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