The song Bob Dylan wished he could have written
There comes a time in every musician’s life when they’re going to want to make a song Bob Dylan could be proud of.
It’s a noble effort for anyone to undertake, but a lot of people forget that Dylan’s songbook is about more than being incredibly verbose and making a few rallying cries every time they strap on an acoustic guitar. It had to be complex and simplistic at the same time, but there tended to be a few artists who were able to make songs that Dylan would have killed to have written himself.
Then again, songwriting was about more than simply writing down one’s thoughts for Dylan. He looked at his lyrics as poetry a lot of the time, and while anyone from his generation could have rested on their laurels and made a mint out of their old work, Dylan was never trying to be a nostalgia act. He was always in search of the next great song, and even on his later records, he was putting out tunes that hit like a sledgehammer the same way they did back in 1964.
Because when you think about it, every songwriter is chasing after that moment when the stars align as well. Paul McCartney would have gladly tried to recreate the day he wrote ‘Yesterday,’ and Noel Gallagher would have tried his hardest to see if he could make something as impactful as ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, but sometimes it just has to be the right time when someone’s strumming away and in tune with the muse.
That kind of practice worked great for Tom Petty, and Dylan didn’t take it for granted when he started writing his later tunes. But even for someone who dominated the folk sphere as he did, it was going to be a little bit complicated when everyone else started copying his style. It was one thing for Dylan to make masterful songs, but hearing everyone from The Byrds to Barry McGuire riding his coattails meant that he switched things up on every other record.
He didn’t want to be pinned down for inventing a genre by any means, but the ones that truly followed in his footsteps understood what he was getting at in songs like ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’. The tune might be set in stone as one of the finest protest tunes ever made, but the simplicity in the lyrics is what really struck people like Dicky Betts when he started writing tunes with the Allman Brothers Band.
Betts was not nearly as wordy as Dylan could be when making a song like ‘Ramblin’ Man’, but he remembered Dylan swooning over his signature tune, saying, “Bob wanted to do ‘Ramblin’ Man.’ I said, ‘You don’t know the words to that, do you?’ He said, ‘I know all the words to ‘Ramblin’ Man.’ I shoulda wrote that song myself.’ I said, ‘OK, let’s check. If you don’t know, just make shit up, and you’ll do well.’ So we sang ‘Ramblin’ Man.’ He sang every word exactly the way I wrote it.”
The song doesn’t necessarily sound like a Dylan tune in theory, but in practice, it works perfectly with his voice. This era of the Allmans embraced their Southern roots a little bit more, and since Dylan was always a lover of great country music, a simple story about a guy who drifts his way through town and the friends and lovers that he comes across feels like it was tailor-made for Dylan to sing.
I mean, ever since he started the Neverending Tour, the tune is practically Dylan’s life story set to music. He may have had his moments where he got personal on record, but if you look at a tune that’s all about a lonesome troubadour that was born to be moving from one city to the next, it’s hard not to think of Dylan in a cowboy hat and strumming away with a harmonica wrapped around his neck.
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