The most familiar song to the public where Dylan does some sweet singing is Lay Lady Lay, but it's disqualified. When the greatest lyricist of the modern era puts the line "You can have your cake and eat it too" into a song, he should be brought up on charges, not congratulated. Dylan, who brings songs from his new album, Modern Times, to the Fillmore Auditorium on Tuesday, has always been able to carry a tune, from the early Don't Think Twice, It's Alright to his new single, Someday Baby.
It's just that sometimes, apparently, he chooses not to. Next time someone tells you he can't sing, whip out any one of these songs and prove them wrong. A 1964 outtake from the '80s Biograph boxed set finds Dylan tenderly singing of a friend's unjust life sentence for an auto accident.
Based on the traditional folk song The Wind and the Rain, it's 16 stanzas and nearly eight minutes of hypnotic, understated singing, with Dylan's vocal constantly returning to the refrain of "Turn, turn, turn again." The Byrds found the beauty in the song after Dylan's gruff demo made its way to them. Dylan's stoned solo version on Live 1966 finds him exploring vocal nuances that he may not have remembered the next morning.
Fortunately, tape was rolling. A melody and vocal so beautiful that the likes of Joan Baez, Fleetwood Mac and Buck Owens have covered the song, even if its lyrics are too elliptical to understand: "She knows there's no success like failure / And that failure's no success at all." The original alternate version of the ultimate breakup song on Biograph captures a gorgeous vocal filled with pain as Dylan tries to hang on to a relationship he knows is gone forever: "I can change, I swear.
" A year later, Dylan would remake this as a roaring rocker recorded live in Fort Collins for the Hard Rain album, but the original Blood on the Tracks version rivals Simple Twist of Fate for its sweet singing. The final song on Blood on the Tracks has acoustic guitar work as tender as the bittersweet vocal, with Dylan bidding farewell to someone he loves but can't have. An unlikely semi-hit single where Dylan is again ambiguous about a lover: "I can't figure out whether I'm too good for you / Or you're too good for me.
" Mostly known from the Victoria's Secret commercials, this comes alive in concert. Fans who bought the special edition of Modern Times got the live version from the Grammys (with the dancing Soy Bomb dude regrettably edited out). Dylan roars the lines in his best wrath-of-God voice: "Did I hear someone tell a lie?
" By 1999, Dylan had lost much of his range but could conjure a steely smooth vocal. Structured with four verses, four bridges and four choruses, Things Have Changed examines the modern cultural landscape and says, in effect, "No thanks." Sheryl Crow ruined it, the Dixie Chicks didn't do much better, but Dylan nailed it on Love and Theft.
It's a weary tale of burned bridges and squandered opportunities: "So many things that we never will undo / I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too / . . .
You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way." OK, there are some songs on which Bob Dylan's singing falls short, including: Lenny Bruce: Perhaps his worst songwriting, certainly his worst melody line. Oh Sister: Oh brother.
Can we just blame this on co-writer Jacques Levy? Seven Days: He gave it to Ron Wood, who sounds more like Dylan than Dylan. He should have kept it that way.
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