Down
the Lyrical Highway
Ah,
but I was so much older then
I’m
younger than that now
― Bob
Dylan, My Back Pages
I
was in second grade when I first suspected my lack of musical
ability. As a music “exam”, each student in my class was
required to stand up and sing a song he or she had learned in class
that year. There were 51 students in Sister Joan Bernadette's room,
and the sweet, patient, energetic nun was nearing the end of her
sweetness, patience and energy as student after student stood up and
sang one of the same three songs. After the umpteenth rendition of
“The Fisherman of Gloucester”, Sister informed the remaining
singers they needed to choose a song other than that sea chanty. I
had yet to sing, and in the alphabet-ordered world of our classroom,
I knew my Z-beginning last name would make me the final performer.
I, like many of the others, had planned on singing “The Fisherman
of Gloucester”, so I had to come up with something I knew the words
to and something my teacher had yet to hear. We had learned to
memorize our multiplication tables to the tune of “Skip to My Lou”
earlier in the year, so when my turn came to sing, I did a rousing
rendition of the ten times table. Sister Joan Bernadette stared at
me a moment, rolled her eyes, covered her mouth to stifle a laugh,
and put her forehead briefly down on her desk before sitting up,
thanking me for my performance and declaring the music “exam”
time over. Later that evening I pondered Sister's reaction to my
song. Amazed and surprised at the clever, unique choice I had come
up with? No one else had sang a multiplication table that day.
Relieved the long afternoon of second grade singers was finally over?
Or amused at my singing ability? I told my mom about the music
“exam” and my teacher's reaction. I asked my mom if I was a good
singer. Her response: “When it comes to singing, you draw and
paint beautifully...
In
the ten years of Catholic school that followed, there were ample
opportunities for me to confirm what I suspected was a serious
functional tone-deafness in the space in my brain where musical
ability resided in others' heads. Mandatory all-class choral
performances occurred every few years, with weeks of singing
preparation. As the concert night approached, the nun who worked so
hard to teach us the various harmonizing parts would announce that
there were some singers who were throwing the others off with their
inability to carry a tune. So as not to embarrass anyone, she said
she would walk among us during the final practice and unobtrusively
touch the elbow of those guilty parties. If we got the “touch”,
we were to inaudibly mouth the words to the songs during the concert.
I don't know how many singers got tagged in that way. I only know
that during every final practice, I got the “touch”.
If
I couldn't sing, I thought, maybe I could play an instrument. It was
the 1960s, so a twenty dollar guitar and a chord cheat sheet seemed a
good place to start. I was smart and methodical in my learning
style, and after months of practice I knew about a dozen chords and
could play some of the simple folk-rock-pop songs of the time. I was
a little frustrated I couldn't tune my guitar – I had a
guitar-playing neighbor do it – and later found out my guitar had
to be really, really out of tune before I would even notice. My
brother, two years younger, approached me one day and asked if I
would teach him a few chords. I willingly did, only to have my guitar
disappear for a few weeks. By the time my brother returned it, he
had far surpassed me in playing ability and was ready to purchase his
own guitar. He also discovered he could sing and within a year he
was playing in youth group bands and eventually coffee houses. I
retreated to my room, and behind closed doors, continued my musical
education at a snail's pace.
Through
all those years of musical frustration, I avidly listened to the
popular music of the day, mostly folk and rock. I would say I loved
music, though the more I discovered what I didn't know and couldn't
comprehend about music, the more I wondered what I loved about it.
Through junior high and high school, into college, I'd buy record
albums, retreat to my room, put the vinyl disc on the turntable, pull
out the liner notes if they had lyrics printed on them, and stretch
out on my bed, listening to the songs, losing myself in the lyrics.
I realized what I loved most about music was the lyrics, the
sometimes poetic, often rambling, always clever expression of writers
who wove words into rhythms and melodies. I could usually hear the
rhythms, sometimes the melodies, but it was always the words of the
songs that gripped me.
Why
am I telling my somewhat sad musical history now? When my radio
alarm, set to an indie rock station, came on one morning last week, I
was greeted by the news that Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize, not
for music, but for literature. Bob Dylan, musical icon for over
fifty years, writer of over 500 songs. Bob Dylan, who shook up the
folk singing world in the 1960s by introducing (Gasp!) electric
guitar music to the genre. Bob Dylan, whose songs take on a new life
when recorded by others. Jimi Hendrix's iconic All Along the
Watchtower? - a Dylan song. Adele's Make You Feel My Love?
- yep, that's a Dylan song, too. And Dylan's albums were some of
my favorite to do the
stretch-out-on-the-bed-and-lose-myself-in-the-lyrics thing to. I thought I appreciated his music, the rhythm and melody, and I thought
his singing voice had a unique sound (causing my brother,
cryptically, to say Dylan deserved me as a fan). But it really was
his lyrics, his twisty, non-linear storytelling I loved. Tangled
Up in Blue doesn't follow a straight story line, but it never
bores. Dylan's gritty telling of the plight of Rubin “Hurricane”
Carter was instrumental in getting the framed middleweight boxer
released from prison and is only one of many of his songs giving a
glimpse into the lives of real people in hard situations. These
musical stories, falling somewhere between prose and poetry, now,
thanks to the Nobel Prize committee, are acknowledged and rewarded as
literature.
Dylan's
genius for lyrics has a certain contagion about it, as well as a
generosity. The Byrd's Roger McGuinn tells an amusing story of
writing the lyrics of the title song from the soundtrack of Easy
Rider. Producer Peter Fonda, to save money, used his own record
collection to score the film, but approached Bob Dylan to write an
original title song for the movie. Dylan screened the movie and then
scrawled a few lines on a paper napkin and handed it to Fonda,
telling him to give the napkin to Roger McGuinn, that he would know
what to do with it. McGuinn received the napkin, wrote The Ballad
of Easy Rider and shared the credit with Dylan. When Dylan saw
the credit, he called McGuinn and told him it wasn't necessary, he
didn't need the money, and he was fine with McGuinn taking all the
credit. The few lyrical lines on the napkin? The river flows, it
flows to the sea. Wherever that river goes that's where I want to be.
Flow, river flow...
I've
long given up any musical aspirations. I haven't picked up the
guitar in years. I do sing with the congregation on Sundays in a
church with a worship band loud enough to hide voices like mine, no
longer fearing the dreaded “touch”. I occasionally play hymns on
the harmonica (in my bedroom, windows and doors closed, when no one
is home). But Dylan's recent honor has caused me to hold my head
high. Yes, there is a lot about music I don't get, but the lyrical
part I do get is Nobel-Prize-worthy. Thank you, Bob...
I
consider myself a poet first and a musician second.
I
live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.
-
Bob Dylan
