The Songs they Are-A Changing
July 2006

Hello

Well, I don’t know about you but I’m feeling a bit weary after all the football. All that chest-thumping national pride; the beer, the parties, the late nights and the general rowdiness – and that was just the players. So being a big fan I tried to watch as many games as possible, but after England got knocked out it all became a bit of a chore. The magic had gone and I found myself watching in neutral.

One afternoon, feeling a bit stir crazy after a particularly dreary match, I decided to get out of the house. My mate Pete and I bombed down to Bournemouth to see Bob Dylan on his only English date this year. Why he chose Bournemouth God only knows? Perhaps he had a good deal for the night on a little net-curtained B&B on the seafront - but we gamely put some petrol in the car and prepared ourselves for a long drive down from London.

Now, Pete and I go and see Bob a lot, so this kind of journey was nothing new to us, but the thing about Dylan is that you never know whether he is going to be awesome or awful. The reason being that he likes to mess around with his back catalogue, change the tunes and even the words to his most famous songs, often leaving the audience in a state of bewilderment as to which song he is playing. Add the fact that his voice now resembles a bear with a sore throat swallowing sandpaper and you don’t necessarily have a recipe for a great gig.

But sometimes, just sometimes, his genius still shines through and the simple, elegant beauty of his music can still pierce your heart like cut glass. It is these moments that we go for. We know perfectly well that we may have to sit through 90 minutes of Bob and his (decidedly average, these days) band mauling, twisting and degrading some of the world’s greatest music, but stick with it, listen hard enough, for long enough and you might just see a gemstone in the sand.

The night in Bournemouth was such a night. Pete and I had just had a giggle watching the astonished reactions of some of the audience who had clearly come to see the Dylan they remember from the cover of his 1967 Greatest Hits, sing Blowing In The Wind note perfectly. We likened his concerts to a grotesque sideshow in a travelling Victorian circus, and this was as grotesque as we had seen him.

But then it happened, at the most unlikely moment. The sound seemed to clear and the muddy mix came into focus as the guitarist plucked some dark, cold notes from his guitar. As usual we were trying to second guess which classic he was about to dribble, but not this time. The words came through sharp and edgy, it was Cold Irons Bound from his ‘return-to-form’ masterpiece Time Out Of Mind. Much more sinister than the original, more desperate and forlorn, Pete and I were rapt. We knew we were having the ‘moment’, and we barely breathed as we tried to soak up every second of it. Most of the crowd barely knew this hidden beauty of a number, but they all felt it too. It towered over crowd-pleasers like All Along the Watchtower, and Like A Rolling Stone that night, and lingered long in the musical memory for days on end afterwards.

On the long drive back up to London that night I pondered an artist’s relationship with his or her own material. Is the artist right to twist and mutilate his songs beyond recognition, or does the audience have a right to hear the songs as they were when they first bought them. In effect, who owns what?

I’ve no doubt that hundreds of thousands of Dylan fans have, over the years, felt shortchanged after watching Dylan drone on monotonously through a set of unrecognisable numbers. Many times he has changed words, melodies, even meaning to try and keep the song alive - and therein lies the point. Dylan grew up labelled as a folk and blues singer, the two most naturally organic forms of music there are. For centuries folk and blues songs have been sung to the next generation, each adding a verse here, tweaking a lyric there to reflect the times. It is no coincidence that Dylan’s new album is called Modern Times, as no artist comes close to matching Dylan’s ability to create something new from something old. He may not get it right every time, but when he does, there is scarcely a joy in music as bewitching than to hear an artist take a great song, and make it even greater.

I can’t pretend that people can expect The Mustangs to start giving our own songs the Dylan treatment just yet, but I look forward to the day we do… if only as it will mean that enough people know them well enough to make the whole process worthwhile!

Thanks for reading, see you soon.

Adam