even if it is prompted by a strong dislike!

  5. What do you mean when you say that it can’t be taken for granted these days whether the song has been written by him or not?
    Are not all of his recent songs (excluding the covers albums) written entirely by him?

    1. Short answer: No.
      Longer answer: Since “Love & Theft” (but most incriminatingly on L&T and Modern Times), a lot of songs have been lifted from someone else, as I’ve written about here and here. See also the essay on the index page of L&T. In short: for at least four L&T songs and five MT songs, not just the melodies but also the arrangements have been stolen — or “plagiarized”, if you wish. On the later albums, the statistics of known thefths aren’t as incriminating, but there are still borrowings.

      In other words: when it says: “Words and music by Bob Dylan”, I don’t take that at face value.

  6. Good analysis. I think this song and all the tired horses [in the sun/how I’m s’pposed to have any ridin’ done’] are cousins.

    Riding/Writing. Black Rider/Writer. The stumbling block is…a writer’s block. That verse looks like the description of the trial&error process of writing a song, a meta quality made explicit in the last verse. (You speak of ‘blocks’ and gestures, and about how those chords sequences are similar in their variation and varied in their similarity. That’s “the same road that you know/only not the same as it was a minute ago”)

    The ‘I’ of the song and the ‘rider’ seem to be two aspects of the same self. It’s as if Dylan the singer had a ghost writer/rider, who happened to be…Dylan. Someone has to sing those songs after all.

    I guess ‘Man In The Long Black Coat’ (“somebody is out there beating on a dead horse”) and the Demon Lover tradotional song – and ‘I and I’- are also there somehow.

    (As I recall, a ghost writer is a black writer, a ‘noir’, in French)

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