I've never reviewed a book while still in the middle of reading but am making an exception for Bob Dylan's new one, The Philosophy Of Modern Song. I can't remember having so much fun reading a book. The title is deceptive - it's not really about a common philosophy, nor is it about the techniques of music making and recording. You won't find much about musical techniques and instrumentation, how to go about structuring interesting melodies, or how to build harmonies. And it's more than fun. This is a great book, full of wonder and contemplation, by an 81 year-old guy with an encyclopedic knowledge of modern song, reflecting on those eighty one years.
The book consists of 66 chapters (I've finished 35), each featuring a song by a specific artist. Some I know well like Blue Bayou, London Calling, Mack the Knife, and Strangers in the Night. Some I've never heard of like Without A Song (Perry Como), Poison Love (Johnnie and Jack), and The Little White Cloud That Cried (Johnnie Ray). Some by artists I know well, like the Elvises (Presley & Costello), The Temptations, and Little Richard. Some by artists I'm learning about for the first time; The Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Wages, and Webb Pierce.
The book is really four things rolled into one. In each chapter Dylan writes about the song itself, usually in a very impressionistic way. In most chapters he also adds a piece about the artist or something tangentially related to the artist. Dylan's writing is often non-linear, captivating, amusing, insightful. At the end of the post I've included some excerpts but they really don't due the author complete justice. Dylan has a certain rhythm to his writing and it all flows together, so mere excerpts drain some of the rolling rhythm away.
The book is also filled with wonderful, often enigmatic (mostly) unlabeled photographs and images, leaving you to figure out why they've been selected, (a few examples follow):
An extra added attraction is, as I am reading, going to YouTube and listening to every song I've not heard. I've already added several to my playlists:
Without A Song (Perry Como)
I can't believe I've downloaded a Perry Como song! The most unhip guy I remember on TV from my childhood (other than Lawrence Welk). This is what got me to listen:
Perry Como was the anti-Rat Pack, like the anti-Frank; wouldn't be caught dead with a drink in his hand, and could out-sing anybody. His performance is just downright incredible. There is nothing small you can say about it.
Perry is also the anti-American Idol. He is anti-flavor of the week, anti-hot list and anti-bling. He was a Cadillac before the tail fins; a Colt .45, not a Glock; steak and potatoes, not California cuisine. Perry Como stands and delivers. No artifice, no forcing one syllable to spread itself thin across many notes.
Perry Como lived in every moment of every song he sang. . . When he stood and sang, he owned the song and he shared it and we believed every single word. What more could you want from an artist?
Take Me From This Garden of Evil (Jimmy Wages)
Nelly Was A Lady (Alvin Youngblood Hart; couldn't find Hart's version on YouTube or ITunes so the link is to a version by Charles Szabo)
Ruby, Are You Mad? (The Osborne Brothers) - Amazing!
Old Violin (Johnny Paycheck) - How have I never heard this before?
It's now close to sixty years since I first heard Dylan. In the 60s and into the 70s I listened to him quite a lot, but by the mid-70s that had lessened considerably. For many years thereafter I listened very little to the old stuff and remained largely ignorant of his output since the late 70s. It was only when, for reasons I can't remember, I decided to read his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, that my interest was rekindled. Chronicles is the finest autobiography by a musician I've read. Like many of Dylan's songs it is not linear, "first I did this and then I did that". Rather, it is episodic, focusing on a very few points in his career, it is both vague and precise using engaging language and, also like much about Dylan, you're never quite sure if what he is telling you is true. It's myth making in action while, at the same time, self-aware and reflective.
In recent years, I've started relistening to the old stuff but have also engaged with his releases since the late 70s and there is so much that is good there. Lyrically his later work is quite different but strong in its own way. In Chronicles, Dylan writes of the making of his "comeback" album in the late 80s, when the producer, who had worked with U2 and others, urged him to write some songs "like Mr Tambourine Man" and Dylan says "I'm not that guy anymore, I can't do that".
It's how Things Have Changed, his song from the 2000 film Wonder Boys (worth watching, by the way), ended up as the name of this blog, with its chorus on the front page. I've done posts on many of his post 1977 songs and more will be coming. I've come across many outstanding covers, often better than the originals. Here's an example - Ring Them Bells by Sarah Jarosz. Oddly, one of the few exceptions is Make You Feel My Love. Adele's version is perfectly fine and her voice 100x better than Bob's but his version (and this version) are better.
The quality of his output over the decades is incredible. My respect for him has grown greatly in recent years.
Excerpts from The Philosophy of Modern Song.
Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins)
There are more songs about shoes than there are about hats, pants, and dresses combined. Ray Price's keep walking back to him, Betty Lou got a new pair, Chuck Willis didn't want to hang his up, Bill Anderson nailed a pair to the floor and the Drifters got sand in theirs. Sugar Pie DeSanto sang about slip-in mules and Run-DMC about their Adidas. There's songs about new shoes, old shoes, muddy shoes, runnin' shoes, dancing shoes, red shoes by the drugstore, and the ol' soft-shoe.
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, a.k.a. Iron Felix, trusted consort to both Lenin and Stalin, led the early Soviet secret police organization known as the Cheka. During the Red Terror, the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918, Lenin asked him how many executions the Cheka was responsible for. Dzerzhinsky suggested they count the number of shoes and divide by two.(1)
On why Elvis Presley had the bigger hit with the song than Perkins, who wrote it and released it first:
Carl was too much the country boy for the rock and roll crown. Elvis, on the other hand, was all sullen eyes and sharp cheekbones, backwoods-born but city-livin', hip-shakin' with a feral whiff of danger. Carl wrote this song, but if Elvis was alive today, he'd be the one to have a deal with Nike.
Take Me From This Garden of Evil (Jimmy Wages)
What you'd like to see is a neighborly face, a lovely charming face. Someone on the up and up, a straight shooter, ethical and fit. Someone in an attractive place, hospitable, a hole in the wall, a honky-tonk with home cooking. Nobody needs to be in a quick rush, no emphasis on speediness, everybody's going to measure their steps.
But you're in limbo, and you're shouting to anyone who'll listen, to take you out of this garden of evil. Get your away from the gangsters and psychopaths, this menagerie of wimps and yellow-bellies.
Ball Of Confusion (The Temptations)
Dylan writes "This is a song about the human condition, and rules don't apply". Praising the Motown song writing team of Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield for writing "one of the few non-embarrassing songs of social awareness", he points out "Writing a song like this can be deceptively easy . . . But in less sure hands one might as well write about the periodic table of elements with built-in-rhymes about calcium, chromium and lithium."
You can see the pattern to their type of writing. Social issues, human nature issues - they could hide what they were trying to say and say it anyway . . . Everything they wrote is meaningful and true to the way things really are. They saw it and told it, relentlessly. They look into the darkness and shine the light.
Ball of Confusion is pre-rap. If you're just walking around drunk and carefree, this song will sure sober you up. The reality of this song is that it's just as true now as the day it was recorded.
My Generation (The Who)
You're in an exclusive club, and you're advertising yourself. You're blabbing about your age group, of which you're a high ranking member. You can't conceal your conceit, and you're snobbish and snooty about it. . . You're looking down your nose at society and you have no use for it. You're hoping to croak before senility sets in. You don't want to be ancient and decrepit, no thank you. I'll kick the bucket before that happens. You're looking at the world mortified by the hopelessness of it all.
In reality you're an eighty-year-old man, being wheeled around in a home for the elderly, and the nurses are getting on your nerves. You say why don't you all fade away . . . You haven't any aspirations to live in a fool's paradise, you're not looking forward to that, and you've got your fingers crossed that you don't. Knock on wood. You'll give up the ghost first.
You're talking about your generation, sermonizing, giving a discourse.
Straight talk, eyeball to eyeball.
Pete [Townshend] would probably be the first to tell you. He has a front-row seat for the history of his generation. He could read the picket signs against hatred and war. Well, that certainly ended that, thank you for your service. Each generation seems to have the arrogance of ignorance, opting to throw out what gone before instead of building on the past. And they have no use for some one like Pete offering the wisdom of his experience, telling them what he has learned on the similar paths he has trod. And if he'd had the audacity to do so, there's every chance that person would have looked up at Pete and told him that he couldn't see him, he couldn't hear him.
And that gave Pete another idea.
Dirty Life and Times (Warren Zevon)
The song of the wretch, the contaminated life - a song that corrupts itself and corrupts others - a deathbed confession. . . An obstinate life, unhampered by constraint, you're settling things up and packing it in.
You're saying a long farewell to greatness, piling the ashes of your life into the corner. In view of all this you still have the backbone and audacity to look the endgame straight in the eye, and carry on with bravado. Untroubled and tough as nails, you're not mournful or morose, you're standing tall, cool, still gritty and filled with spunk. You're lifting up a life that's been shot full of holes, going for broke this time, undaunted and unafraid.
This is a song with head turning beauty. This is a daredevil of a song.
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(1) When I say Dylan's writing can be impressionistic, that includes his grasp of history, which can be shaky. I've no idea if the anecdote about shoes and Dzerzhinsky happened, though he certainly had a lot of people shot, many just to make an example of, and there are other historical references in the book might be near, but not in, the circle of truth.
Well said and agreed! …..The audiobook which blends Dylan reading his own commentary, with readings from various a list actors thrown in is worth a hear too! —R.V.
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