Posted on 10/13/2016 12:16:57 PM PDT by Hostage
I don’t know if I would say that Dylan is the greatest living poet, but he has certainly written some great lyrics. One I love that has been performed by quite a few people is: To Make You Feel My Love
Verse 1]
When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love
[Verse 2]
When the evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one there to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love
[Verse 3]
I know you haven’t made your mind up yet
But I would never do you wrong
I’ve known it from the moment that we met
No doubt in my mind where you belong
[Verse 4]
I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue
I’d go crawling down the avenue
There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do
To make you feel my love
[Verse 5]
The storms are raging on the rolling sea
And on the highway of regret
The winds of change are blowing wild and free
You haven’t seen nothing like me yet
[Verse 6]
I could make you happy, make your dreams come true
Nothing that I wouldn’t do
Go to the ends of the earth for you
To make you feel my love
Dylan is fine, but a Nobel in literature? That’s kind of a stretch. They should open a new category if they want to recognize musicians.
For the gainsayers on this thread, please take a listen (or several):
Who would you have picked, O iron-hearted, tin-eared Achilles?
Kipling and Hem are gone, you know, and Homer too.
(Maya Angelou is out of the running as well, thank goodness.)
Heard an old live recording with the audience booing him off the stage. Apparently he made the mistake of hiring The(legendary)Band, who played electric. Dylan stood them down. I always respected him for that, as for me, it was the demonstration of the hippie arrogance that they can try to dictate what an artist does or doesn’t do.
Cranky cranky niff!
The Revolution is ON!
Vote Trump!
This is why I respect Dylan.
Neighborhood Bully
Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully
Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully
Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully
He got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully
Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully
Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully
Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully
What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He’s the neighborhood bully
What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully
Bobby gave his life to Christ. And he often snubbed the leftist nonsense.
He’s been a little here and a little there, and everywhere in-between. But people see honesty in him and that’s why he is held up.
John Lennon idolized him and copied him a little:
“And if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow!”
Sure they were young, often immature and misguided, and vulnerable to naive thinking. But we watched then mature and transform. Lennon also was coming to Christ just before his murder.
The pop/folk icons back then were not like the leftist trash that occupies the entertainment industry today.
Part of conservativism is allowing our youth to find their way but always letting them know we are friends when they start to wake up and respect us for being wiser than first thought. Then we are there for them to help them become fuller human beings.
I’ll always love Bob Dylan.
I heard once that the Peace Prize is given out by a group in Norway, while the other Nobel Prizes come from a group in Sweden. Hence, the Norwegian judges have gone rogue for at least the past twenty years.
I’m sorry, I have to disagree. The song “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” has got to be one of the greatest songs ever written. Especially when sung by Judy Collins. Also, the gorgeous love song “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” combined with his more famous classics. A great poet.
Congrats, Bob!
The Pali Fan Club ain’t gonna like this.
Here's the excerpt of Bob Dylan's comments:
“When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius,” Dylan said. “Even the counterpoint lines—they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music. Even the simplest song, like ‘The Law,’ which is structured on two fundamental chords, has counterpoint lines that are essential, and anybody who even thinks about doing this song and loves the lyrics would have to build around the counterpoint lines.
“His gift or genius is in his connection to the music of the spheres,” Dylan went on. “In the song ‘Sisters of Mercy,’ for instance, the verses are four elemental lines which change and move at predictable intervals . . . but the tune is anything but predictable. The song just comes in and states a fact. And after that anything can happen and it does, and Leonard allows it to happen. His tone is far from condescending or mocking. He is a tough-minded lover who doesn’t recognize the brush-off. Leonard’s always above it all. ‘Sisters of Mercy’ is verse after verse of four distinctive lines, in perfect meter, with no chorus, quivering with drama. The first line begins in a minor key. The second line goes from minor to major and steps up, and changes melody and variation. The third line steps up even higher than that to a different degree, and then the fourth line comes back to the beginning. This is a deceptively unusual musical theme, with or without lyrics. But it’s so subtle a listener doesn’t realize he’s been taken on a musical journey and dropped off somewhere, with or without lyrics.”
In the late eighties, Dylan performed “Hallelujah” on the road as a roughshod blues with a sly, ascending chorus. His version sounds less like the prettified Jeff Buckley version than like a work by John Lee Hooker. “That song ‘Hallelujah’ has resonance for me,” Dylan said. “There again, it’s a beautifully constructed melody that steps up, evolves, and slips back, all in quick time. But this song has a connective chorus, which when it comes in has a power all of its own. The ‘secret chord’ and the point-blank I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself aspect of the song has plenty of resonance for me.”
I asked Dylan whether he preferred Cohen’s later work, so colored with intimations of the end. “I like all of Leonard’s songs, early or late,” he said. “ ‘Going Home,’ ‘Show Me the Place,’ ‘The Darkness.’ These are all great songs, deep and truthful as ever and multidimensional, surprisingly melodic, and they make you think and feel. I like some of his later songs even better than his early ones. Yet there’s a simplicity to his early ones that I like, too.”
Dylan defended Cohen against the familiar critical reproach that his is music to slit your wrists by. He compared him to the Russian Jewish immigrant who wrote “Easter Parade.” “I see no disenchantment in Leonard’s lyrics at all,” Dylan said. “There’s always a direct sentiment, as if he’s holding a conversation and telling you something, him doing all the talking, but the listener keeps listening. He’s very much a descendant of Irving Berlin, maybe the only songwriter in modern history that Leonard can be directly related to. Berlin’s songs did the same thing. Berlin was also connected to some kind of celestial sphere. And, like Leonard, he probably had no classical-music training, either. Both of them just hear melodies that most of us can only strive for. Berlin’s lyrics also fell into place and consisted of half lines, full lines at surprising intervals, using simple elongated words. Both Leonard and Berlin are incredibly crafty. Leonard particularly uses chord progressions that seem classical in shape. He is a much more savvy musician than you’d think.”
To the last bolded sentence, I replied: So are you Bob Dylan, so are you.
Bob Dylan is a great lyric writer. The Byrds also wouldn’t have had a career if not for him.
But, no kidding, Dylan wrote some great poetry. Some sad, some funny, some biting commentary, some absolutely lovely.
I say, “good for him.”
Bob, actually, has always been a musical genius. People confuse his scratchy voice and less than top skills on various instruments with having no musical education. It almost makes me want to get The New Yorker again after what you posted.
Some president needs to make him the national poet laureate. Bob’s getting up there in years now.
The award is well deserved and I’ll bet Bob Dylan is voting for Donald Trump.
What a fitting tribute that would be, I agree.
As a serious poet, I agree.
I enrolled in a course in poetry several years ago. The community organizer indoctrinating us spent the first session asserting that only political poetry was valid, and that Tupak Shakur was a better poet than Percy Shelley.
I dropped the class the next day.
We live in the communist LCD Age: Lowest Common(unist) Denominator.
A friend of mine played guitar and steel guitar for Cohen for many years, but retired a couple years ago.
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