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I am currently struggling with this unwieldy monster:

Bob Dylan: The Lyrics Since 1962.

A Chrimble present from someone here, despite it’s unwieldy nature, I’ve barely taken my head out of it since it arrived, and it is a total revelation.

Despite its user-unfriendly stats (it’s 12.7 inches by 13.5 inches, 3 inches thick, and – with thick heavy paper, and thin card dividers – weighs in at a hefty 13.1 pounds) it instantly replaced my previous Dylan lyric books:

Now, it only adds three albums, and 2 volumes of The Bootleg Series, but these three books have far fewer than maybe 50 to a 100 lyrics in common, and many of those are for songs Bob has never released.

How can that be so?

Well, 1962-1985 and 1962-2001 contain Dylan’s lyrics as published. I know of no artist whose published lyrics are so wildly different to the lyrics he actually sings, and this latest isn’t another collection of his published lyrics, but rather based on transcriptions of what he actually sings.

Here is just an example of the difference, here is the published lyric for a verse from a song called Isis:

She said, “Where ya been?” I said, “No place special”
She said, “You look different.” I said, “Well, not quite”
She said, “You been gone.” I said, “That’s only natural”
She said, “You gonna stay?” I said, “Yeah, I jus’ might”

However, this is the lyric Bob actually sings:

She said, “Where ya been?” I said, “No place special”
She said, “You look different.” I said, “Well, I guess”
She said, “You been gone.” I said, “That’s only natural”
She said, “You gonna stay?” I said, “If you want me to, yes”

As you can see, the sung lyric has a completely different rhyme scheme in lines 2 & 4 to the published lyric.

And this new volume doesn’t only include the sung lyric as it originally appeared, but any variations on the sung lyric that has been officially released over the years, and Bob has ALWAYS played with his lyrics over the years. The majority of songs in this book give at least two different versions of any lyric, while many have a half-dozen or more different versions, sometimes minor variations, other times completely different.

I’m learning parts of his songs that I could never quite work out before, merely knowing that what he was singing didn’t match the published lyric.

It is a revelation, and the lyric book that Dylan has deserved and needed ever since his first attempt with Writings & Drawings in 1973.

Currently reading:

My edition is an old Wordsworth Classics (i.e. the cheap books so poor people can read too >.>) and the font is so small it turns me right off reading it. I’m going to see if I can get a better edition of it especially as I’m enjoying the story.

I love me some Hardy. It’s funny he always thought his poetry was better than his novels but I prefer his novels far more than his poetry.