Bob Dylan Group 5: Joshua Jansen, Alexandra Puls, Jake Parenteau, & Jared Larson Why Bob Dylan? • Bob Dylan is one of the greatest lyricists to have ever lived. • He has been an influential figure in music and culture for more than five decades. • He won a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize jury because of his compositions of poetic power. So... why else? • Bob Dylan is more than "The thing about rock'n'roll just a figure of rock is that for me anyway it music's developmental wasn't enough ... There were great catch-phrases history - he is a figure of and driving pulse societal development rhythms ... but the songs through his use of, as weren't serious or didn't mentioned: poetry! reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I Utilizing his uniquely got into folk music, it was • more of a serious type of intelligent lyrics, Dylan's thing. The songs are filled music often surrounded with more despair, more deeper topics such as sadness, more triumph, more faith in the depression, victory, the supernatural, much deeper supernatural, and feelings." - Bob Dylan countless others. Early Life • Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota on May 24, 1941. • Throughout his early years and teen years, Dylan spent most of his time listening to blues, country, and rock 'n' roll radio stations - with a particular musical affinity for those genres of country, rock 'n' roll, and traditional folk- music. • By age 10 he was a self-taught guitarist and also learned how to play harmonica. • He created and performed with many different bands during high school; doing covers of Danny and the Juniors, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard. Early Life Continued • 1959 Bob Dylan moved to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. • He performed at a local coffeehouse known as the Ten O'Clock Scholar. • He lived in an apartment above Gray's Campus Drug, which is now called The Loring Pasta Bar. • It was during his Dinkytown days that Robert Zimmerman began introducing himself as Bob Dylan. The Beginning • In May 1960, Bob Dylan dropped out of college and by January of '61 he was moving to New York City. • The reasoning for this: o He was hoping to perform there o Dylan wanted to visit his idol and biggest influence during his early days, Woody Guthrie (Guthrie was terribly sick with Huntington's Disease). • Dylan achieved both his hopes within only a short time. • He performed at various clubs in the Greenwich Village area. About Bob Dylan • Unlike anybody else at the time, regarded as the rock ‘n’ roll “poet-singer” • Has an innate ability to connect his words and songs with everybody who listens to his music • "[I] don't call myself a poet." - Bob Dylan About Bob Dylan • Likes speaking from the heart which, while poetic in nature, it is dissimilar by the lyrical value in conjunction with the “background music” • That is to say, Bob Dylan values the music as much as the lyrics - and points out the obvious error in saying one form of expressive art is more important than the other (which is the case with poetry; implying that heartfelt, poetic emotions are solely words, which is wrong in Bob Dylan’s eyes as it completely disregards the valuable emotional capabilities that come from musical compositions) Record Deal • October 1961, John Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia Records • March 1962 Bob Dylan was released. The album consisted of folk, blues, and gospel material. o The album only sold a whopping 5,000 copies • August 1962 Bob Dylan signed a management contract with Albert Grossman. • That same month he legally changed his name to Bob Dylan. Records Continued • May 1963, Dylan's second album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was released. • He had started to make his name as a singer and a songwriter. o This album included many protest style songs. Early Albums • “The Times They Are a-Changin'” was released, which was far ahead of its time through its stylistic quality that was recognized later on as mixing protest songs with personal lyrics. • By this time, Dylan was playing around 200 concerts a year! • “Another Side of Bob Dylan” was recorded in a single evening. • “Bringing It All Back Home” had a very different sound than the folk style Dylan was known for, the beginning of Bob Dylan's revolution Life Changes • 1965 Dylan married 25 year old model Shirley Noznisky. • 1966 Bob Dylan is involved in a terrible motorcycle accident with several broken neck vertebrae, a concussion, and lacerations of the face and scalp. o He was in critical condition for a week and bedridden for a month. o The accident left him amnesia and mild paralysis. • This accident hurt Dylan mentally as much as it did physically. He spent nine months in seclusion after the accident. • In 1968 Bob Dylan made his public re-entry with the release of another album Later On • Bob Dylan continued making many more albums, all having powerful and meaningful lyrics. • He has numerous achievements and has done many things in the music industry. • He is alive and well today and is still writing, producing, and selling his music. o Dylan has also published 3 books of drawings and paintings. Musical Analysis of "Like a Rolling Stone" The song that we have chosen to analyze is: "Like a Rolling Stone" We chose this piece of music because it was one of Bob Dylan's most successful hits, and had an interesting array of instruments for a folk song of that time period. Musical Aspects of "Like a Rolling Stone" Instrumentation: • Electronic keyboard/synthesizer • Harmonica Vocals (singular vocalist) • Electric guitar • Basic folk drum kit (kick, snare, & ride/crash) Meter: • Binary-Strophic Form • Quadruple Metered; but, certain parts of the song are best described as Duple Meters Musical Aspects of "Like a Rolling Stone" Beat Subdivision: • Main vocal beats are 1 & 3 o Syncopating drums on 2 & 4 • Mezzo-Forte ([mf]) verses; crescendos into choruses at [f]; decrescendos back to [mf] for next verse o This notes one of the musical elements, which will be discussed shortly, regarding "dynamics" of this composition Texture: • Polyphonic Imitative Musical Form of "Like a Rolling Stone" Verse-Chorus Song Form [ABABABAB song format - 4 verses] *(A) Verses 1-4 change lyrics, each verse **(B) Chorus in-between each of the verses Chorus ("How does it feel? ...") 4/4 time; 10 measures the first time; 12 measures in choruses 2-4 (*); [AAABC form] Verse (new lyrics for each new verse) 4/4 time; 20 measures each; [AABCD form] Musical Structure & Elements of "Like a Rolling Stone" Rhythm: o Syncopation from drums Melody: o Vocals are conjunct mainly, but become disjunct approaching the verse-chorus changes o Guitar riffs and harmonica fills take charge of the melody intermittently throughout the course of the song, using a soloistic approach to keeping the verses different from one-another (solos seem improvised, which impressions the listener to mark a change within the song's format) Musical Structure & Elements of "Like a Rolling Stone" Harmony: o The guitar and keyboard often are within consonance, but the song employs a "Call & Response" tactic within the verses and choruses; calling for major-minor (and vice-versa) transitions between instruments, with the adjacent vocal melody Tone: o The range and register of this song stays mostly within the bass and treble-clef area, with exceptions from vocals approaching changes in verse to chorus transitioning Analytical Discussion of "Like a Rolling Stone" Overall, from an analytical standpoint, I believe that this song follows a pretty standard approach to folk-music; however, it takes an atypical twist (which is quite characteristic for Bob Dylan to do in his music) that starts with the instrumentation and carries on throughout the piece. The instruments used are mainly electronic, which is very different from the folk-music of the time. Most songs were acoustic, as it was customary of the genre to contain those sounds - but this music showed a challenge to normative culture in all aspects; including the simplest, most "key" element of all: instrumentation. Continued Analytical Discussion of "Like a Rolling Stone" To follow that analysis of the base-layer for the song, it can also be noted that the form is very simplistically typical, yet cleverly unique to this genre of music. [ABAB] format is one of the most easily composed types of arrangements: it is the use of an initial verse, followed by a chorus, then followed by a lyrically new verse, succeeded by the same and unchanging chorus - so on, and so forth. While this is widely used in the folk-music style, the intricacies of Bob Dylan can be found in the way that he augments the song's structure. Continued Analytical Discussion of "Like a Rolling Stone" The song structure, technically, follows a format of [ABACACAC] because the first chorus only contains 10 measures, while the other three contain 12 measures. This simple twisting of this streamlined musicality style, from which the generic backbone of this time period's folk-music is based upon, created many forces for change; thus, the beginnings of "crossing-over" from folk-music to contemporary rock 'n' roll! Continued Analytical Discussion of "Like a Rolling Stone" Intricacies are also found within each of the verses and choruses. The patterns in the verses consist of [AABCD] form, which is used for soloing and availability for lyrical changes. The patterns following those are the choruses, which use an oddly effective [AAABC] form. The reason that I call this structure "odd" is because it is atypical for this style to try to change the "call & response" progression between the melody and harmony.