And as he was better at it, he practised them more, and learned how to do them better.1969 song by Bob Dylan "To Be Alone with You" Maybe Bob always has been better at the songs of separation, leaving and loneliness than the songs of love. As so often the chronology of the songs is interesting at this point. (Not that we had one in the little London flat I was brought up in, but you know what I am mean). Maybe I have, in all the years I have known the song, not being ready for a return to the nursery. I’m closer to All Music however with hearing it almost as a nursery rhyme, “I’ll always thank the Lord/When my working day is through/I get my sweet reward/To be alone with you.” Not irredeemably so, because I suspect the earlier version s without all the extra instrumentation could have worked better – if maybe he had given a little more attention to the lyrics.ĪllMusic liked the song and found all these songs, “so effective in displaying the down-home, country values that Dylan was attempting to convey.” OK, so it is probably just me, brought up and living in another country, not fully appreciating the nuances of what I hear. It was and is the very weakest of the four. We’re told that the other songs that Dylan had written for the album before he got to the studio were “Lay Lady Lay”, “I Threw It All Away” and “One More Night”. Apparently 20 years later Dylan suddenly started playing it on the Never Ending Tour and because the words were fairly indecipherable it actually became quite an interesting song. So the promise dies away, and it’s just a song that could have been but wasn’t. But no, we get everyday chords and everyday lyrics. oh….ĭylan on 10% would instead have given us the unexpected in the lyrics. However fade that out of your mind and y0u actually have something quite interesting… Until the middle 8, which could make or break it, broke it.Ī Dylan on even 10% of his normal form would have avoided the chord sequence of A E F# B which we so utterly expect that when it comes is just…. “Hey listen Dad I can do this.” “OK son, yes you can. I personally blame the pianist, whose work is out of context, crude, jarring and just erghhh… I think I was playing like that when I was about six years old – no imagination, no originality, I’d just learned it from rock n roll records and was imitating. And that very gentle light start suggests he might be halfway there.īut it never happens. The fact is that Dylan had easily enough talent each day before he woke up and switched on the light to be able to do something very unusual, interesting and exciting with this song. Plus that false modulation in “Too many thoughts” it is too, too, much. And then to sing the last line of the 8 unaccompanied is just so everyday, so much what everyone would do in the middle 8 of every song of this type. Fine – that’s ok if it were to be the nighttime that was the right time to … something very unexpected. Which is about as hackneyed as you can get. Dylan can and does use platitudes and common phrases, but he gets away with it usually by being unexpected in the music, or having given us the everyday phrase, takes us off to somewhere unexpected. If you listen to the first two verses which are taken in a slightly lighter manner than what happens later, before the middle 8 starts to stretch the simplicity and instead gives us what everyone else would have done, then you can have the feeling that despite the simplicity this really could actually turn into a beautiful or at least memorable love song.īut where it all goes wrong is in the middle 8. To be Alone with You is a dead simple song that sticks to the standard format of chords and structure, and it has been suggested in an interview by Dylan that it was part of an experiment musically to grasp something new, but in which that “something” remained forever out of reach.Īnd yes the song does degenerate into, well, not the ordinary, because Bob is never that, but less than it might have been. They say that nighttime is the right timeĪnd oh… I find that hard to take from a man who has given me so many phrases that have peppered my life from teenager to pensioner. Which always makes me think this could have been a delightful song, worthy of Dylan – or at least worth playing once in a way just for old times sake.īut then, talk about throwing it all away we get It’s not brilliant, it’s not a revelation. There is something really rather charming, slightly unexpected, a little unusual in that verse.
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