Lyrics here, in case you want to analyze them. I'll just select one verse:
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn’t see her anywhere
He told himself he didn’t care, pushed the window open wide
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate
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Hunts her down by the waterfront* docks
Where the sailors all come in
*To distinguish them from the non-waterfront docks perhaps.
Even the greatest lyricists need to pad their meter every now and then.
That's an absolute favorite of mine - and I'm pretty sure that's the occasion Scarlet said in an interview Dylan switched keys at the last minute, and she thought it was so she'd have to focus so much on the switch instead of getting nervous about the huge exposure the event would give her. Seeing the Rolling Thunder Revue two nights in a row (San Antonio & Austin) perhaps the best concerts I've ever attended.
The Times they are a changing. Heed the Trump.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon…
The Times they are a changing. Heed the Trump.
A counterrevolution is not a dinner party.
I coined the phrase, at least according to Google.
Different version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rQ-YJB1WJ4
I like that Dylan changes lyrics, keys, tempos and even melodies in his concerts. It'd be a bore to see him try to recreate what's on the album. That said, this version is interesting, the one on the album is great.
Love this version. To me the violin adds to and completes the mood of the song & lyrics. Jeff Tweedy of Wilco does an excellent cover.
Seems to me a key to this is in the next three lines:
People tell me it's a sin
To know and feel too much within.
I still believe she was my twin
An older man's one night stand with a prostitute? Maybe. But it shook him to the bottom of his soul. Well, is she just a prostitute? Isn't she also his double? And what about that blind man at the gate (of Jerusalem) into whose cup she drops a coin? Because of his blindness, he let Jesus go by, just as the singer let her go by. Some descriptions of conversion experiences describe them as sudden one-time events that person searches all life to repeat, but which can only be remembered. Seems to me the title, "simple twist of fate" is enigmatic. They perhaps are never that simple.
Analyzing lyrics is something I have never done. Don't know why. It is getting worse as I age and my hearing declines. Love to listen to music sung in other languages such as Spanish or Hindi. I prefer to focus on the tone, the mood and the feel of the sound. Recently saw Seu Jorge sing Bowie covers in Portuguese - fantastic!
So very few lyrics stick in my head. The exception is Dylan singing "You look like the silent type." in Tangled up and Blue. Just those 6 words. Love how he sings those 6 words.
It's a chauvinistic lyric, especially insensitive to transsexuals and homosexuals.
Wouldn't a complicated twist of fate be more deserving of analysis?
Speaking of twists, I still giggle like a school-girl when I think about
"Dead ants are my friends, they're blowin' in the wind."
Here's my preferred version of "Tangled Up in Blue." From ca. 1978-79.
(BTW, I saw Half-Japanese at clubs in NYC and Hoboken several times in the 1980s, and on the last Nirvana tour in 199_, as they opened for Nirvana on that tour, at Kurt Cobain's request.)
Here's the same video, except that it plays properly
Is there a timer which warns you that you haven't written about Bob Dylan in X days?
To me the violin adds to and completes the mood of the song & lyrics.
I don't like the music but the violin trick is usually good.
Dixie Chicks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdkIJm65ytM
Cat Stevens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdkIJm65ytM
Allison Krauss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy9B43ERrbw
And there's a Kate and Anna McGarrigle with Emmy Lou Harris, Goin' back to Harlan, that youtube has converted to a modern format that won't play for me, but look it up.
McGarrigle and Harris, this link should work (bookmark that I can't check)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vK7jitvJXI
Dylan wears short shorts.
Lol at the lyrics
Gawd, I wonder what Dylan thinks about Trump.
Except when he remembers being confused, Dylan is telling the story in the third person as though the man could be someone else. Then the story twists to a memory of the woman he lost, his twin. It seems he picked up a woman who has prompted these painful recollections, he wants to find her again but which one?
There are a couple songs on that album which I’ve always had a strong affection for, including that one. He was dealing with loss and I was a senior in high school. Troubled times “most of all she was thinking about the Jack of Hearts”
Unrecognizable in 2018. Sometime, when you paint your masterpiece, it's best to just put down the brush and back away slowly.
I'll bet he changes the verses
Every time he rehearses
I can't become my own cover band
People might hear that my voice is bland
It's never too late
for a simple twist of fate
What you gona do with love at first sight? Do you fight the twist of fate, or do you move on and cherish the memory?
Unrecognizable in 2018. Sometime, when you paint your masterpiece, it's best to just put down the brush and back away slowly.
To the contrary, since the age of twenty Dylan's been longing to sing with the broken-down authority of an ancient black bluesman, and now he's finally able.
That album was to me musically what The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye were to me with literature. Major, euphoric awakenings all... I don't see a lot of quality Blood on the Tracks era Dylan videos around. Love it.
The violin was annoying. Always better to use a cello underneath everything. Kinda' like Hammond B3. It makes a great underpinned foundation. But that's just the producer in me talking.
FIDO said...
Is there a timer which warns you that you haven't written about Bob Dylan in X days?
11/1/18, 1:49 PM
Not since menopause, but perhaps they have an app for that now.
Dylan was playing with the concept of time when he wrote this song. It's not clear if this was one event or a blend of more than one event. Was it about his wife or another woman who came before or after? Was it a merged image of one or more women? Some aspects of his lyrics are very personal and others are fairly transactional. Not relating vs. his twin and searching her out again. Or was his not relating just his immediate reaction and the latter feelings when reality struck? If asked, he'd probably say all of the above.
Dylan is a master of layered meanings in his lyrics. It's why I love to listen to the lyrics over and over again and discover new ways to understand them.
I also noticed his forceful way in pronouncing the lyrics in this performance. He played around a lot with different singing styles over time. It's part of his sense of a song never being done and set in stone. His performances reflect how he feels and wants to sing his songs on any given night.
Has there been any other musician in the rock era who works this way?
Pure doggerel by a nebish crackhead. Our culture aiming low.
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