Posted on 04/08/2008 8:51:40 AM PDT by Borges
You must be a youngster. Rod Stewart used to be pretty darned good, but I think you have to back as far as “ A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse” for aural evidence thereof. Likely recorded before you were born (I peeked at your home page, admiral).
If Rod Stewart dresses up as John Wayne in Rio Bravo, he's still gay.
“My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.”
I think what Dylan sings also suggests “bodes” where printed lyric has “boats” and various folks reactions that sort of stuff plays into the differing reactions to Dylan’s singing.
And you frequent these places often?
McQuinn took that line and then wrote the "Ballad of Easy Rider".
It would not surprise me that there are many changes in the lyrics as sung by one artist vs. the other.
That's Dylan, all right. He owns the songs and probably feels that he can repaint them anyway he wants. Stardom came quickly for Dylan and lasted because no matter whether folks hated him or loved him, they talked about him.
His success in getting attention though was supported by his talent, which was in part, his imitation of his favorite singers. He listened over and over to the music of his favorites. Yet one cannot become someone else so Dylan began with imitating his predecessors and then tweaked that imitation into his own unique style.
Initially I think he started out just trying to be as good as the musicians he had listened to as a kid. Then as time went on, while continuing to pay homage to his audio mentors, he also seemed to deliberately age his vocal sound to greater than his real life age and that's where the half-spoken, often hard to understand lyrics came in.
That's a very interesting observation, tdunbar. Bodes does fit in there quite nicely. LOL, I wouldn't be surprised to see Dylan change that line again in the future.
If you have time, listen to the linked audio version on YouTube of Dylan singing it. If you wish, you can just listen to the audio because the video is made up of lots of stills. Warning, it's a bit slower than The Byrds' version but Dylan pronounces each word precisely, very clearly.
Dylan singing My Back Pages (1964?)
Thanks for the article; it’s worth reading. Although I still wouldn’t buy any of his records I now have more respect for him; thanks for the clarity.
I liked Dylan’s poetry, but he had a voice like a man with a red hot poker being shoved up his butt.
"Bad Liver, Broken Heart" ping.
.
Thanks
Interesting thread!
Don’t know if Dylan can act, but that’s a face that belongs in a Western. Maybe even a Spaghetti Western.
A lot of people don’t get Tom Waits, just like a lot of people don’t get Bob Dylan, and complain that he can’t sing, revealing more about themselves than about him. Others don’t get opera, or don’t get James Joyce. On the other hand, there is nothing to get in Debbie Boone’s singing or Sheryl Crow’s for that matter. But a stylist like Dylan and Waits, or, heck, Ray Charles, has to be ‘gotten’.
Wow. That's so cool. I love these stories behind the songs. I saw Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, David Crosby and a few side musicians perform as "The Original Byrds" in a tribute to Roy Orbison. There's a long legal story about the name they used at the concert.
At the concert I don't recall having seen the incredibly talented singer, songwriter and co-founder of the Byrds, Gene Clark on stage and sadly he passed away the following year. Then two years later, the Byrds Drummer Michael Clarke also passed away.
When the "Original Byrds" began playing after the first few opening lines in "Mister Tambourine Man" out from stage left casually walked a most familiar figure, the subject of this thread, strumming his guitar and singing. If there was a person in the audience who hadn't been a Dylan fan before that, without a doubt they became one in that moment.
bd476, I’ll listen later (no audio now). Btw, I’m not arguing for either boats or bodes but rather for allusion to both. That sort of thing is very common in Dylan’s songs, imo, and one of the reasons no one sings Dylan like Dylan. Just as in his sonnets Shakespeare plays off various meanings of words, in his songs Dylan often bends the pronunciations to further the poetics. Sounds that way to me, anyway.
>a face that belongs in a Western
such as Peckinpah’s “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid” :)
“Rod Stewart’s music is gay; I have no idea about the man himself. That you would hold him up as an exemplar of anything “good” about music speaks volumes about your taste, though.”
You should listen to Rod Stewart do the vocals on Jeff Beck’s Truth album.
I still have that album, one of the all time greats!
Understood, absolutely, and it was an excellent observation on your part.
Layers upon layers of meaning, all to be interpreted, or not, and enjoyed or not, and felt, or not, as in how a painter moves his audience with an odd stroke of the paintbrush, that is Dylan for me. © bd476
(Please note that the above is my attempt to go for the Most Awkward, Poorly Constructed Sentence in the World, all while listening to Dylan's music, and the local news.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.