Bob Dylan – The philosophy of the modern song. : CH Beck
The new book just published Bob Dylan, “The Philosophy of Modern Song” is surprising, entertaining, daring and sometimes even breathtakingly exciting for many reasons. It is best educational reading for anyone interested in delving into Dylan’s world of songs that are important to him. Among the 66 songs he reviews – mostly presented with riff (empathy) and essay (classification) – there are also quite a number of country songs.
Dylan spans the spectrum from songs by old-time musicians like Charlie Poole and Uncle Dave Macon to songs by great legends like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson to songs by lesser-known artists like Johnny Paycheck.
Bobby Bare: Detroit City
It starts with Bobby Bares Detroit City from 1963. It’s about the country bumpkin in the big city who would love to go back to his loved ones. The song is in some ways a late echo of Jimmie Rodger’s “Miss The Mississippi And You” from 1932, when not only African Americans migrated from the South to the industrial centers (The Great Migration), but also many whites in the midst of the Great Depression went north to look for work. Always with the heart in the homeland. No wonder that offered enough material for sentimental songs. Bares Song comes late, because just ten years later the automotive industry in America and with it “Motown Detroit” were in crisis. However, in his riff Dylan downright destroys the country sentiment: the listener knows that this world doesn’t even exist. There is no mother, no dear old father, no sister and no brother. They’re all either dead or gone. The girl that the singer dreams of has long been married to a divorce lawyer and has three children with him. Like thousands of others, he left the farm for the big city to make it big and died there. That’s why the song works.”
Webb Pierce: There Stands The Glass
The prototypical honky tonk song. The singer and the glass of whiskey. He’s in great pain. Where the results come from remains unsaid. Dylan’s riff cites the war as the reason, one thinks of Vietnam, although the song was written during the Korean War. But since Dylan knows that honky tonk is timeless, the lonely drunk with him is a traumatized veteran, which unfortunately is also timeless in the USA, because thousands of traumatized soldiers have spat out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone. “The flamboyant 1950’s singing Pentecostal,” Dylan says of singer Pierce. In the essay, but actually tells the story of country music loving Ukrainian-Jewish tailor Nuta Kotlyarenko, who dressed country stars and politicians.
Billy Joe Shaver: Willy The Wandering Gipsy And Me
that Dylan Billy Joe Shaver estimates, he had already expressed in his 2009 song “I Feel A Change Comin’ On” from the album “Together Through Life”. “I’m a-listening to Billy Joe Shaver And I’m reading James Joyce. Some people, they tell me I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice,” he rhymed, mentioning the Texas outlaw singer. But what is the song about? There’s the wily con who laughs at the stuffy sucker in order to seduce him, rip him off and put him in danger, only to leave him behind. “Willy would like you to leave your long-suffering wife, she is clumsy and pregnant, you should leave her and go with him. He says if you stay, it’s at your own risk. Come on, let’s go, let’s pull the leash. He wants you to leave your wife and not argue back. You and Willy, the wise man and the idiot. You’re on the road to nowhere, don’t let it stop you – the good ol’ boy and his country cousin, you rip-off with the ladies who give in to you and are good to you. They stand in line and pour out their hearts to you”, Dylan puts the story precisely in a nutshell and has taken the side of the poor seduced man: “Man love, fifth wheel in the cart – you are proud and unapproachable. At best you are Sancho Panza, at worst you are left behind. You have to open your eyes before it’s too late.”
Harry McClintock: Jesse James
The 1920’s and 1930’s old time singer and radio host is more recently known for the soundtrack to ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’, where he opens the film with ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’, a hobo Song. He knew songs about classic American misfits, being listed as “Jesse James” in Dylan’s song collection. And Dylan, who wrote the poem “to live outside the law you must be honest” when he was young, uses this to reflect fundamentally on the outlaw in his essay: “Outlaws are different from ordinary criminals. Common criminals come in many forms. Criminals can wear badges, wear army uniforms, or even sit in the House of Representatives. They can be billionaires, locusts or stock market analysts. Even doctors. But an outlaw is not protected by any group. He no longer has any ties to society. No sponsors, no relatives to speak of, and wherever he goes he is vulnerable. Inevitably, he is a rugged loner with no friends or shelter.”
Townes van Zandt: Pancho & Lefty
Dylan is full of empathy for the songwriter: “Born a square wedge in the round circle of a wealthy family, Townes tried to fit in and become a lawyer like his father. The love to Elvis Presley and various other intoxicants made this plan fail. A lifelong battle with depression and addiction has kept him withdrawn, squeezing dark, haunted songs from the depths of his sadness. Townes was diagnosed with manic depression and given electric shocks and copious amounts of insulin. The treatment destroyed parts of his memory, which most likely gave his songs their stripped-down, detached mood.”
But the version Dylan is performing here is by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. Dylan says the song has been sung by a few, “including two of the greatest iconic singers of modern times. Willie Nelson As is well known, he could sing the phone book and make you cry – by the way, he could also write the phone book, and the same goes for Merle, more or less.” Dylan is known to be friends with Willie Nelson, his relationship with the “Poet Of The Common Man ‘ was more complex. He valued him as a singer and songwriter, and with his “Workingman’s Blues #2” in 2006 he continued in his own way his “Workingman’s Blues” (1969), which was almost 40 years older. While Haggard’s working man was still able to support his family, Dylan’s was impoverished in times of globalization, location competition, shareholder value and wage dumping. Personally, however, he still resented some of Haggard’s statements decades later. “Merle had a song called ‘Fighting Side of Me’ and I saw an interview with him that was about the hippies and Dylan and the counterculture and it burned into my brain and it hurt that he was lumping me in a pot threw everything he didn’t like.” But to de-escalate the whole thing at the same time in his conversation with journalist Bill Flanagan: “But of course times have changed and so has he. If there were hippies today, he would be on their side and he himself is now part of the counterculture.”
Eddy Arnold: You Don’t Know Me
The song by Eddy Arnolda country singer inspired by Chet Atkins’ cloying Nashville Sound almost indistinguishable from the urban pop crooners, leads directly into the theme world of Dylan’s current music, as he celebrates it on his album entitled “Rough And Rowdy Ways” and the tour of the same name: “A serial killer could sing the song. In a way, the text suggests that. Serial killers have a peculiarly formal understanding of language, they would also speak of sex as the art of making love. Sting could have written it instead of “Every Breath You Take”. The singer is watching her with another lucky guy. Since you don’t know where this is happening, you could get the idea that it was all happening in the man’s head. At least until he picks up the knife. Then it’s all about the cold, hard reality.”
Dylan could have written the song instead of his own “Soon After Midnight”. In Dylan’s late work it goes in some places – that also has, among other things Laura Tenschert Beautifully described in her Dylan podcast “Definitely Dylan” – around the often thin line between romantic love and dark desire. Nowadays he also interprets songs like “To Be Alone With You” or “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” in this direction.
Johnnie And Jack: Poison Love
Also Johnnie And Jack are big favorites of Dylan’s, as you can easily see in his post about “Poison Low”: “They sang like brothers, but they weren’t. Like the Bailes Brothers. Like the Stanley Brothers or the Everly Brothers. But somehow these guys managed to take it all to an even higher sphere and to sing like the brothers they were in spirit,” the master begins his contribution. For him, Johnnie and Jack are too radical and unusual for mainstream country music: and are therefore not in the Country Hall of Fame. But also in no other. And then Dylan gives the best and funniest definition of Country music, which has been read for a long time: “The problem with Halls of Famers is that they celebrate the sanitized versions of real life. Country sits in the Sunday morning Church, for getting involved in a stabbing in a seedy backyard on Saturday night and trying to get the waitress to peek downstairs. Without the dynamic tension that comes from the guilty conscience after the binge, it degenerates into either joyless proselytizing or brainless bawling music.”
For the song “Poison Love” he writes: It is illicit love. Contrary to popular belief, paying money for sex is relatively cheap. Complex relationships, on the other hand, come at a high price.” Going to the brothel would cause less trouble. A very resigned and unhappy point of view for someone who has written wonderful love songs like “Love Minus Zero, No Limit”, “Lay, Lady, Lay” or “Make You Feel My Love”. At the end it says: “Poisoned love, that’s the worst. she kills you There’s a lot of people out there who can’t live without a daily dose of it.”
Bob Dylan – The Philosophy of the Modern Song: The 2022 Book
title: The Philosophy of Modern Song
authors: Bob Dylan
release date: 18. November 2022
Verlag: C.H. Beck
Format: Buch
pages: 352 pages
language: Deutsch
