When it comes to the forthcoming Bob Dylan album, Together Through Life, I’m someone who doesn’t even like reading previews by some of these critics who were allowed an early listen, like Alex Ross and David Fricke. I’d like to hear the album for myself. I regularly disagree with the critics on Dylan anyway, so why would I want my first impressions of the album to be tainted by their perceptions? Of-course, given that I choose to write about Dylan here, I don’t have much choice but to follow the latest news.

So, given that context, I have to admit to decidedly mixed feelings when I saw that the estimable Scott Warmuth has already started analyzing and finding sources for lyrics in some of the songs on the album, based on the early press reports. (Scott has found many references/paraphrases/quotes from literature in Dylan’s songs previously, notably from the work of Henry Timrod.) However, Scott’s work is not in any way mean-spirited — quite the opposite — and he has an uncanny talent for making these discoveries, and they are ones which can’t be ignored if you write about Dylan’s work (although one could understandably want to postpone consideration of it all).

What he’s been discovering in some lyrics from the new songs, as revealed to date, are references/paraphrases/quotes related to Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” and in particular, he thinks, to a modern “translation” of that work by David Wright. Read his latest post on it for specifics.

It has to be said that a continuing litany of discoveries along these lines can be disquieting to some fans, who might feel that the mystery is being robbed from the songs, or might just be wondering if they are fans of a common plagiarist after all. I think it’s important to have an idea of what Dylan is doing here, and how it fits into what he’s always done, to a significant extent — although it is also probably somewhat different these days, because he’s now 67 and not 22. But there has always been a great deal of synthesis going on in Bob’s songs, and he has always used other sources to create something that is uniquely his own. Think how out of The Parting Glass he made Restless Farewell, or how from Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye and Mrs. McGrath he created John Brown. Yet, while Dylan’s songs take those old songs as their launching point, they are completely different songs in the effect they have on the listener. While Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye and Mrs. McGrath effectively mock the returning wounded soldier himself, John Brown focuses on the expectations of the soldier’s mother. The Parting Glass is a very nice song, but, to me, it has barely a shade of the richness that Dylan imparts to his own Restless Farewell — for instance the stirring and poignant defiance in that final verse:

Oh a false clock tries to tick out my time
To disgrace, distract, and bother me.
And the dirt of gossip blows into my face,
And the dust of rumors covers me.
But if the arrow is straight
And the point is slick,
It can pierce through dust no matter how thick.

Fast forward all the way to the 1980s, and Dylan is still drawing from other sources in his work. As we know well, he has never ceased drawing from the old folk and blues songs that are part of his creative foundation, and he has also never ceased drawing from the one book whose words stay true, i.e. the Bible. However, in addition to these sources, his album Empire Burlesque is well known for including lines from films like “The Big Sleep” and “The Maltese Falcon.” And note this, in an interview about songwriting from twenty-four years ago with the same Bill Flanagan who has interviewed Bob regarding Together Through Life:

[Bob Dylan] A lot of times you’ll just hear things and you’ll know that these are the things that you want to put in your song. Whether you say them or not. They don’t have to be your particular thoughts. They just sound good, and somebody thinks them. Half my stuff falls along those lines. Somebody thinks them. I’m sure, when I’m singing something, that I’m not just singing it to sing it. I know that I’ve read it. Somebody’s said it. I’ve heard a voice say that. A song like “Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight” sort of falls into that category: “I’ll take you to a mountaintop and build you a house out of stainless steel.” That kind of stuff just passes by. A guy’s getting out of bed saying don’t talk to me; it’s leaving time. I didn’t originate those kinds of thoughts. I’ve felt them, but I didn’t originate them. They’re out there, so I just use them.

BILL FLANAGAN: Are there thoughts that go by that you resist writing about?

BOB DYLAN: Everything I’ve written about I can relate to. There’s a lot of stuff I hear that I wouldn’t write about, because it don’t mean anything to me. You hear people talk every day, and most of it goes in one ear and doesn’t even come out. Or it goes in then out the other. Bill Monroe once said he got his best thinking done when people were talking to him. I always liked that.

Not a whole lot of real thought goes into this stuff. It’s more or less remembering things and taking it down. Sometimes you’re just taking notes on stuff and then putting it all together. Sometimes it’s just the opposite. A lot of people ask, “What comes first, the words or melody?” I thought about that. It’s very rare that they don’t come together. Sometimes the words come first, sometimes the melody comes first, but that’s the exception. Most of the time the words and melody come at the same time, usually with the first line. With me it’s usually the first line. I know Bob Seger writes from hooks and titles. A lot of people do that. They come up with a line that sums up everything and then they have to go backwards and figure out how to fill it in. With me I usually start right at the beginning and then wonder where it’s going. I sometimes fill in the middle and the end at some other time, but I don’t usually work backwards.

So, Bob Dylan here is being entirely guileless about the mechanics of his songwriting. As I understand what he’s saying here and elsewhere, it goes like this: He carries a notebook and has his ear out for lines that resonate with him in one way or another. This part is not the songwriting itself, but more like a routine discipline. Later, he will generally begin writing a song on the basis of an inspiration. How do the lines he’s noted down get in there? Well, he clearly refers to them, and inserts them to punctuate or color or move along what’s going on in the song. You can see him maybe getting stuck at a certain point, then looking for a line that restarts his process. Meanwhile, the lines that he has accumulated in this way resonated with him for a reason; they reflected off of things going on his mind and his soul. They seemed true or revelatory in some way. And that’s really about it. That’s how he writes songs, according to himself. Except he comes up with things no ordinary person could come up with by using these techniques.

And no doubt his techniques have also evolved through the years. Remember his interview with the late Ed Bradley in 2004:

[Bradley] Does he ever look back at the music he’s written with surprise?

“I used to. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written,” says Dylan, who quotes from his 1964 classic, “It’s Alright, Ma.”

“Try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that, and it’s not Siegfried and Roy kind of magic, you know? It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic. And, you know, I did it. I did it at one time.”

Does he think he can do it again today? No, says Dylan. “You can’t do something forever,” he says. “I did it once, and I can do other things now. But, I can’t do that.”

Scott Warmuth is finding some of the sources for some of the “other things” that Dylan can do now, and it is an interesting illustration of a process which Dylan has already revealed. The end results are still Dylan’s songs, which (I think) stand as unique creations, quite distinct from the works from which he has drawn these phrases. People have argued and will argue that Dylan should credit his sources, when he uses these lines he has jotted down. I’ll let the courts decide (while actually hoping that courts never get involved). I know that it would make for some pretty unwieldy lyric sheets, and ones which I would not take much pleasure in reading.

Together Through Life: Dylan, Chaucer, Henry Timrod, Junichi Saga, Humphrey Bogart, and a cast of thousands? Well, I think we are the richer for it.

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