I really want to like - or even better, I would like to love - covers of Dylan songs the same way I love the originals. Sometimes that happens, though not often, but read on, because that rsquo;s not what this review is entirely about.
At the very least, I want to hear something that is on a par with the original.
I want something that is a new and interesting take that makes for good listening that I would feel confident recommending to readers in my music column or to friends in general; I want to feel that this is something worthwhile and new - I don rsquo;t mean any of the previous and well-known covers here. I don rsquo;t mean George Harrison. I mean something newer, and while I rsquo;ve heard a few, they are few and far between.
In short, I want covers of the sort of stuff that I would burn on a CD for a friend. I want covers that are like Maria Mulduars rsquo; recent disc, which wasn rsquo;t bad at all.
Covers of songs can be just terrific, sometimes even better than the original.
Some of the Beatles covers I rsquo;ve heard of late just stick, like ldquo;Hello Goodbye rdquo; by Erin Alden, which really plays on my mind in the best possible way. It doesn rsquo;t have to be better or worse than the original, but just a take that is different and interesting and, ideally, pleasing. Call me crazy, but yeah, I want music that pleases me.
After all, that rsquo;s the point, part of it anyway mdash; music should move us, please us, stay with us, inspire us, and so much more, but it should always be memorable in the best possible way and for all the right reasons. Not memorable because it is so unbelievably bad that you can rsquo;t get it out of your head because it sticks in the groove like an old and bad record, like David Soul rsquo;s ldquo;Black Bean Soup rdquo; which, I admit, I owned as a child and that stuck in the groove ( ldquo;and soup, and soup, and soup, and soup rdquo; hellip; ad infinitum). This is not what I am looking for.
No, I rsquo;m not saying Alden rsquo;s version of ldquo;Hello Goodbye rdquo; is ldquo;better rdquo; than the original, only that it offers us a different flavor and one that I like. In this way, Erin Alden succeeds. The same is true of Paul Weller rsquo;s version of ldquo;Sexy Sadie, rdquo; but who would expect anything less from Paul Weller?
So without question Weller rsquo;s version of ldquo;Sexy Sadie rdquo; just blows me away.
And what of Sweet Jane as sung by the ethereal voice of Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies on their album The Trinity Sessions? It s amazing and gives the song a whole different, and softer, spin.
Don rsquo;t get me wrong, I love The Velvet Underground rsquo;s version and adore Lou Reed but it rsquo;s good to have an alternate take that actually works. Call me crazy, but I like options.
There have been songs that Dylan wrote for others, songs that he specifically wrote to be covered like ldquo;I rsquo;ll Keep It With Mine, rdquo; which he originally wrote for Nico to perform.
Still, it is the Dylan version of ldquo;I rsquo;ll Keep It With Mine rdquo; that I will always remember mdash; well, any version that I rsquo;ve heard of his. (For the record, Judy Collins beat Nico to the punch before Nico recorded the song. Collins had somehow elbowed in.
)
Regardless, the point is, I like Dylan rsquo;s version despite the fact that he wrote it for someone else, which is sort of entertaining. I think the only cover of his songs that come to mind right away that I do like are ldquo;Knockin rsquo; on Heaven rsquo;s Door rdquo; which has been done by some good people ndash; Eric Clapton, for example. ldquo;If Not for You rdquo; is another; George Harrison recorded it first on his All Things Must Pass album before it came out on New Morning.
So as with math, then, there are exceptions to every rule and I rsquo;m sure if I sat and thought more I could think of other songs of his that have been well-covered and that I like, but I cannot say this of the recent Bryan Ferry CD.
Bryan Ferry seemed an odd person to be doing Dylan in the first place, given the difference between Ferry rsquo;s mellifluous ldquo;Slave to Love/Avalon rdquo; sound versus Dylan rsquo;s ldquo;All I Really Wanna Do/One More Weekend with You rdquo; sound. One is soft and smooth, the other is harder, not so easy to get used to, and Dylan is likely an acquired taste.
One does not immediately take to Dylan, I think. You may like one or two of his songs initially, but that rsquo;s it. For those I know who really like Dylan, they came to him slowly at first, then loved one album, hated another, then back again, and so forth.
But then he morphs from album to album, so just when you think you rsquo;ve got him pegged enough that you can say, ldquo;I like Dylan rdquo; he is a whole new Dylan. You may like the old Dylan, the new Dylan, even what you think or can guess a Dylan of the future may be, but it rsquo;s hard to pin him down and no doubt this is intentional. Dylan is nothing if not a restless spirit.
As for me, I rsquo;ve liked pretty much all his albums now ndash; or have come to over time.
Ferry rsquo;s Dylanesque is odd. I keep listening to ldquo;Baby Let me Follow You Down rdquo; but first, the music is too up-front, by which I mean it rsquo;s too present.
Ferry rsquo;s voice in the background quivers like a jellyfish left stranded on the beach, as if he is shimmying his way through the song while singing to create what amounts to a ghostly sound, and I do not mean ldquo;ghostly rdquo; as in ldquo;hauntingly beautiful rdquo; or some such ad copy, I mean ldquo;haunting rdquo; as in he sounds like a ghost that would go ldquo;Booo rdquo; or a child rsquo;s impersonation of a ghost. Just play Bryan Ferry rsquo;s ldquo;Baby Let Me Follow You Down rdquo; and there you have it. The song quivers too much when it should rock.
Or maybe this is Ferry rsquo;s version of rock? It rsquo;s certainly his version of Dylan. I never thought of Ferry as ldquo;rock rdquo; anyway.
New wave was more like it. That rsquo;s how Roxy Music struck me and that rsquo;s how Ferry remained in my mind. ldquo;Slave to Love rdquo; is a great song and perfect for Ferry.
Ferry is best doing Ferry. He, too, has an almost inimitable style (much like Dylan, I think) so here we have one artist who would be near impossible to imitate covering an artist who is difficult to cover.
Moving on.
.. ldquo;The Gates of Eden rdquo; seems too slow here, even though it is probably about the same speed as the original, with the harmonica in the far-off background (or is that a synth?
) that lends the song an other-worldly feel. I feel like I rsquo;m standing near a cemetery somewhere with a howl of mist about my feet facing some prophet who is about to tell me my due, and maybe that rsquo;s the whole point of the song, but I prefer Dylan rsquo;s version which is slow, yes, and melancholic as well, but less hellip; well, less absurdly tragic, which Ferry is almost famous for, sweeping that lank black hair off of his face as he swoops back with one of his ldquo;uh-ooo rsquo;s..
rdquo; (you know what I mean) which again, work in songs like ldquo;Slave to Love rdquo; but not here. It works in Avalon . There is no room for melodrama here.
Drama perhaps, but melodrama, no,and there is a world of difference between the two.
ldquo;If Not for You rdquo; isn rsquo;t too awful, it just sounds like an old man singing the song, and go ahead and tell me how old Dylan is, but so what? He again has adopted a new style, but we rsquo;re looking at covers of the original versions.
Perhaps that is just it; the whole album is very impressionistic. The harmonica weaves through pretty much every song, even songs that do not in their original have harmonica, so this is an addition, and not one that really works in every case. He would have done better to stick to the plan, and the throbbing bassline here is too much for this delicate song.
You need a strong bass to carry the melody, but this is just too strong and too up front. I want to hear the singer up front and not the band front and center, but instead it sounds to me just the reverse. This could be just a matter of taste.
The wicked guitar ending doesn rsquo;t work for me.
ldquo;Knockin rsquo; on Heaven rsquo;s Door rdquo; is one of the only songs on this album that really works. Ferry sounds more like Ferry and less like he rsquo;s trying to sound lsquo;different.
rsquo; It rsquo;s truer to the original and the arrangement is quite beautiful, as it is in pretty much every cover of this song, but I do particularly like this, so score one for Ferry here. He rsquo;s done a great job on this and sounds more sincere than anywhere else. Oddly, there harmonica here and it rsquo;s not exactly what Dylan did, but it works regardless and in some ways I like it even more.
It rsquo;s smart. It rsquo;s a good cover. What more can one say about this?
Gone is the ghostly voice and back are those beautiful, mellifluous, dulcet tones for which Ferry is known. The back-up singers are low-key enough and do not dominate the song but add to it in a really gentle way. There is a sweetness here and a melancholy (read: not melodrama) that works this time and I rsquo;m glad for it.
Kudos to Ferry for this one.
What can I say about ldquo;Positively 4th Street rdquo;, one of my favorite songs of all time? I don rsquo;t like it.
But I realize that there is no way I am ever going to like a cover of this unless it is phenomenal. Ferry is almost too laid-back here, and in doing so, he sounds like he is looking for sympathy, unlike Dylan rsquo;s big ldquo;fuck you rdquo; which is what I hear when I hear this song. I hear ldquo;Fuck you, you let me down, see you later, rdquo; but what I do not hear is any plea for sympathy at all.
Quite the opposite. I hear someone moving on.
Dylan once told Joan Baez (back in the 60s) that ldquo;years from now, people will be listening to this shit and reading this shit and saying it rsquo;s about this or that hellip; when I don rsquo;t know what the fuck it rsquo;s about, rdquo; and he laughed, according to Baez.
I paraphrase there, but you get the idea. Dylan knew mdash; like any artist or poet, singer or songwriter, anyone who creates for a living mdash; if you have success, any measure of success, then with that will come the critics who will interpret and misinterpret and who is to say who is more authoritative? Right now I rsquo;m reading Christopher Rick rsquo;s book on Dylan and sin and it rsquo;s fascinating, but is he right?
I don rsquo;t know. It rsquo;s interesting, but then, we can overlay a template onto anyone and force them into a system if we want to. Just plug the circuits into the fitting holes and somehow the whole thing lights up like a Christmas tree and we all go A-ha!
as if it suddenly all made sense. Some interpretations are better than others, and no, I rsquo;m not arguing for no interpretation, simply that we need to be careful of our own hubris.
Really, the song remains the same and I suppose I like to stay as close to original source material as possible.
If someone is going to tell me what Dylan has to say, then let it be Dylan. I do enjoy reading interpretations and books and read almost all of them, and find them fascinating.
I worked with my own husband on his Highway 61 Revisited (Mark Polizzotti, Continuum Books, 33 1/3 series) and had endless conversations about what this or that song means and it was great.
My point is this (I do love my husband, so let me preface this statement with that): I think his Highway 61 Revisited is about as close as any of the better critics can come to understanding Dylan. But do I think he is ldquo;more rdquo; or ldquo;less rdquo; right than you or I?
No, I do not.
I think he thought about it a lot, but at the end of the day, it rsquo;s all impressionistic. We cannot do much better than speculate. I do it all the time, don rsquo;t get me wrong.
There rsquo;s absolutely nothing wrong in speculation, it just doesn rsquo;t mean that we have always reached the right answer, no more than I have, as I write these words here about Ferry rsquo;s Dylanesque. It rsquo;s all relative. It rsquo;s not my cup of fur, but hey hellip;
This album isn t for me.
It s not for me because I know that with the exception of ldquo;Knockin rsquo; on Heaven rsquo;s Door rdquo;, I wouldn rsquo;t listen to it. It rsquo;s really that simple. If you want to know more about the songs on this album, then check out the track listing at Amazon.
I picked a few here. I could do a few more, like ldquo;The Times They Are A-Changin rdquo; which to me just sounds awful and out of context today. Yes, the times they are a-changin, but not like they were when this song was first recorded.
Dylan has and had a prescience that is virtually unmatched.
This was part of his success ndash; he could and did have his finger on the country rsquo;s pulse and knew what was going on (or down) at any time, pretty much. Songs like ldquo;A Hard Rain s A-Gonna Fall rdquo; were way ahead of their time and seemed almost to predict the future.
If you listen to the bootlegs, you rsquo;ll hear Dylan talk of ldquo;Goliaths rdquo; and ldquo;greater Goliaths rdquo; whose heads will continue to grow as we chop off the head of one after the other. There rsquo;s no winning, he seems to say. Maybe so.
Right now, it would seem so, but I rsquo;d like to ask him that. I really would. I see Goliaths today ndash; but are mine the same as his?
Everything is relative.
As Dylan said, every word means something else. We all have our different definitions of these words, even ldquo;people rdquo; he tells one interviewer in the documentary Don rsquo;t Look Back after she says, ldquo;Well, surely we can agree on what people are, can rsquo;t we?
rdquo; to which he replies, ldquo;I don rsquo;t know hellip; can we? rdquo;
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