The incredible night Judy Collins heard Bob Dylan write a 1964 classic in her dressing gown behind a blue door
Different songwriters have different approaches to creating music. Consider the contrasting styles of Tom Petty and Bob Dylan for instance.
In fact, before we do that, it’s probably worth saying that regardless of how much people’s approach to writing may vary, it’s that variation that makes the process of creating art so beautiful. The end result may be the same, in that it doesn’t matter what the approach is, different artists can still wind up making excellent pieces of music. However, it’s the journey towards crafting that art which defines an artist, not the art themselves.
As such, when we dive into the different writing techniques of different musical greats, it’s worth remembering that neither of these approaches are right or wrong. Some musicians are able to churn out songs in one sitting, meanwhile, others will spend hours, days, weeks, even months pondering over different lines in a bid to get something perfect.
Tom Petty was one of those artists who could knock out a great track in no time. You’d be surprised just how many of his best pieces of music fell out of his brain in a matter of moments. For instance, when he wrote the song ‘Wildflowers’, he had a simple chord structure in mind, and then the vocals which would go over said chords came very quickly.
“I just took a deep breath and it came out. The whole song. Stream of consciousness: words, music, chords. Finished it,” he said, “I mean, I just played it into a tape recorder and I played the whole song and I never played it again. I actually only spent three and a half minutes on that whole song. So I’d come back for days playing that tape, thinking there must be something wrong here because this just came too easy. And then I realised that there’s probably nothing wrong at all.”
Meanwhile, Bob Dylan was the opposite. When he was writing lyrics for his songs, he would sit with different pads of paper for days on end, trying out a variety of lines and phrases, before scrumpling up draft after draft and starting all over again. It must have been a frustrating process at times, as Dylan wasn’t able to come up with songs as quick as his contemporaries; however, it was a blessing for those around him, as there were a lot of people close to Dylan who got to hear drafts of his classics before the rest of the world were lucky enough to do so.
One of these lucky listeners was Judy Collins. After attending the same party as Dylan, she woke up to the sound of him writing what would soon become one of the most famous folk songs of all time. Even though the heights of that song were yet to be truly realised, as Collins woke up from a party induced sleep, she knew that she was witnessing what would eventually become musical history.
“I was at a party at Al Grossman’s house in Woodstock,” she said, “And it was a party where Dylan was and Susie Rotolo and other people that I knew. And at night I was sleeping or passed out, what everyone did in those years. And I was upstairs on the third floor and I heard this voice coming up the stairs and it was Dylan writing ‘Tambourine Man’.”
She continued, “So I got my robe on, I went downstairs and I sat for 2 hours in front of this blue door behind which Dylan was writing ‘Tambourine Man’.“
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