Hi folks here’s my take on DIRGE, the angst ridden track from PLANET WAVES….
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EXTRACTS
In many ways Dirge is presented like one of Dylan’s old protest songs. The six verses use a basic AABB rhyme scheme and a repeated regular rhythm. There are no choruses or refrains. The musical backdrop consists of a remarkable duet between Dylan’s characteristically rhythmic ‘stabbing’ piano and Robbie Robertson’s deft and melodious Spanish style acoustic guitar. At times the two instruments seem to be playing separate tunes. This is particularly effective as the song deals with conflicting emotions. Despite the apparently ‘doomy’ picture it paints, it also appears to offer considerable hope for the future. But the performance appears to signify an acceptance that, for an artist such as Dylan to fulfil his creative potential, inner conflicts cannot be ignored and emotional pain and struggles need to be confronted. A dirge is a traditional form of song which is performed at funerals to honour the dead. The Lyke Wake Dirge from North East England, which was performed by folk groups of 1960s and 70s such as Pentangle, was one famous example. The eloquent sadness of the song makes it a kind of dirge or elegy for his period of domestic bliss and relative obscurity.
Dylan’s narrator appears at first to be addressing a woman he has had a relationship with. As with other songs in which he appears to be directing his love – or his venom – towards a particular woman, many commentators have tried to link this song to his memories of women he was associated with in the mid-1960s, such as Suze Rotolo, Joan Baez, Edie Sedgwick or Nico. But no detailed historical or geographical context is given here. We learn almost nothing about this person in the song or any actual details of a relationship. As in Like a Rolling Stone, Dylan appears to be using the convention of a personal address to articulate his feelings about a particular woman. But the expression of rage in the songstrongly suggests that he has wider concerns about his relationship with fame and his public. Much of the narrator’s bile seems to be being directed not at the woman but at himself. This is apparent in the first line of the song, which is already shocking in its intensity and apparent emotional honesty: …I hate myself for loving you and the weakness that it showed…
The narrator then spits out some more venom: …Can’t recall a useful thing you ever did for me/ ‘Cept pat me on the back one time when I was on my knees… Now he appears to be addressing his inner demons again, although he could also be referring to the mass media – an entity for which Dylan has frequentlyexpressed nothing but contempt. Certainly he seems angry at the way he has been treated. He describes a ‘stand off’ between himself and this personification of an individual who he has been lambasting throughout the song: …We stared into each other’seyes ‘till one of us would break/ No use to apologise, what difference would it make?… Despite the pain he has been through, in the final verse he gives us a note of proud defiance, beginning with the most ‘ant-establishment’ lines he has delivered for many years: …So sing your praise of progress and of the Doom Machine/ The naked truth is still taboo wherever it can be seen… In other words, the kinds of injustices and horrors that the younger Dylan had railed against are still there. But right now he is waiting for his ‘crystal ball’ to provide him with the words he needs to point them out. He ends on a fairly hopeful, upbeat note: …Lady Luck, who shines on me, will tell you where I’m at… (a passing reference to Luck Be a Lady, a Frank Sinatra standard) Then he reiterates his opening statement, with a new coda: …I hate myself for loving you… he tells her again, but then becomes more equivocal …But I should get over that…
The song, in which Dylan has displayed such anger and self-loathing, now ends on a more hopeful note. However, the tongue in cheek cynicism of ‘I should get over that’ still conveys a degree of uncertainty. If the song is a dirge, it is announcing the death of one part of Dylan’s career and is looking hopefully towards the future. Planet Waves is something of a patchy album which was rather disappointing for many fans, who were hoping that – after what was, by the standards of those days, such a long hiatus between albums -he would produce something with the depth, fire and bitter humour of his classic 1965-66 period. Yet in Dirge, Wedding Song and a handful of the other tracks on the album, he showed that he was still capable of plumbing those depths. Soon he would be back on the road for a major tour, he would be hitting the folk clubs in Greenwich Village again and he would be producing albums of songs that stood comparison to his finest work. But within a year or two, his marriage – and thus his settled domestic life – had fallen apart.Dirge thus stands as a kind of elegy for that life and a testament to one of the uncomfortable truths of Dylan’s life – that personal happiness and artistic fulfilment and were, for him, rarely compatible. But Dirge demonstrates a renewed determination to find that elusive ‘gem’ that somehow, over the years, he had lost.
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