Landmarks of Songs: Bob Dylan

tom chapman
Mar 17, 2016
7 min read

Bob Dylan:

Bob Dylan is one of the most famous singer/songwriters of all time, and is widely considered by many to be one of the greatest songwriters ever. Dylan has stated in interviews before that he prefers to let his songs come from his subconscious, and favours a writing environment which allows him to write songs like this, in one particular 1991 interview he went on to describe this ideal environment as ‘peaceful’ but at the same time ‘invigorating’. In the same interview he commented on originality: “The evolution of a song is like a snake, with its tail in its mouth. That’s evolution. That’s what it is. As soon as you’re there, you find your tail.” His early influences include Robert Johnson's blues work, Woody Guthrie’s folk music and American singer-songwriter Hank Williams. Dylan has also said that you should never copy something directly, and describes the importance of looking back to what inspired your inspiration: “But you can’t just copy somebody. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years. I go back to Stephen Foster.” It is also well known that Bob Dylan prefers to write and record all of his music at night time, as he believes it makes you more open to new ideas and trying new things: “At night time we’re ready to be more mysterious and dark. Oh Mercy’s about that.” Is a comment Dylan had about his 1989 album.

Dylan stated in a 1969 interview “I try to be a little different on every album.” This has majorly impacted the way Dylan approaches recording songs since he released Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964, as he constantly tried to find new and different sounds for every album. However, this hasn’t had as much of an impact on his songwriting as recording. He has always kept the same method of actually writing a song, by fitting music to lyrics and allowing his music to flow from his subconscious.

Evidence of his songwriting methods having little change lie in songs like Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (1966). This song saw Dylan include a full brass band as well as percussion and a full rock band, however the song still follows a traditional twelve bar blues pattern. This is the same twelve bar blues as songs like Bob Dylan’s Blues (1963) and Dirt Road Blues (1997). All three songs have radically different sounds and instrumental arrangements, but they all have their basis in the same twelve bar blues pattern, showing that Dylan’s sound has changed a lot but his songwriting has the same themes running through such a long period of time. Another consistent theme of Dylan’s work is story songs, which tell tales of both real life and fictional events and characters. Examples include The Ballad of Hollis Brown (1964) which tells the tale of a fictional farmer in desperate poverty, as well as Oxford Town (1963) and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (1964) which were both stories based on real events of racism and written by Dylan to try and spread what he saw as injustice to the rest of the world. Stories of fictional characters have continued all the way through his work, for example Like a Rolling Stone (1965) a tale of how a woman had fallen from wealth to poverty, and Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts (1975) a complex love and murder story- all three of these songs sound completely different at first listen. Story songs about real people include Joey and Hurricane (1976). Hurricane told the true story of an unjust racist conviction, which is very similar in its theme to Oxford Town and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, but again has a very different musical arrangement. Religious imagery and references have been a major part of Bob Dylan’s work throughout his entire career as a songwriter, all the way from early songs like With God On Our Side (1964), through Highway 61 Revisited (1965) referencing the story of Abraham, Shelter From the Storm (1975) a love song with biblical imagery, I Believe In You (1979) from his intensely Christian gospel trilogy and all the way up to the more recent Trying To Get To Heaven (1997). All of these songs carry the same religious themes, but again carry very little resemblance to each other, crossing genres like rock, blues, folk and gospel.

His earliest approach to songwriting was to convey protest and politics borrowing from traditional folk ballads and 12 bar blues. Examples of his songs taking these forms include Bob Dylan’s Blues, based round the 12 bar I IV V blues chords, and Girl From the North Country (1963) which lyrically and melodically is based on the traditional folk song Scarborough Fair in places. Lyrically, his primary concern was to infuse politics in songs like in Blowin in the Wind (1963) and The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964) which were associated with countercultural movements and civil rights, and have since gone down in history as protest songs. During this phase of his career, Dylan also wrote a lot of music in waltz time signatures like A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (1963) in ¾ and North Country Blues (1964) in 6/8. Many of his songs around this period weren’t really bound by popular song structure of verses and choruses, and contained only one section of music which remained the same accompanied by non repeated lyrics, for example Masters of War (1963) and Down the Highway (1963) with the former consisting of eight straight verses.

Between the period of 1964-1966 over the course of four albums, Dylan moved away from his folk/blues based songwriting and really came into his own as a songwriter. This was the most dramatic change in his approach to songwriting. This change of approach occurred when Dylan wanted to distance himself from the folk and protest song community, so he began to write songs less overtly political. Early examples of these songs include It Ain't Me Babe (1964) and Mr Tambourine Man (1965). Another new aspect to his songwriting in this period was surrealism. He began to experiment with surrealist lyrics and bizarre wordplay on tracks like Ballad of a Thin Man (1965). It was around this period that Dylan adopted his long standing songwriting technique of writing the lyrics before the music. “I do the words first. I know what music I want when I hear the words” Is what he said in a 1965 interview. This is evidenced with several examples including Like a Rolling Stone which he had written as a long piece of verse before he even had the idea to put it into musical form. Bootleg recordings show it in several different versions, like this 3/4 version (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Like_a_Rolling_Waltz.ogg) which is very different to the released single. Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands (1966) was written in a similar manner, with Dylan writing the lyrics first and then the music being largely improvised in the studio afterwards. Most importantly, around this time Dylan moved away from performing and writing for himself as a soloist, and began to include the backing of a full band of session musicians. Before this time all of his songs were written for just vocals, acoustic guitar and harmonica. Dylan often knew what he wanted and sometimes gave direction to the band, but for the most part he liked to allow room for improvisation and trusted the musicians to play well: “We just take a song; I play it and everyone else just sort of fills in behind it”.

By the end of this period Dylan had developed a very clear style of songwriting, and his songs had become very recognisable, even while experimenting with country music around the late 60s, early 70s with songs like All Along The Watchtower (1967) incorporating many of his famous traits of characters, surrealism, biblical imagery and commenting on the human experience. Around 1974/1975 Dylan gave more creative control to his band, when he began to release music credited to Bob Dylan and The Band. This particular period saw more instrumental solo passages and the inclusion of more complex guitar and keys parts for example You Angel You (1974) which has some of the most melodically interesting instrumental parts. During these times of stylistic change and bigger backing bands, Dylan’s approach to songwriting was largely unchanged, perhaps best illustrated by Wedding Song (1974) which shows Dylan singing and playing acoustic guitar and harmonica in a folk style.

Around the time of the late 70s, early 80s Dylan explored gospel and religious music which was greatly reflected in his songwriting style. Songs like Gotta Serve Somebody (1979) saw him experimenting for the first time with backing vocals, harmonies and large vocal sections, typical of the gospel style but very different to anything he had tried before. Continuing on from his work with The Band, this period saw greater focus put upon instrumentals, especially organs and lead guitar parts from his frequent collaborator at this time- Mark Knopfler. Although many of his songs around this period bare no resemblance to his earlier folk, blues and rock songs, one thing remained the same, in how Dylan would write his lyrics as poems before putting music to them and introducing them to the band. There was a lot less improvisation and much more strict song form in this period on the musical side of things.

His gospel period came to an end in 1983 with Infidels which became known as his return to secular music. This was Dylan’s last large shift in his style of writing, and since then he has maintained a consistent approach to writing.

An overview of Bob Dylan’s approach to songwriting: