Chronicles - Bob Dylan [74]
We lost two or three days just goofing around. Through it all, I started seeing that the song should have been more of an upbeat ballad. We tried breaking the song apart and adding melodic lines like a chorus, but it was too time consuming. Nothing was going to make any difference. Danny had a strong belief in the funk version. I didn’t think we were communicating very well and it was beginning to break my bloody heart. At one point things really began to boil. He got so frustrated, he flashed into a rage, swung around, flinging a metallic dobro like it was some kind of toy and smashed it to the floor with furious actions. There was a momentary silence in the room. A young girl, who’d been cataloging tracks and taking notes, stopped grinning and left in tears. Poor doll. I felt terrible for her. Everything was beginning to collapse and we hadn’t gotten started yet. We would have to let this song go. It was either too early or too late for “Political World.” We’d have to put it away and listen to it later. It might sound better. That can happen.
Next song we tried was “Most of the Time.” It didn’t have a melody so I would just have to strum it ’til I found one. I never did come up with any definite melody, only generic chords, but Dan thought he heard something. Something that turned into a slow, melancholy song. On this, Danny was contributing as much as any musician. He added layers of parts and soon the song seemed to have some kind of attitude and purpose. Trouble was that the lyrics weren’t putting me in there, where I wanted to be. It wasn’t busting out the way it should. I could have easily given up five or six lines if I had phrased the verses differently. For what we were doing, though, Dan’s treatment was fine. But it was just like the other song. I began to feel differently about it as we moved along. It seemed to have more to do about time itself than it did with me. I felt that the sound of a clock like Big Ben should be ticking right through the tune at various levels. A big-band treatment would have been okay, too. In my mind I was beginning to hear me singing the song with the Johnny Otis Orchestra. A lot of the lyrics needed to be shifted around and I began to feel blocked off. Danny put as much ambiance in this song as he could and he kept things from drifting, but this wasn’t a song that I really felt like changing my grip on. You could change the lyrics, but the patterns were set. The tune was gaining weight by the minute and none of its clothes were fitting. It was all dammed up and stagnant.
We worked it to a standstill. Dan would have to be a shaman to make this work. The song, which seemed unfinished to begin with, had just become more unfinished as we rolled on. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I thought I’d left all this recording aggravation in the past. I didn’t need this. It’s not like I despised the song, I just didn’t have the will to work on it. The lyrics were so full of cloudy meaning and there was nothing in the song that was transforming itself, not even with all the ambiance.
After sitting around and talking for a while with Danny and Malcolm, I recorded the song “Dignity” with only Brian and Willie. This was the first song we did that delivered things and didn’t just dream them. We listened to the playback and Dan got excited, said that he felt the song had plenty of promise and arranged to cut it the next night with Rockin’ Dopsie and His Cajun Band. There was nothing the matter with the song the way we had just cut it, with a minimum of instruments and the vocal up front, but I knew what Dan was trying to do and I wanted to see him do it, so I didn’t feel any pressure or stress about recutting the song. I didn’t think it was unreasonable.
On the way back to the house I passed the local movie theater