Dylan Dissected #2: All Along The Watchtower

If you have visited my blog before, you've probably realised that I have changed my title from MrDylanRecords to 'This Is Not Our Fate'. I'm still toying around with a more permanent name for the blog, but at the moment I want to leave it as it is. The phrase is of course a lyric from one of my favourite Dylan songs, All Along the Watchtower. It is a song that perhaps surprisingly, took me a long time to warm up to. I always admired the song, but like so many others I preferred the electric version by Jimi Hendrix. It is only in the last few months that I have started to think more deeply not only about Watchtower, but the whole of Dylan's mysterious 1967 masterpiece, John Wesley Harding. The album has always fascinated me. Why and indeed how, could someone of the stature of Bob Dylan go from the claustrophobic, urban tone of an album like Blonde On Blonde to the parable-like musings of John Wesley Harding in just over a year. I deduce that he must have undergone a profound change of both mind and artistic intention. Of course he also recorded the infamous basement tapes in between these two masterworks, and although they contain much genius in their own right, I think we can see them as an aside in Dylan's album chronology. Where Blonde On Blonde seems schizophrenic, intoxicating and indulgent, John Wesley Harding seems quite the opposite; stripped back and grounded in a clear-minded morality. Although I prefer the former, I see JWH as a hugely bold artistic statement, an obvious attempt to distance himself from the drug induced chaos of the previous 2 years, which had seen him both rise and fall from the dizzying heights of fame and fortune. In a year where the rest of popular music was moving in the opposite direction towards psychedelia and the abstract, Dylan retreated to the serenity of Woodstock to regain some clarity and seek truth through his music.

After 3 stunning opening tracks that very much set the musical and lyrical mood for the album, we get the 2 and a half minute, All Along the Watchtower. This desperately short run time demands that the track to be concise and biting, which it more than delivers on. The track's intro lasts just 15 seconds with a driving guitar chord structure and a screeching harmonica layered over subdued yet noticeable drums. The instrumental does not change much, it doesn't have to. It does a great job of filling the gaps between Dylan's lines, which are clearly divided into two halves. In fact if you count the syllables of each half of each line, they almost exactly mirror each other, "There's too much confusion" (6 syllables) "I can't get no relief" (6 syllables). This way of structuring the song provides a sense of symmetry, forcing the listener to pay attention to every word. Unlike some of his earlier work which is much more descriptive and free-form, a concerted effort is made on Watchtower to make use of every word and syllable. This might not have worked as well as it does without such a disciplined structure in place, which is why the form is just as important to this song as the lyrics. The track reinforces my views on earlier Dylan songs and is something I touched on in my analysis of Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, the way he uses words to punctuate the music in order to create a nuanced and densely layered sound. The song couldn't be further from Sad Eyed Lady topically, yet it obeys the same principle of giving the words and music a sort of symbiotic relationship. In other words, the power is in both the music and words working together.

The track is just 12 lines long, which gives it a parable like quality. Dylan told Rolling Stone in 1968 that the album had 'no blank filler' and that there were no lines that you can 'poke your finger through'. Every word in All Along the Watchtower holds true to this, it has to in order to possess such power. Dylan manages to refrain from using descriptive words that he may have used just 1 or 2 years earlier, without sacrificing any of the imagery. In fact, Watchtower is easily one of his most vivid songs. The imagery of the joker and the thief, the businessmen and plowmen, the princes, barefoot servants and women, the riders approaching the watchtower, the wildcat growling. It is astonishing how Dylan manages to fit so many characters into 12 lines. He was playing to his very well established strength of storytelling and creating immersive visual worlds for his listeners, whilst also being very careful not to let pretty language overshadow the real point of the song, in this case being the joker, thief and their conversation. Perhaps this is why he reverses the verses, setting the scene for the encounter in the last stanza of the song instead of the first. This way round, the discussion between the joker and the thief is not taking place in a crowded, imperfect reality but in sort of vacuum. It is only when the last stanza is uttered that the listener can contextualise what is being said and interpret it. This delay in gratification is very interesting and in a funny way causes the listener to feel like the joker, confused and without relief. It also gives it a cyclical quality of being trapped in the chaos of life. Dylan spoke on this as well, stating he had purposefully not fulfilled the balladeers job on John Wesley Harding, instead reimagining how a story could be told in order to throw out any traditional sense of time.

Although I think the lyrics speak for themselves, lets take a deeper look at them. The opening 2 lines read:

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief

As Dylan had not yet set the stage for the encounter, the listener does not know where 'here' is. It has been speculated that the joker and the thief may represent the two men either side of Jesus at the crucifixion, in which case 'here' would be the apocolyptic situation they found themselves in. It can also be supposed that if the joker and the thief are in fact the two riders who approach the watchtower in the final stanza, then perhaps they have been imprisoned by the powers that be (the princes perhaps?). However there is no confirmation of this. In my opinion, I don't think it matters who they are or where they are. What is clear is that the thief is in distress, desperate for salvation from some opposing force in the world. He goes on to explain the root of his suffering:

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth

None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

These lines touch at the very heart of the human condition. The joker is observing a world where people live for worldly pleasures, performing their daily rituals without any idea of where they're going or what they're doing. He seems stuck in a godless world where everything is futile, where nobody knows the true worth of life. Dylan seems to also be observing the nature of social structures as well by juxtaposing the businessmen with the plowmen, yet without any obvious bias for either one. He is saying that no matter what our social status or our 'role' in the world, without the truth we are incomplete. It is at this point that the thief responds:

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke

But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate

So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”

It seems like he is saying that the businessmen and plowmen that the joker speaks of see life as meaningless, devoid of any purpose and truth. He is consoling the joker, attempting to put his doubts about the world around him to rest. He tells the joker that they've 'been through that', they've been in the position of these people and thus can understand its uselessness. He assures the joker that it is not their fate to live such a life and that they must push forward towards the truth. I think in these two stanzas Dylan encapsulates the two sides of the human psyche. The first displays our tendency to doubt the existence of meaning, and exhibit the need for distraction from our certain deaths, whilst the second displays a deeper and contradicting need to actively seek the truth, to never fully resign ourselves to a futile existence. The second verse pinpoints the moment of total clarity when the material world dissolves and a person realises that they must finally be strong. It echoes a line from It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) where Dylan states "you lose yourself, you reappear, you suddenly find you got nothing to fear". He is describing the awakening of a person from the perils of a broken world to a realisation that the truth is in fact out there. The last line of the stanza has obvious biblical implications. The thief acknowledges that they are running out of time. But until what exactly? It could be until Christ is crucified, or until his second coming to earth. These are the more likely interpretations, but the thief could also mean that they are simply getting old, they only have a short time left to live, therefore they must not mince words or waste time.

The final stanza puts the dialogue in some kind of context as we are plunged into one of Dylan's bizarre hotchpotch worlds, filled with interesting archetypes and imagery: 

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view

While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too

We can assume since the verse structure has been reversed that these 2 lines should be the first in the story. Princes keep the view from the watchtower, while women and servants come and go, presumably to satisfy the needs of wealthy men, symbolised by the princes. The power in these lines is their detachment from any sense of judgement. Dylan plays the observer, not the moral judicator. Without this bias we can seek something deeper in the world Dylan is depicting, and relate it to the words of the joker and the thief we have already heard. This kind of objectivity and straight talking is rare in music, even in Dylan's own work, although he struck upon it more times than most artists. There is not a single word or phrase wasted on Watchtower, every line develops the narrative and expands the consciousness of the listener. This lack of filler was clearly something Dylan was aiming to do on the song, and it wouldn't surprise me if he wrote it in a similar fashion to Like a Rolling Stone, by starting with a much longer set of lyrics and painstakingly refining it until it contained nothing but the vital information and imagery. The song concludes with these two lines:

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl

Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

The image of the wildcat could be symbolic of something or it could be one of the only descriptive devices in the song. Whatever the case it certainly serves to enrich the setting of the watchtower for the listener, perhaps placing it on the great rural planes of America where wildcats are most commonplace. Taking it more literally, the wildcat could symbolise the overwhelming forces of nature, capable of doing much more damage than mankind can. With the last two lines, Dylan conjures up a feeling of dread and an predicts an imminent storm for those in the watchtower. The wildcat could also represent some kind of evil, not quite upon those in the watchtower but within striking distance. Those in the watchtower can only hide from the truth for so long before it it is unescapable. The riders approach the watchtower, bringing with them the howling wind. This could also be a metaphor for the coming of truth to the unenlightened. A great shake up of the established order is underway, led by the two riders. But indeed if they are the joker and the thief, then perhaps the opening dialogue is evidence that their mission was unsuccessful. It is easy to theorise on the meaning of these last 4 lines, but ultimately Dylan wanted to leave Watchtower open-ended. The two parts are clearly related, but it is up to you to decide how they fit together. 

The biblical allusions in All Along The Watchtower are impossible to miss, and the track can certainly be read in a religious context, but I don't think it is required in order to get something from it. One thing's for sure though, Dylan's writing at this time was being heavily influenced by the large King James Bible that he kept on his kitchen table in Woodstock - he even talks about it in Chronicles. Despite claims that Bob was an atheist in his formative years, there is no doubting that he always had an interest in religion. Even his early work contains direct references to christianity, and by JWH nearly every track seems intimately linked with bible texts. With this song for instance we see strong similarities to a passage in the Book of Isaiah. On Watchtower and others on JWH, I feel Dylan manages to weave these deep moral threads into songs that are both alluring and thought provoking, whilst still maintaining his trademark storytelling. A decade later, he would embark on a series of albums dubbed his 'born again trilogy', which were ultimately branded as far more dogmatic and evangelical than what he gave us on John Wesley Harding. This is what gives the album a liberating quality. It never feels like we are being spoken down to by the narrator, but rather taught lessons about ourselves that perhaps we already knew but had long forgotten. The jarring nature of a song like Watchtower brings these deep truths back into our mind's eye and forces us to confront some difficult questions about ourselves and our society.

As is always the case with art, it is easy to conflate the artist with the work being produced. Understanding the context of where Dylan was at this point in his career may provide us with evidence of the song's origin and influences, but it is important to note that this is almost certainly not a personal song. Some have suggested that Dylan may have cast himself as the joker in Watchtower, along with Elvis as the thief for stealing African American music for the white race. For sure, the first verse does seem to be in line with how Dylan might have been feeling during the mid sixties. The world tour of '66 had all but killed him, and as he retreated to Woodstock it seemed he wanted one thing above all, a bit of relief. This is certainly one way to read the song, yet I feel it significantly dampens the transcendental power and mystery of it all. For me, this is a song that needs to be read objectively. It is really interesting to see the shift in Dylan's songwriting at this time. Having carved out the path for the modern singer-songwriter with his previous 7 albums, he seemed weary of having to carry such a responsibility on his shoulders. His work on this album could be seen as a regressive step back from the high water mark in creative expression that was Blonde on Blonde, but this is not the case. Instead it is an example of an artist digging back into the very roots of American music, and coming out with an album that sounded both old and new at the same time.

All Along The Watchtower is one of Dylan's most cryptic compositions. It attempts to force the listener to contemplate one of life's greatest questions, what is it all worth? Moreover, what might it cost to pursue to truth? For me, the song works because it can be read in a multitude of ways, not confined to its obvious biblical allusions but well anchored by them. The reverse verse structure combined with its unnerving instrumental has the listener unable to avoid its sense of an almost unbearable truth about the human species. Dylan clearly loves the song, having now played it a staggering 2257 times in concert, whilst it has also become one of his biggest hits. I view it as the majestic centrepiece on perhaps his most overlooked album, a track that continues to give me more and more each time I return to it.

I want to thank Nerdwriter1 on YouTube for his fantastic video about this song. His analysis formed the basis for this blog post and taught me many things that I didn't know about the track. I strongly encourage you all to go and check it out, along with the rest of his awesome channel!

DJ's Crowning Moment Amid Controversy at Oakmont

It is fast becoming a bigger part of our nature to rally together and quickly condemn any actions we consider unsavoury. Sport is no exception to this. We all want our opinions heard and validated, and we want this validation immediately. We often seek this through social media, where bandwagons can be hopped on with just one or taps of our screen. A perfect example of this quick condemnation and hyperbole was at last week's US Open, which concluded yesterday at Oakmont Country Club. Amid a nail biting final round battle, Dustin Johnson found himself enshrouded in a ruling controversy that ended up overshadowing his quite brilliant victory. The whole thing was as fascinating as it was perplexing, but flagged up a couple of key points which I think need to be mentioned.

The incident occurred on the 5th hole, where Johnson's ball ended up moving as he was about to address it. Doing the right thing, he called for a ruling there and then, claiming that he didn't cause the ball to move by grounding the club behind it. The coverage confirmed this and to my eye, the ball oscillated due to the green speeds rather than Johnson's putter. We moved on. A few holes later, a rules official confronted DJ on the tee, apparently telling him that he was to 'review some footage' after completing his round to determine whether a penalty was to be applied. Rightfully so I think, the commentary team were quick to jump on the USGA for not making an instant ruling, accusing them of throwing the whole tournament, and crucially the players, into confusion and ignorance as to where they stood. Were the chasing pack 1 back of Johnson or 2 back? Nobody knew.

As the round continued, the Sky commentators did not let up. Quickly, it was not an isolated incident, but a full blown assault on the competency of the USGA. The world's top players chimed in on twitter. Rory McIlroy claimed that he 'wouldn't hit another shot until this farce was rectified', a sentiment quickly echoed by Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth. When 3 of the top 5 players in the world are coming together to speak out against your organisation, it's probably best to act. Nevertheless, the round continued with no further announcements from the USGA. They had backed themselves into a corner that was virtually impossible to escape from unscathed.

The issue gained so much traction that even the normally level headed Ewan Murray was finding it increasingly difficult to report on the actual golf being played, repeatedly coming back to how it had 'ruined the championship'. It was at this point that I became rather annoyed by the whole thing. It seemed that the commentary team was putting politics before golf, jumping on the anti-USGA bandwagon and adding significant fuel to the fire. As much as I sympathised with the players and condemned the decision, the tournament still felt alive to me. There were still several players in with a shot of winning, and I wanted to enjoy the action as the players came down the stretch trying to win what had been a wonderful US Open. The other players in contention were far from immune from controversy however, and the commentary team continually attributed Shane Lowry's bad play to what had happened with DJ. The fact is, we don't know to what degree it affected him, or any of the players for that matter. It is all speculation. I agree that the decision was wrong, but the politics and the ranting should have been put aside until the final putt had dropped. For sure, if Dustin had lost as a result of the ruling then I might not be writing such an article, but he ended up winning comfortably.

In many ways, I actually found it fascinating to watch Johnson having to force himself through the situation and come out on top. He struck a couple of loose shots following the news, but then managed to bounce back, parring 15, 16 and 17 before his epic birdie on the last. I saw it as his coming of age moment. Ultimately it summed up what is so great about sport, the way it builds character and tests a person's will when the odds are stacked squarely against them. Golf will never be perfect, and there is certainly a debate to be had about the way the game's governing bodies should enforce the rules, but ironically it is often within this imperfection that we often see true greatness emerge.

I have very mixed feelings on both what happened and the reaction to it. The fact is that the USGA put on two of the best championships in the golfing calendar, and I don't think that they deserve the level of scorn they are receiving. By all means lets talk rationally about how they can prevent things like this from happening again, but simply hurling abuse at an organisation that involves hundreds of committed people is to devalue what really matters, the golf. I hope that Dustin's fantastic win will not be smudged too much by this, and that both the USGA and the golfing community as a whole can move on from it having learnt a lesson, whilst also being proud for hosting such a memorable championship. I for one thoroughly enjoyed it - roll on Royal Troon!

TRACK REVIEW: Kanye West - Champions

We are living in the post Pablo world. In the few months that we've had to digest the latest project from Mr West, he's been anything but silent. Endless twitter rants, the announcement of a new album and video game, and controversial edits of The Life of Pablo have kept Kanye very much in his natural habitat, the public eye. Now we have a new single, Champions, set to be the first track from the upcoming Cruel Winter, the second G.O.O.D Music collaboration album which I'm guessing will be dropped sometime late this year or early next. To call this a Kanye West track would be a mistake I think. He is not credited as a producer and raps only a very short verse on the song. Rather, Champions is a team effort, a G.O.O.D Music free for all where everyone gets their chance to brag for 30 seconds or so. As Kanye put it in his interview with Big Boi, where he premiered the track, "when you have the Avengers you have to give them a movie". Kanye obviously sees his label mates in this vein, as the best rappers in the world. Whether there is the evidence to back this up is another matter entirely.

The track takes no time at all to get going, with Quavo coming in with an intro that is also the interlude. It's a catchy few lines but fails to really stir up the energy that the bombastic beat requires. Kanye's verse is first, but before it gets going it's basically already over. I like the line "I'm about to hit the Ye button", but with that kind of set up I really wanted Kanye to go in and start spitting some hard bars. Instead his lines are mostly flat and the verse falls desperately short of what I wanted. Gucci Mane comes in next for one of his two verses, but this one is just 4 lines, again failing to really do anything at all for me. Big Sean doesn't do much to stop the rut either, although at least his verse is more than 20 seconds. Unlike so many people I don't actually hate Sean's delivery. I mean it's nothing special but it's passable. What I can't stand is his lack of adaptability and how he never seems to try anything fresh or new. This verse just reaffirms that. After this we get the obligatory 2 Chainz verse, which incidentally is my favourite on the track. He sounds dope on the beat, which seems to work with his voice instead of clash with it like many of the other rappers do. But even 2 Chainz can't string together any creative metaphors or rhyme schemes, and lyrically the verse is very bare bones. I get that a track like this is purely about bragging and ignorance, but at least give me a few bars people! Verse 5 is given to Yo Gotti, and at this point I've lost track of who's even rapping anymore. The main irony of calling these artists The Avengers is that in the movie each Avenger has his/her own unique superpower, but on Champions, there is barely anything to distinguish the artists from one another. They sound so similar and are rapping about the exact same topics. Yo Gotti's verse can be added to the growing list of throwaways on this track. Gucci closes the track with a really annoying verse, possibly my least favourite. Yet again none of the bars possess any thought or inventiveness, leaving me utterly bored by the end of it all.

The one saving grace for Champions is its hook, which without being super memorable, is at least catchy and distinct from the verses. I like Travis Scott's grandiose delivery and the statement that they run the city, which feels more akin to Kanye's Avengers claim. This is a track where I want to hear glorified arrogance and hyperbole. I think this hook is a good foundation for the rappers to really deliver this, but unfortunately virtually all of them fall flat. Ultimately the hook deserved a more audacious and ambitious set of verses. Something must also be said about the production on Champions, which was done by A-Trax, Lex Luger and Mike Dean. It's a decent turn up beat which sounds a lot like what we heard on Cruel Summer in 2011. Again I think if the rapping had delivered I might have been able to appreciate it a little more, but as it is I feel like it was spoiled slightly by how many of the rappers were going over it.

Champions does nothing revolutionary, in fact in many ways it is a step back for Ye and his G.O.O.D Music A-Team. I have nothing against this kind of hip hop when it's done with originality, but this just sounds so derivative to me. It may have sounded fresh in 2010, or even perhaps in 2013, but this is 2016. I'm looking for a new sound, creative lyrical ideas, especially if Kanye is putting these artists forward as the the pioneers of the genre. I will always hold Ye to a high standard simply because of his unbelievable track record and constant hunger to push the boundaries of what hip hop can be, but I fear he may be sacrificing this in order to follow trends. I don't think we should read too much into this track though. I still see some potential in a 2016 G.O.O.D Music project, but I sure hope it ends up at a higher standard than this.

Score: 50/100

TRACK REVIEW: Pusha T - Drug Dealers Anonymous

It' s Push season baby! One of the most underrated rappers in the game for some time, Pusha T, has released a track with none other than Jay Z! Hardly a surprise collaboration, but certainly a tantalising one. The track is slow and brooding, with an ear grabbing beat from DJ Dahi and both rappers spitting deliberately to the listeners. They sound like they have something to shift off their chests. This sounds like a track that is very much in the same ilk as Darkest Before Dawn, Pusha T's last project, released at the end of last year. Pusha's verse starts the track off in great fashion. People complain that he is one-dimensional and that he is "just a drug rapper". I think that is unfair. Sure, Pusha tends to stick to the confines of drug/coke rap, but he does it with such finesse and creativity that I hardly see it as a problem - in fact it might be a good thing. In this song he weaves some fantastic metaphors and imagery into the verse. "How many Madonna's can that Mazda fit? My brick talk is more than obvious, it's ominous" he raps, which is exactly how I feel about Pusha's place in hip hop. He may be predictable in terms of subject matter, but he never fails to sound hard-hitting and sincere. He forces your ears to stand to attention. He references the "He who casts the first stone" Bible verse and turns it into a glorious piece of braggadocio, before going on to cryptically note the time he anonymously sent truckloads of bottled water to Flint, Michigan after the water supply was contaminated with lead. Overall it's a great verse loaded with quotables and Pusha's delivery remains controlled but equally biting.

Jay's verse is of similar length, perhaps even slightly longer. I was fascinated to see how he well he would rap over this kind of minimal production as I felt that on his last project, Magna Carter Holy Grail, Hov hid a little bit too much behind overly indulgent production. On this track he proved that he's still got it in him to spit a whole verse of great bars. Almost every line felt miticulously crafted and well thought through. The context is set perfectly with a soundbite from TV host Tomi Lahren, who took a shot at Beyoncé during her halftime Super Bowl show, criticising the singer for being married to a 14 year drug dealer. From this point we know shit is about to get real. Hov starts by comparing himself to Federico Fellini and Sergio Tacchini, heavyweights in the film and fashion worlds. Worthy comparisons I think - after all he has released some of hip hop's greatest albums. He finds a really solid flow on the beat, rapping about his early days and how they shaped the mould for his current success. Jay has always held up his rags to riches story as something to constantly be celebrated and bragged about, like many rappers do. But with Hov's long history in the game and the limelight, a listener like myself can understand his story and come up much more deeply than other rappers. There are many memorable lines in this verse such as "Before Reasonable Doubt, the jury hung", a comment on the importance of that release and a nice play on words "jury hung' - "jewellery hung". I like how Hov avoided bragging too much about his current lifestyle and instead focussed more on his success-centered mindset that has been with him for several decades now. The balance of bragging, reminiscing on the past and clever pop culture references made it easily one of my favourite Jay Z verses in a long time.

This track has me really pumped for the release of King Push later this year. Pusha is riding the crest of a really big wave, and after King Kendrick I see him as being right up there as one of the best in the game right now. Hopefully the album can affirm this praise when it finally drops. I did have a Soundcloud link to post where you can listen to the track but unfortunately it has been taken down. For now it is only available to stream on Tidal. Damn exclusives!

Score: 85/100