Bob Dylan - "Tears Of Rage" (recorded 1967, released 1975)

Twenty years. That's how long I've been trying to figure it out.

"Tears Of Rage" was recorded with the Band, still known at the time as the Hawks, while Dylan was ensconced with them in Woodstock in 1967, recovering from his motorcycle accident. History has it that this was one of the first songs Dylan wrote to someone else's music - the Band's pianist Richard Manuel - but actually, that's a lot of crap because Dylan ripped off dozens of melodies in his day, it was just that this time he had to give proper credit because the Band released their own version years before his saw the light of day. And anyway, that's all besides the point because his singing style makes the specifics of melody superfluous.

In the version released by the Band on Music From Big Pink, Manuel sings as though waking up from a bad dream. Dylan, however, stared the nightmare down and what he sees is his own private version of King Lear.

Oh what dear daughter 'neath the sun
Would treat a father so
To wait upon him hand and foot
And always tell him, "No"?

There is every indication that Dylan never fully planned out song topics in advance (until "Hurricane" anyway) and the way I always heard this song, I suppose Dylan came up with a few choice images and a few catchy lines and using them, built up this impressionistic tale as a metaphor for rejection and loss of direction (much like many other songs on the Basement Tapes).

We pointed out the way to go
And scratched your name in sand
Though you just thought it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand

Dylan almost always keeps a certain emotional distance from his best songs, jabbing with a snarl or a leer, then moving in close, bearing down on a few choice words and backing off to circle again. That's what we love best about him, after all. But there's a line at the emotional heart of this song where he's about as naked as he ever was, and you can feel him rasping against the microphone as he sings

But, oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?

Though there's still an echo of the sarcastic hipster of Blonde On Blonde in the way he starts to sneer on "worse", the ache and fear in that short couplet forecast the long road from John Wesley Harding through Blood On The Tracks all the way to Modern Times. And that fear is worth spending twenty years trying to understand and come to terms with.

Lyrics copyright 1967 Bob Dylan

1992 - Bob Dylan Reclaims His Voice

Bob Dylan's 1997 Out Of Time is widely regarded as the comeback album that heralded a return to form that Dylan has managed to maintain ever since. But the truth is, the comback trail started in 1992 and 1993 when he cut a pair of acoustic sets comprised of old folk and blues covers.

Look, when people talk about Dylan's contributions to rock's vocabulary of expression, they usually discuss his use of language and then they might note that the impact of his rough voice emancipated other so-called limited singers to perform their own material. But that's just skimping the surface and not giving enough emphasis on what his Dylan's use of language and his voice really mean.

At his best, Dylan is a great performer and I don't care what his voice sounds like. Even today when the phlegm just hisses off the speakers. He's a great performer because his phrasing, the subtle pauses, the way he hangs on to certain words and syllables, bring meanings to the words that just aren't there on paper. And that's something he took from a largely unremarked-upon substrata of the American folk and blues tradition, that way of leaning into the microphone and making cryptic remarks sound like God given truth.

That tradition also informs his use of language. The reason even his more arcane and surrealistic songs sound so convincing and knowing is they draw upon a huge bed of images fostered by that tradition. His voice and his deep understanding of the American psyche as revealed through hundreds of old folk and blues songs are the reason Dylan, even in his early twenties, managed to sound much wiser than he might have actually been. But somewhere along the way, in the course of a myriad of personal changes, he lost touch with that tradition and wandered in a creative wilderness for a decade and a half. Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong are the albums where he went back to the well and found his voice again.

And you know what, these albums are even proof of his underrated guitar playing. But maybe it's easy singing and playing great when you're going back to songs you've loved all your life. Whatever drove Dylan to fame, then recluse, then stardom again and finally various religious re-births, he finds meaning for that drive in these songs. They give him solace and peace of mind, which is what the blues is supposed to do for you, and in doing so, rediscovers himself.

My favorite track from the two aforementioned albums is actually a minor song from Good As I Been To You, "You're Gonna Quit Me", which is almost too catchy to be a great song. It does, however, highlight all of what I've said above: the knowing warmth of the voice, the way his voice cracks, the way he seems to be singing to himself, the little whispers that crackle in the echo chamber. But the greatest moment in that song is not on record, nothing that anyone but me ever heard, nothing Dylan himself could ever have imagined. The greatest moment came the other day when I was listening to it. When it was over, my ten year old daughter, who usually listens to stuff like Avril Lavigne, came out of her room and asked me to play it again. Now that's good upbringing.