One More Cup of Bobby #2: The Commonly Voiced Complaint
- D.G. Fleitas
- Jul 10, 2021
- 12 min read
It probably costs people more ink discussing about Bob Dylan's voice than it originally cost him to write the songs that people idolize him for. A song will begin, brimming with potential energy, filtered through a wailing harmonica or riffing guitar. Most folks, though, feel at the entrance of his voice that something is either plainly underwhelming or stridently overwhelming about his voice. His early albums are generally characterized by an energetic, dampened voice that blends nasal tones with a grating, geriatric twang (Bob Dylan; The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan; The Times They Are A-Changin'), giving possibly the most potent case for the cliché of "a young person with an old soul." But our intuition is not mistaken to imagine that, even if Dylan wrote lyrics of tremendous stature to start a career, his voice must have likewise impressed, impacted, and persuaded people of his potential. He wasn't told to just stick to songwriting, even though perhaps today we know Jimi Hendrix's iteration of "All Along the Watchtower" and Guns and Roses' iteration of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" more than the wiry Minnesota songwriter's original versions. True, few people doubt that Dylan's lyrical keycard opened doors, sometimes for others.
But that voice. He's proficient on guitar and piano, but people had seen better and still claim to see better. His influence was almost immediately pervasive, drawing comments from all fronts. Mitch Jayne of the Missouri folk band The Dillards legendarily commented in 1961 that Dylan sounded "like a dog with his leg caught in barbed wire." Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel, taking a shot at Bob Dylan's lionized 1960's album trinity (Bringing it All Back Home; Highway 61 Revisited; Blonde on Blonde), wrote "A Simple Desultory Philippic" in 1965 that mocked both the singing and lyrical slant of Dylan at the time.* David Bowie later in his galactic, laudatory "Song for Bob Dylan" (1971) called out the singer "With a voice like sand and glue" that, nonetheless, wrote titanic lyrics. Dylan himself, in one the two original compositions for his eponymous first album talked about his initial reception in Greenwich Village:
I walked down there and ended up
In one of them coffee-houses on the block
Got on the stage to sing and play
Man there said, "Come back some other day
You sound like a hillbilly
We want folk singers here"
("Talkin' New York," Bob Dylan)
Though the arc of references traced here spans a decade and intersperses (sparse) direct praise with mocking criticism, herein lies the crux of my point. I will not defend, starry-eyed and goofed out on Dylan, that the voice everyone talks about is unanimously appealing, that there is a forbidding mystery to it. Listeners discern well enough a singer's timbre, tone, cadence, dynamics, technique (vibrato, pitch bending, etc.), and emotional investment. We form educated and intuitive responses, making implicit and explicit comparisons to other singers/songwriters. Dylan is not a universal cup of tea. But the trickiness becomes apparent when we closely compare any two adjacent albums: Bob Dylan does not have a single voice, he has almost as many voices as he does albums.
In the decade traced out previously, we will encounter a thin-voiced (hillbillyesque) folk singer plucking and strumming like mad, an emboldened advocate for racial justice ("The Death of Emmett Till," The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964; "Only a Pawn in Their Game," The Times They Are A-Changin'), a yelling surrealist, a gritty motorcycle-and-pompadour rockstar, a proto-psychedelic troubadour, and a tender-voiced country boy twangin' away with Johnny Cash. Dylan's ability (and conscious desire) to sound different from album to album is also the animating force behind every live performance sounding different. But Dylan being Dylan, he was prickly and said that he wants to be compared not to himself, but to his contemporaries. For example, don't compare Blonde on Blonde to his earlier work, but compare it to Rubber Soul by The Beatles and Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, so on and so on ad infinitum for each album. Anyone familiar with Dylan knows that his musical craft and personal code reproduce a quote by one his favorite authors, Arthur Rimbaud: "Je est un autre" (I is another). A fair principle when dealing with Dylan is "don't hear what I say, but hear what I play, and that's gonna change a lot so buckle up." Part of this is a practiced, demure humility or a recalcitrant stoicism that keeps him from talking a self that is always hungry, hunting for change.
To hopefully illustrate that star power of the Bob Dylan's Protean voice, flaws and all, I want to bring your attention to two versions of one of his notoriously popular "Mr. Tambourine Man." The song itself features on an album where Dylan is starting to openly refashion his relationship to acoustic folk music, both lyrically and musically. He sings in a more unrestrained voice and writes with a surrealistic, multirhythmic rhymic flow. First let's hear (and see!) Dylan perform "Mr. Tambourine Man" live at the Newport Folk Festival, July 26, 1964:
By this point Pete Seeger and Dylan already had a close relationship, having travelled through the South to expand voter rights to African Americans and speak out in favor of civil rights. There is a soft-spoken plainness to the introduction preceding the apparent absence of the singer who eventually strides forward calmly. An audience member seems to yell, "Folk king!" (thank goodness he probably didn't swear at the young Dylan). Dylan laughs it off, playfully saying "Yes, yes, I hear you well. I think you have the wrong man." After a moment of arranging the speared-up microphones and tuning his guitar, Dylan begins strumming the guitar that, across his body and slung behind him, forms a perfectly calibrated right triangle. A positive omen.
His harmonica is insistent but not overpowering, melodically teasing the song to come as it floats over his bass-heavy guitar strumming. He steps here and there. He bends up to the first words, "Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me/ I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to." The interstice of guitar playing moves almost mournfully from the A to and Asus4 just before he booms directly "HEY!" in a voice that quivers quite magnetically. Far from projecting nervousness, he ecstatically bobs (*buh dum tss*) his head in all directions and seems to voice a prayer, a dream as those lyrics proceed with the spirit of vatic genius. The performance itself alternates long vowel tones with staccato hops from one word to the next. Put another way, he is confident stretching the timing of each line producing a chorus that differs always if but slightly. Dylan seems glad, almost smiling at time, but always projects a degree of intensity outwards. It is interesting to see the remark he made in a 1984 interview with Bert Kleinman and Artie Mogul on Westwood One Radio:
Kleinman: You've been smiling a lot and laughing here, but you don't do that much on stage. But you say you really enjoy yourself... you look so serious.
Dylan: Well, those songs take you through different trips you see. I mean what's there to smile about in singing "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" or "Tangled Up in Blue" or "With God on Our Side"... or Mr. Tambourine Man" or "Like a Rolling Stone" or "License to Kill" or "Shot of Love" or "Poisoned Love"... any of that. How can you sing that with a smile on your face? I mean it'd be kind of hypocritical.
When I do whatever it is I'm doing there is rhythm involved and there is phrasing involved. And that's where it all balances out, in the rhythm of it and the phrasing of it. It's not in the lyrics, people think it's in the lyrics, maybe on the records it's in the lyrics, but in a live show it's not at all in the lyrics, it's in the phrasing and the dynamics and the rhythm. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with the lyrics, I mean it does -- the lyrics have to be there, sure they do. But...
What is to be made of the mesmerizing, live take of "Mr. Tambourine Man" which certainly maintains a degree of pained eloquence yet begs, demands that we heed the lyrics? There is no backup behind Dylan. We behold a man, a guitar, and a harmonica. No studio artifice, no deflection and no deliberation. The sum total of the parts is staggering and it is those lyrics that, if we listen closely, spell a number of complex readings, most of which do, in fact, make us realize that to smile means betraying something about the song.
If we choose to heed Dylan's words from 1984 (given the interview went fairly well, he was not recalcitrant and evasive, nor did he deliberately misguide the interviewers as he's so often done), what can be said about the album version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" from March 1965's Bringing It All Back Home? The actual quality of his voice is more familiar to listeners of previous albums -- there is a sibilant undertone that grates under each word, a humming buzz. It cannot be disputed that much like the live rendition, this is a Dylan bursting at the seams and rising in dynamics. The gentle, omnipresent electric guitar in the background softly intervenes with bouncy long tones that could be read as glad, relaxed, bubbly. Dylan's entrance on harmonica after the second repetition of the chorus is uplifting, dropping frequently close to pianissimo nigh-silence and coexisting with the aforementioned electric guitar. Often Dylan's voice closes the line of the various verses, mainly the rhymes, with a tone quieter than he starts the lines ("Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship/ My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip/ My toes too numb to step"). The same can be said of the conclusion to the song which quietly fades (if we allow the song's lyrics to put it this way), fades into its own parade. The consummate bard, between Newport and the studio, has given two similar and enticing takes of a marvelous song.
So, what exactly is in the lyrics that would cause Dylan to say that singing it with a smile would be disingenuous? More presently, is it right to excise the lyrics and put the lyre aside? The wise and witty erstwhile Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins, put it thusly in the introduction the poetry/photography collaboration between Bob Dylan and Barry Feinstein, titled Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric:
Whenever the question comes up -- and it does nearly every semester -- of whether or not rock lyrics qualify as poetry, I offer my students a simple but heartless test. Ask all musicians to please leave the stage and take their instruments with them -- yes, that goes for the backup singers in the tight satin dresses, and the drummer -- and then have the lead singer stand alone by the microphone and read the lyrics from that piece of paper he is holding in his hand. What you hear can leave only one impression: the lyrics in almost every case are not poetry, they are lyrics. Some are good lyrics ("A Whiter Shade of Pale"), others not so good ("Hats Off to Larry"), but certainly lines like "Come on, baby, light my fire," repeated many times, do not, and were never meant to, hold up their own without the music.
If we can give a pass to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (song, song, says T.S. Eliot) and its, "In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo," let us be merciful with Dylan's actual song that vies honorably for the title "poem." In its entirety, we read the following:
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you
Though I know that evening's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship
My senses have been stripped
My hands can't feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade
Cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you
Though you might hear laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun
It's not aimed at anyone
It's just escaping on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facing
And if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time
It's just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn't pay it any mind
It's just a shadow you're seeing that he's chasing
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you
And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you
Dylan is often the performer and not the one performed for. Not that we should feel sorry for him in actuality, and yet the first line of the chorus is a performance that asks for a performance in return. The peripatetic young singer who, as Pete Seeger put it earlier, "said he ran away from home seventeen times and got brought back sixteen," has no place he is going to and will gladly follow the figure of "Mr. Tambourine Man." The first verse depicts the singer as weary, holding the sand of a dissolved "evening empire," alone, unable to rest. The words of the chorus do not change but their relational value is gained in relations to the sandwiched-in verses. If the first chorus is the flippant, giddy willingness of a young traveler to hear a song and move along, we realize through the first verse that he is alone, bewildered. In the second verse, the singer is numb: he probably cannot feel the evening empire that "vanished from my hand," nor perceive it through his battered senses. How he will even follow Mr. Tambourine Man is another mystery given his "toes too numb to step" and dubiously wandering boots (he was just "Left... blindly here to stand but still not sleeping" before). What sad gravity too, his desire to "fade/ Into my own parade,' though this is possibly a comfort to someone who is misunderstood and tired. The third verse explodes with the revelry of "laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun." One is hard pressed to find a more Apollonian image of the poet-singer glowing in their art. The limitless sky is the only boundary that could stop us. The "vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme," however, that come from "a ragged clown behind" invite us to consider if this is not the singer himself who, up to now, has spun an amazing series of pure rhymes, slant rhymes, and multi-syllable rhymes (ship/grip; grip/step; wandering/under it). But who is he chasing, if not Mr. Tambourine Man?
The fourth and final verse is not only the longest at thirteen lines (compared to six, eight, and nine lines for each preceding verse in order), but also the most imagistically rich. A shifting landscape painting bleeds into a faintly perceived portrait of someone dancing, "With one hand waving free/ Silhouetted by the sea/ Circled by the circus sands/ With all memory and fate/ Driven deep beneath the waves." We move from vague mental intimations ("the smoke rings of my mind," "the foggy ruins of time") past "frozen leaves" and "haunted frightened trees" to the very beach that is "far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow." Of what sand is that beach made? Does Dylan sing, at the end, about a person dancing on the disappeared, imperceived sand of evening's empire from the first verse? This is certainly one way of looking at it, a way that acknowledges the glad catharsis of artistic expression that, despite seeming blind and stripped of senses, is actually tragically aware of "the twisted reach of crazy sorrow." Yes, if Dylan was forced to trudge up alone to the same speared-up microphones and recite these words, I imagine they would wring us dry and drain our every tear.
So what, and where, is Dylan's voice in "Mr. Tambourine Man?" In person he was exuberant yet sober. In the album he is controlled, determined to perform his piece and relegated to fade away into the silence preceding "Gates of Eden." As a standalone page of paper, the piece crackles with technical genius that both gladdens and depresses the spirit. It has been reinterpreted countless times and with different spins (many people enjoy the groovy version by The Byrds, Dylan included; any who enjoy the William Shatner version may deserve to be sent to "the twisted reach of crazy sorrow"). The same defense people use for Dylan's lyrical ability must, I think, be extended to his actual singing on more instances than has typically happened. People defend his capacity as a songwriter while indifferently conceding that his voice is not up to snuff. But a voice is not only the capacity of our larynx to produce sound; it is also that more spacious element of great writers, great speakers that is almost synonymous with "style." An oft-cited appeal for enjoying Dylan's voice is that, in youth, he is altogether human; we can sing along with him openly. Only compare any of his renditions of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" to that of Joan Baez and the message is clear. A voice so open to the gravity of events both internal and external, handled like Dylan handled his own lyric voice, is a rarity to be treasured. It keeps you going, sharp and energetic, like only one more cup of Bobby could.
* Shoutout to Polyphonic for their reference to "A Simple Desultory Philippic", as well as Stealers Wheel's familiar song "Stuck In the Middle With You." His video on the topic of Bob Dylan's status as a mocked icon can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYokDsGNmIY&t=159s
Image: Bob Dylan singing "Mr. Tambourine Man" live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1964
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