Credit: Bent Rej

Is this rare unfinished Bob Dylan track one of his best?

Sat 17 June 2023 17:00, UK

It speaks volumes that Bob Dylan was the first and only songwriter to date to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Much of his music over the past six decades has transcended mere audible enjoyment and deserves a read, taken as poetry as well. Dylan’s unique ability to convey striking imagery while leaving narratives to the artistic hands of mystery has served him extremely well.

The music by which we now familiarise Dylan came from his own pen, but he had a helping hand in the early days from some of the oldest names in the folk tradition. Early on, his small coffee house gigs would often be laden with Woody Guthrie covers and several other folk reworks. Guthrie’s political material, especially, taught a young Dylan that music was a powerful tool when used properly.

Word-dense folk music became a nurturing conduit for Dylan’s early songwriting. Within the folk community, sharing or stealing lyrics and progressions was part and parcel. On several occasions, Pete Seeger famously quoted Guthrie as saying, “That guy stole that from me, but I steal from everybody,” when discussing the folk writing process.

In the early 1960s, when confident enough in his own skills as a songwriter, Dylan migrated from the comfort covers to air some of his early compositions, including ‘Song To Woody’, ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’, ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’. His early rise to global acclaim was primarily attributable to poignant lyrics illuminating the injustice in modern society. Despite this success, by the mid-1960s, Dylan had seemingly outgrown the folk tradition, instead fancying himself as a rock musician and a Beat poet.

Dylan chartered unprecedented ground in 1965 with the release of Bringing it All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. With the controversial inclusion of the electric guitar came avant-garde lyrics reflective of his new friendship with Allen Ginsberg. By this point, much of Dylan’s music could be read like poetry, and some of the narratives were so mystical and evocative that one’s imagination would be constantly stimulated.

Over the past six decades, Dyan’s prolific career has ebbed and flowed in terms of artistic flair, but his lyrics have never ceased to inspire writers and songwriters through the generations. Though the ‘60s never repeated themselves, milestone moments like ‘Hurricane’, ‘Jokerman’, ‘Not Dark Yet’, ‘Mississippi’ and Murder Most Foul’ attest to Dylan’s ceaseless talent.

Today, I draw your attention to one such moment of magic that sadly never was. During the Hearts of Fire sessions of August 27th-28th, 1986, Dylan recorded a rough demo of an unfinished song called ‘To Fall In Love With You’. The unreleased ballad has fortunately been saved from the sands of time for us to appreciate.

Listen to the song below.