Bob Dylan's "Visions of Johanna"

This morning I listened to the first disc of Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde (and I'm listening to the second disc now).  I found something in "Visions of Johanna" that both excited and confused me.

At about 3:49, there's a short guitar riff:

This is the fifth song I've found that riff in (which is the exciting part), but now I have even less of an answer to questions of influence (which is the confusing part).

I first found that riff in the Zombies' "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" (there are two versions on Into the Afterlife, but that riff is only in the second version - the one with fuzz guitar).  Then I found it in the Moody Blues' "So Deep within You" from On the Threshold of a Dream.  A few months later, I stumbled across it in the Tremeloes' "Hello World."  And then I also found it (albeit on piano) in Colin Blunstone's "Caroline Goodbye" from One Year.

"Visions of Johanna" predates all of those though.  It's from 1966.  "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" is from 1968 (but wasn't released until 2007).  "So Deep within You" and "Hello World" are both from 1969, and "Caroline Goodbye" is from 1971.

I'd postulated that there was some influence between "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" and "So Deep within You" because the Zombies and Moody Blues knew each other, and there's almost certainly some connection between "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" and "Caroline Goodbye" because Rod Argent was the leader of the Zombies and played piano for Blunstone (who was also in the Zombies).  I'd had trouble fitting in the Tremeloes though.

Finding that same phrase in this Dylan song still doesn't clear up everything, but it does introduce a new line of influence.  The Tremeloes covered Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" at the end of 1968, so they were familiar with him, possibly including that particular riff in "Visions of Johanna."

A strumming pattern in "Visions of Johanna" also stuck out to me.  I'm not sure if I have the chord phrasing right, but it's something like:

There's an Asus4 that modulates to an A major.  With a slight difference (modulating to A minor rather than A major) that same rhythm is in the Zombies' demo of "Call of the Night":

"Call of the Night" was later re-workt into (and put into a different key for) "Girl Help Me," but that feature is present there too.

I'm not sure if any of this really provides evidence that any of these musicians were influenced by an-other, but their songs at least share some similar features that I thought interesting.

The Beatles' "Ticket to Ride"

I'm listening to the Beatles' The Beatles 1 and working on my transcriptions of their songs for my Beatle-specific project.  I noticed something about the chorus of "Ticket to Ride."  Two of the four lines are "She oughta think twice; she oughta do right by me."  It's very similar to the last line of each verse (and also the title) of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," except that where Dylan says not to think twice, the Beatles say "she oughta think twice."  The "think twice" and "(al)right" are the two similar elements.

Apparently, "Ticket to Ride" is more of a John Lennon song than a Paul McCartney song, and since he mentioned that "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" from Help! (the same album that "Ticket to Ride" appears on) is from his "Dylan period," it seems a bit more likely that "Ticket to Ride" had some of that Dylan influence too.

Bob Dylan's "All I Really Wanna Do"

This morning I listened to Another Side of Bob Dylan, and I noticed something about the melody of "All I Really Wanna Do," the opening track.

As Dylan (or, rather, his narrator) lists the things that he doesn't want to do ("I ain't lookin' to compete with you / Beat or cheat or mistreat you...") the melody is descending by scale degrees.  It's (roughly) the same descending phrase (D, C#, B, A); he just switches octaves between each line.  When he gets to the "All I really wanna do / Is, baby, be friends with you," the melody ascends, and the intervals are usually larger than just a half-step or whole-step.  It's something like E, F#, A, A', A, C#, B, A, C#, A (that doesn't include repeated notes).

There's a relationship between what the narrator says he does or doesn't want to do and the way in which he sings them.  The things he doesn't want to do are sung to a descending melody that - while not exactly boring - isn't very interesting because it's built on those scale degrees.  The thing he does want to do is ascending and melodically sounds more interesting because it has those larger intervals.

The Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"

Last year, I re-read The Beatles Anthology, and I made a note of page 158, where John Lennon says that "'You've Got to Hide Your Love Away' is my Dylan period.'"  I'd thought I noticed a resemblance between the chords of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," but I never got around to investigating that.  Listening to it now though, I discovered a lyrical similarity.  "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" has the line "Gather ‘round, all you clowns" where Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" starts with "Come gather 'round, people, wherever you roam" (incidentally, I think Dylan took that line from Woody Guthrie).  Unless Lennon hadn't mentioned "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" in his "Dylan period," I would just think that resemblance a similarity (if I would have remarked it at all), but because he did mention it, I think that phrase is a bit of Dylan's influence.

Neil Young's Harvest

This morning I listened to Neil Young's Harvest.  I'm fairly certain it's only the second time I've listened to it.  In any case, I found a Bob Dylan reference in "Out on the Weekend."  One of the later verses start with the lines. "She got pictures on the wall - / They make me look up / From her big brass bed," which has the same phrase as Bob Dylan's "Lay lady lay / Lay across my big brass bed" from "Lay Lady Lay" on Nashville Skyline.

I'm less sure on this, but I think "Are You Ready for the Country?" starts with a slight reference to Little Richard's "Slippin' and Slidin'."  The first line of both songs is "Slippin' and a-slidin'," and the melodies are faintly similar (although the tempo on "Are You Ready for the Country?" is much slower).  I'm not as convinced on this reference as I am the Bob Dylan one though.  Although I hadn't really thought of Bob Dylan and Neil Young in the same sphere, they do have some similarities (like country influences and harmonica playing), whereas there seems to be a greater distance between Neil Young and Little Richard.  It's certainly possible that it is a reference to "Slippin' and Slidin'," but I'm hesitant to assert it, especially since I haven't listened to this album very much and don't know much about Neil Young's solo career.

Paul Revere & the Raiders' "The Great Airplane Strike" and "Action"

As I alluded to in my last post, I just listened to Paul Revere & the Raiders' Greatest Hits.  I found two different instances of what I think are their imitations of other musicians' styles.

First, "The Great Airplane Strike," which has some Dylanesque qualities in the lyrics.  More specifically, it's a lot like "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" from Bringing It All Back Home.  They're both long, involved stories told in past tense.  Additionally, both feature a series of characters that the singer/narrator has conversations with.  I realize that's kind of a broad statement, but those conversations are narrated in the same way - in a very brief fashion in which inflections of said are frequently used.

Part of the second verse of "The Great Airplane Strike":

The man said I could ride the wing and I said that was fine
He said I could fund your reservation and put the plane on hold
He comes back and said sorry but that wing space's just been sold

The sixth verse of "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" (found here):

Well, I rapped upon a house
With the U.S. flag upon display
I said, “Could you help me out
I got some friends down the way”
The man says, “Get out of here
I’ll tear you limb from limb”
I said, “You know they refused Jesus, too”
He said, “You’re not Him
Get out of here before I break your bones
I ain’t your pop”
I decided to have him arrested
And I went looking for a cop

Both songs are also very loosely connected in a narrative sense.  Almost any verse of Bob Dylan's song provides an example, but the best example in Paul Revere & the Raiders' is the fire the singer/narrator builds in the washroom, to which the panicked janitor replies, "That's all right" once the situation is explained.  I guess it's a lack of real-world reactions and situations that the songs have in common.

Even the title "The Great Airplane Strike" seems to suggest some of Dylan's more protest-influenced songs from a few years earlier.

According to the liner notes, "The Great Airplane Strike" was recorded on 18 July 1966, well after "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream," but still while Dylan was in his electric and enigmatic period.

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Second, "Action" seems to be a nod to the style of the early Beach Boys.  At the beginning and ending of the song, there are layers of vocals.  The last syllable of "Oh, baby, come on" is sustained while the line "Let me take you where the action is" comes in.  And then "Oh, baby, come on" starts again before "Let me take you where the action is" has quite finished.

This same technique is used on the Beach Boys' "Catch a Wave."  In the second verse, the line "all the surfers going strong" turns into a single held note that supports the next line - "they said it wouldn't last too long."

During the verses of "Action," the backing vocals are just "ooh"s in a style reminiscent of the Beach Boys.  Particularly in the first verse, this association is strengthened through the line "In every little town across the U.S.A.," recalling the Beach Boys' "Surfin' U.S.A." and its catalogue of places.  Two other verses include the line "Dance, dance, dance," which - obviously - is the title of "Dance, Dance, Dance," which appeared on the Beach Boys' Today!

Looking at the data in the liner notes provides more credence for this pastiche.  "Action" was recorded on 5 August 1965, well after "Surfin' U.S.A." and "Catch a Wave" and a few months after Today!  Furthermore, one of the writers is "S. Venet," the brother of Nik Venet, who produced some of the Beach Boys' early material.

Bob Dylan's "Jokerman"

I'm listening to Bob Dylan's The Essential Bob Dylan.  Some of these later songs I don't know very well because my Dylan knowledge (sparse as it is) is mostly centered around the mid-60s albums.  But in any case, I noticed that in "Jokerman," he quotes the old standard "Fools Rush In" in the line "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

The Byrds' The Byrds Play Dylan

I’m currently listening to the Byrds’ The Byrds Play Dylan, and I don’t understand why it isn’t sequenced chronologically.  Either chronology - the Byrds’ recording these songs or Dylan’s writing them - would suffice.  But there are songs from 1969 stuck in between songs from 1965, and I just don’t understand how that was a conscious decision anyone made.

I read a book about Dylan earlier this year (Andy Gill’s Bob Dylan:  The Stories behind the Songs 1962-1969), and one of the points it made was that Dylan was a constantly-evolving artist.  There was the early folk stuff, then the protest songs, then he went electric, and then back to roots music.  Not all of those distinctions would necessarily come across in the Byrds’ versions of these songs, but I still think it would be better to sequence the album chronologically.

Even from a more Byrds-favoring perspective, the sequencing is weird.  Songs that were originally on the same album are separated in the track listing by four or five places, and the positions of those songs on the original albums are disregarded.  Both “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and “Nothing Was Delivered” were on Sweetheart of the Rodeo, with “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” starting off the album, but here, it comes five tracks after “Nothing Was Delivered.”  Amazingly, ”Mr. Tambourine Man” the Byrds’ debut single (and therefore first Dylan cover) is track six.  The sequencing is just all over the place.

Bob Dylan's "North Country Blues"

Recently, I’ve been reading a book by Andy Gill about Bob Dylan’s songs from 1962 to 1969, so after I read about a particular album, I listen to it.  Gill mentions that some of the melodies that Dylan uses are from older folk songs.  For example, he says that “Girl from the North Country” and “Boots of Spanish Leather” bear some melodic resemblance to “Scarborough Fair.”

I’m in the midst of listening to The Times They Are A-Changin’, and I realized that the melody of “North Country Blues” is similar to the melody of the folk song “Barbara Allen.”

Gill also mentions that an-other musician who was inspired by folk songs - and “Scarborough Fair” in particular - is Paul Simon.  One of the bonus tracks for the Sounds of Silence album is “Barbriallen” - a variation of “Barbara Allen.”  So it seems that “Barbara Allen” was as important as “Scarborough Fair.”