Listening to Bob Dylan by Larry Starr

Author:Larry Starr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Building Bridges

The songs on Bob Dylan’s first five albums are all strophic in form, some with choruses, and some without. On his sixth album, Highway 61 Revisited, “Ballad of a Thin Man” is the only song to break this mold. Starting out as if it will be a strophic song, as expected, “Ballad of a Thin Man” surprises with a brief bridge section—defined as such by the new music that accompanies the new words, beginning with “You have many contacts”—following the third strophe. After the bridge, four additional strophes, musically identical to the first three, are heard, and the song fades out.

Why did Dylan feel the need to add a bridge to “Ballad of a Thin Man”? The long strophes already have the internal variety created by the presence of a chorus (“Because something is happening”), and Dylan obviously hadn’t felt that his previous long songs required such a contrasting section. Perhaps the fresh music here, with the vocal melody positioned in a consistently high register, helps illuminate the lyrics’ change of perspective at this point. The scene shifts to the world outside the room/show/circus(?) where “Mister Jones” is undergoing his experience/inquisition/education(?), and we learn of the lumberjacks who provide him with “facts.” This “outside” perspective is retained for the following strophe, with its references to professors, lawyers, and books, before we are abruptly shifted back “inside,” in the company of a sword-swallower and a mysterious midget, for the duration of the song.

Bridge sections naturally provide additional musical variety to any song, and there is also the sense of musical roundedness resulting from the return to the main music of the song after the bridge. When the musical novelty of a bridge section is paired with some new development in the lyrics, the formal structure of the whole becomes particularly satisfying. Dylan obviously seemed to be investigating this possibility with “Ballad of a Thin Man.” His subsequent album, Blonde on Blonde (1966), reveals a marked new interest in experimenting with the incorporation of bridge sections into his songs. It’s as if Dylan were asking himself which songs might have bridges, how many sections overall should songs with bridges have, and even, how many bridge sections might be placed into one song.

The traditional A-A-B-A formal structure (where “B” is a bridge section) is found among the Blonde on Blonde songs in “Just Like a Woman” and in “Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine.” In “Just Like a Woman,” an unexpected harmony lends intensity to the start of the bridge, and that intensity is soon furthered by the lyrics, with references to “dying there of thirst,” “your long-time curse,” and “this pain in here.” The ending of this bridge section literally creates a “bridge” over to the succeeding section, musically and lyrically, by means of the phrase “Ain’t it clear that—[new section] I just can’t fit.” (This is an unusual practice for Dylan, whose bridge sections typically form discrete units.) With “Most Likely You Go Your Way and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.