"What I do, IT SOUNDS DIFFERENT"

"My lyrics, some written as long as twenty years earlier, would now explode musicologically like an ice cloud. Nobody else played this way and I thought of it as a new form of music." Bob Dylan, Chronicles Volume One

When we met Bob, one thing that he said about his playing is that he tends to utilize a different timing than most other musicians, a timing that comes from a very old musical tradition, and that this is what makes his music sound different . Even if people don't realize it, this is why it sounds different.

Chronicles       Lonnie, Martha and Link      What I learned from Lonnie

He writes about this technique in Chronicles Volume One, attributing to it a significant role in the development of his sound (Don't have Chronicles Volume One yet? Check out this site to find a local, independent bookstore near you: http://www.booksense.com/store/index.jsp -- they will probably sell it but if not, ask them to! If you can't find it at your local bookseller, you can find it online here at amazon.com.) It is a method of playing he acquired a long time ago and returned to in the 80's in a way that revitalized his songs and concerts.

This method of playing appears fundamental and pivotal in Bob's musical development, and in particular in bringing his old songs to life on the stage and giving them a unique sound. This area of our website is therefore dedicated to exploring this sound and where it comes to life in Bob's performances.

To get started, please read the passages in Chronicles beginning on page 156 and ending on page 162, from "Returning from the emergency room with my arm entombed in plaster." to "Nothing would be exactly right." (Really you need to read the whole thing, but we are assuming that has been done by pretty much anyone on this website!). So that we can more easily discuss and refer to this, we have cited one particularly pertinent section of text below. We also cite and provide links to check out other music that Bob refers to which demonstrates this playing method.

While reading, please click on the links below to our discussion forum where we encourage you to read the comments of others and contribute your own. As much as possible, please use specific examples from live shows to illustrate the concepts. Don't worry if you feel like you don't fully understand it. We want to use this forum to develop an understanding of what Bob is talking about here and see where we can apply it to our own real life experiences with Bob's music and concerts.

From Chronicles Volume One

(pages 156-160)

Besides my devotion to a new vocal technique, something else would go along with helping me re-create my songs. It seemed like I had always accompanied myself on the guitar. I played in the casual Carter Family flat-picking style and the playing was more or less out of habit and routine. It always had been clear and readable but didn't reflect my psyche in any way. It didn't have to.

Please cite and discuss any performances in which you feel Bob has demonstrated this in his singing or playing which we made add to the cite by emailing us here.

The style had been practical, but now I was going to push that away from the table, too, and replace it with something more active with more definition of presence.

I didn't invent this style. It had been shown to me in the early 60's by Lonnie Johnson. Lonnie was the great jazz and blues artist from the 30's who was still performing in the 60's. Robert Johnson had learned a lot from him. Lonnie took me aside one night and showed me a style of playing based on an odd- instead of even-number system. He had me play chords and he demonstrated how to do it. This was just something he knew about, not necessarily something he used because he did so many different kinds of songs. He said, "This might help you," and I had the idea that he was showing me something secretive, though it didn't make sense to me at that time because I needed to strum the guitar in order to get my ideas across. It's a highly controlled system of playing and relates to the notes of a scale, how they combine numerically, how they form melodies out of triplets and are axiomatic to the rhythm and the chord changes.

If you are musically inclined and can recognize examples of this style in Bob's playing, or can add input that can clarify the style described, Please email here!

I never used this style, didn't see that there'd be any purpose to it. But now all of a sudden it came back to me, and I realized that this way of playing would revitalize my world. The method works on higher or lower degrees depending on different patterns and the syncopation of a piece. Very few would be converted to it because it had nothing to do with technique and musicians work their whole lives to be technically superior players. You probably wouldn't pay any attention to this method if you weren't a singer. It was easy for me to pick this up. I understood the rules and critical elements because Lonnie had showed them to me so crystal clear. It would be up to me now to expel everything that wasn't natural to it. I would have to master that style and sing to it.

The system works in a cyclical way. Because you're thinking in odd numbers instead of even numbers, you're playing with a different value system. Popular music is usually based on the number 2 and then filled in with fabrics, colors, effects, and technical wizardry to make a point. But the total effect is usually depressing and oppressive and a dead end which at the most can only last in a nostalgic way. If you're using an odd numerical system, things that strengthen a performance automatically begin to happen and make it memorable for the ages. You don't have to plan or think ahead. In a diatonic scale there are eight notes, in a pentatonic scale there are five. If you're using the first scale, and you hit 2, 5, and 7 to the phrase and then repeat it, a melody forms. Or you can use 2 three times. Or you can use 4 once and 7 twice. It's infinite what you can do, and each time you would create a different melody. The possibilities are endless. A song executes itself on several fronts and you can ignore musical customs. All you need is a drummer and a bass player, and all shortcomings become irrelevant as long as you stick to the system. With any type of imagination you can hit notes at intervals and between backbeats, creating counterpoint lines and then you sing off of it. There's no mystery to it and it's not a technical trick. The scheme is for real. For me, this style would be most advantageous, like a delicate design that would arrange the structure of whatever piece I was performing. The listener would recognize and feel the dynamics immediately. Things could explode or retreat back at any time and there would be no way to predict the consciousness of any song. And because this works on its own mathematical formula, it can't miss. I'm not a numerologist. I don't know why the number 3 is more metaphysically powerful than the number 2, but it is. Passion and enthusiasm, which sometimes can be enough to sway a crowd, aren't even necessary. You can manufacture faith out of nothing and there are an infinite number of patterns and lines that connect from key to key - all deceptively simple. You gain power with the least amount of effort, trust that the listeners make their own connections, and it's very seldom that they don't. Miscalculations can also cause no serious harm. As long as you recognize it, you can turn the dynamic around architecturally in a second.

A bit further on, Bob continues:

Those who had followed me for years and thought they knew my songs might be a little confounded by the way they now were about to be played. The total effect would be physiological, and triplet forms would fashion melodies at intervals. This is what would drive the song - not necessarily the lyrical content. I had perfect faith in this system and knew it would work. Playing this way appealed to me. A lot of folks would say that the songs were altered and others would say that this was the way they should have sounded in the first place. You could take your pick.

Choose a song that Bob has played for at least the last few years and discuss it, addressing ways that the song has changed or evolved. Email here.

Lonnie, Martha, and Link

In the same chapter of Chronicles Volume One, Bob refers to several other musicians who either showed him this style of playing directly (Lonnie Johnson) or demonstrated it in their own music. If you don't have any music by the artists mentioned, the following links will take you to the eMusic website where we were able to download music by all of the below artists. Hopefully this will enable you to hear this method as demonstrated in the music of these other artists.

Download Lonnie Johnson , Martha Reeves and Link Wray

Lonnie Johnson

Blues guitar simply would not have developed in the manner that it did if not for the prolific brilliance of Lonnie Johnson . He was there to help define the instrument's future within the genre and the genre's future itself at the very beginning, his melodic conception so far advanced from most of his pre-war peers as to inhabit a plane all his own. For more than 40 years, Johnson played blues, jazz, and ballads his way; he was a true blues originator whose influence hung heavy on a host of subsequent blues immortals.

Johnson 's extreme versatility doubtless stemmed in great part from growing up in the musically diverse Crescent City . Violin caught his ear initially, but he eventually made the guitar his passion, developing a style so fluid and inexorably melodic that instrumental backing seemed superfluous. He signed up with OKeh Records in 1925 and commenced to recording at an astonishing pace -- between 1925 and 1932, he cut an estimated 130 waxings. The red-hot duets he recorded with White jazz guitarist Eddie Lang (masquerading as Blind Willie Dunn ) in 1928-29 were utterly groundbreaking in their ceaseless invention. Johnson also recorded pioneering jazz efforts in 1927 with no less than Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Duke Ellington 's orchestra.

After enduring the Depression and moving to Chicago , Johnson came back to recording life with Bluebird for a five-year stint beginning in 1939. Under the ubiquitous Lester Melrose 's supervision, Johnson picked up right where he left off, selling quite a few copies of "He's a Jelly Roll Baker" for old Nipper. Johnson went with Cincinnati-based King Records in 1947 and promptly enjoyed one of the biggest hits of his uncommonly long career with the mellow ballad "Tomorrow Night," which topped the R&B charts for seven weeks in 1948. More hits followed posthaste: "Pleasing You (As Long as I Live)," "So Tired," and "Confused."

Time seemed to have passed Johnson by during the late '50s. He was toiling as a hotel janitor in Philadelphia when banjo player Elmer Snowden alerted Chris Albertson to his whereabouts. That rekindled a major comeback, Johnson cutting a series of albums for Prestige's Bluesville subsidary during the early '60s and venturing to Europe under the auspices of Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau 's American Folk Blues Festival banner in 1963. Finally, in 1969, Johnson was hit by a car in Toronto and died a year later from the effects of the accident.

Johnson 's influence was massive, touching everyone from Robert Johnson , whose seminal approach bore strong resemblance to that of his older namesake, to Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis , who each paid heartfelt tribute with versions of "Tomorrow Night" while at Sun. ~ Bill Dahl, All Music Guide

Martha Reeves

Motown's brightest female star after Diana Ross , Martha Reeves was the earthy, gospel-infused counterpart to her rival Ross ' uptown sophistication. With her backing group, the Vandellas, Reeves cut some of the brightest, most infectiously danceable R&B of her time. Unfortunately, she didn't fare as well after leaving Motown for a solo career in the '70s, and although she continued to perform for quite sometime, it was mostly on the oldies circuit, looking back over her past glories.

Reeves was born in Eufaula , AL , on July 18, 1941, and before she was even a year old, her family moved to Detroit . As a child, she sang in her grandfather's church and in school, and continued her vocal training through high school. After graduating in 1959, she joined a girl group called the Fascinations, and the following year co-founded the Del-Phis, whose membership included the future Vandellas . They cut a flop single for a Chess subsidiary in 1961; the same year, Reeves won a talent contest as a solo act and got a nightclub engagement performing as Martha LaVaille. There she was noticed by Motown exec William "Mickey" Stevenson , who invited her to stop by the label's offices. Reeves wasn't able to land an audition right away, but did parlay her visit into a secretarial job in the A&R department. She caught a lucky break when backup singers were needed for a recording session as quickly as possible, and so the Del-Phis wound up supporting Marvin Gaye on his first hit, 1962's "Stubborn Kind of Fellow." Stevenson was impressed enough to record a Del-Phis (renamed the Vels) single, "You'll Never Cherish a Love So True ('Til You Lose It)," and released it on Motown's Mel-O-Dy subsidiary. One day, Mary Wells failed to show up for a recording session, and musicians' union rules demanded that a lead vocalist be present on the mic -- so secretary Reeves was hastily tapped to sing "I'll Have to Let Him Go." That song went on to become the first single credited to the newly renamed Martha & the Vandellas in 1963; their second single, the ballad "Come and Get These Memories," reached the R&B Top Five.

The rest, of course, was history. Martha & the Vandellas racked up an impressive slate of Motown classics that included the Top Five smashes "(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave" and "Dancing in the Street," plus "Nowhere to Run," "I'm Ready for Love," "Jimmy Mack," and "Honey Chile," all of which made the R&B Top Five. Despite the occasional personnel turnover, and the fact that rivals the Supremes had become Motown's female group of choice, Martha & the Vandellas' run of success continued through 1967. Unfortunately, feeling the pressure to keep up, Reeves developed an addiction to prescription drugs, and in 1968 a bad acid trip prefigured a nervous breakdown that slowed the Vandellas' momentum even further. Although they continued to perform and record for several more years, they never matched the success of old and disbanded in December 1972 after a farewell concert in Detroit .

Meanwhile, Motown decided to transfer its offices from Detroit to Los Angeles . Reeves adamantly refused to move along with them and sued for release from her contract; she eventually won her independence and signed with MCA as a solo artist. She entered the studio with producer Richard Perry and a top session cast, and cut a monstrously expensive album that mixed rock, pop, and R&B covers, both vintage and contemporary. Martha Reeves was released in 1974 and sold very disappointingly, especially given its cost. Reeves sank deeper into a host of personal problems until she finally cleaned up and became a born-again Baptist in 1977. That year, she signed with Arista for The Rest of My Life, which blended '60s soul with disco-era production; once again, it sold poorly, and Reeves moved to Fantasy for 1978's even more disco-oriented We Meet Again , which featured four of her own compositions. After 1980's Gotta Keep Moving, Reeves gave up the ghost on her solo career. She spent the early '80s working on various Motown package tours, and eventually put together a new version of the Vandellas. In 1989, she reunited with original Vandellas Annette Sterling and Rosalind Holmes and cut the single "Step Into My Shoes" for British producer Ian Levine 's Motor City label. However, she mostly continued make her living on the nostalgia circuit. Reeves was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide

Link Wray

Link Wray may never get into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but his contribution to the language of rockin' guitar would still be a major one, even if he had never walked into another studio after cutting "Rumble." Quite simply, Link Wray invented the power chord, the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists. Listen to any of the tracks he recorded between that landmark instrumental in 1958 through his Swan recordings in the early '60s and you'll hear the blueprints for heavy metal, thrash, you name it. Though rock historians always like to draw a nice, clean line between the distorted electric guitar work that fuels early blues records to the late-'60s Hendrix - Clapton - Beck - Page - Townshend mob, with no stops in between, a quick spin of any of the sides Wray recorded during his golden decade punches holes in that theory right quick. If a direct line can be traced forward from a black blues musician crankin' up his amp and playing with a ton of violence and aggression to a young white guy doing a mutated form of same, the line points straight to Link Wray , no contest. Pete Townshend summed it up for more guitarists than he probably realized when he said, "He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and "'Rumble,'" I would have never picked up a guitar."

Everything that was handed down to today's current crop of headbangers from the likes of Led Zeppelin and the Who can be traced back to the guy from Dunn, NC, who started out in 1955 recording for Starday as a member of Lucky Wray & the Palomino Ranch Hands. You see, back in the early '50s, it was a different ball game altogether. Rock & roll hadn't become a national event in the United States yet, and if you were young and white and wanted to be in the music business, you had two avenues for possible career moves. You could be a pop-mush crooner like Perry Como or a hillbilly singer like the late Hank Williams , and that was about it. With country music all around him as a youth in North Carolina, the choice was obvious; Wray joined forces with his brothers Vernon and Doug , forming Lucky Wray & the Lazy Pine Wranglers, later changing the band name to the spiffier-sounding Palomino Ranch Hands . By the end of 1955, they had relocated outside of Washington , D.C. , and added Shorty Horton on bass. With Link , Horton , and brothers Doug and Vernon (" Lucky ," named after his gambling fortunes) handling drums and lead vocals respectively, they fell in with some local songwriters, and the results made it to vinyl as an EP on the local Kay label, with the rest of the sides being leased to Starday Records down in Texas.

But by 1958, the music had changed, and so had Wray 's life. With a lung missing from a bout with tuberculosis during his stint in the Korean War, Link was advised by his doctor to let brother Vernon do all the vocalizing. So Link started stretching out more and more on the guitar, coming up with one instrumental after another. By this time, the band had sweated down to a trio, and changed its name to the Ray Men. After a brief flirtation as a teen idol -- changing his name to Ray Vernon -- the third Wray brother became the group's producer/manager. Armed with a 1953 Gibson Les Paul, a dinky Premier amp, an Elvis sneer, and a black leather jacket, Link started playing the local record hops around the D.C. area with disc jockey Milt Grant, who became his de facto manager. One night during a typical set, says Link , "They wanted me to play a stroll. I didn't know any, so I made one up. I made up "'Rumble.'"

"Rumble" was originally issued on Archie Bleyer 's Cadence label back in 1958, and Bleyer was ready to pass on it when his daughter expressed excitement for the primitive instrumental, saying it reminded her of the rumble scenes in West Side Story. Bleyer renamed it (what its original title was back then, if any, is now lost to the mists of time), and "Rumble" jumped to number 16 on the national charts, despite the fact that it was banned from the radio in several markets (including New York City), becoming Wray 's signature tune to this day. But despite the success and notoriety of "Rumble," it turned out to be Wray 's only release on Cadence. Bleyer , under attack for putting out a record that was "promoting teenage gang warfare," wanted to clean Link and the boys up a bit, sending them down to Nashville to cut their next session with the Everly Brothers' production team calling the shots. The Wrays didn't see it that way, so they immediately struck a deal with Epic Records. Link 's follow-up to "Rumble" was the pounding, uptempo "Rawhide." The Les Paul had been swapped for a Danelectro Longhorn model (with the longest neck ever manufactured on a production line guitar), its "lipstick tube" pickups making every note of Link 's power chords sound like he was strumming with a tin can lid for a pick. The beat and sheer blister of it all was enough to get it up to number 23 on the national charts, and every kid who wore a black leather jacket and owned a hot rod had to have it.

But a pattern was emerging that would continue throughout much of Wray 's early career; the powers that be figured that if they could tone him down and dress him up, they'd sell way more records in the bargain. What all these producers and record execs failed to realize was the simplest of truths: if Duane Eddy twanged away for white, teenage America , Link Wray played for juvenile delinquent hoods, plain and simple. By the end of 1960, Wray found himself in the mucho-confining position of recording with full orchestras, doing dreck like "Danny Boy" and "Claire de Lune." But when these gems failed to chart as well, relations with Epic came to a close, and by years' end, Link and Vern formed their own label, Rumble Records.

Rumble's three lone issues included the original version of Wray 's next big hit, "Jack the Ripper." If "Rumble" sounded like gang warfare, then "Jack the Ripper" sounded like a high-speed car chase, which is exactly what it became the movie soundtrack for in the Richard Gere version of Breathless. Link 's amp was recorded at the end of a hotel staircase for maximum echo effect, while he pumped riffs through it that would become the seeds of a million metal songs. After kicking up noise locally for a couple of years, it was going through another period of disc jockey spins when Swan Records of Philadelphia picked it up and got it nationwide attention. Certainly Wray was at his most prolific during his tenure with Swan, and label president Bernie Binnick gave Link and Vernon pretty much free rein to do what they wanted. Turning the family chicken coop into a crude, three-track studio, the Wray family spent the next decade recording and experimenting with sounds and styles.

At least now they could succeed -- or fail -- on their own terms. Most of these sides were leased out as one-shot deals to a zillion microscopic labels under a variety of names like the Moon Men, the Spiders, the Fender Benders, etc. What fueled this period of maximum creativity is open to debate. A lot of it had to do with the fact that Link and the boys honed their particular brand of rockin' mayhem working some of the grimiest joints on the face of the planet when these tracks were cut. When Swan label chief Binnick was questioned as to how he could issue such wild-ass material, he would smile, throw his hands up in the air and say, "What can you do with an animal like that?"

As the new decade dawned, Link Wray 's sound and image were updated for the hippie marketplace. Wray 's career fortunes waxed and waned throughout the '70s, a muddle of albums in a laid-back style doing little to enhance his reputation. After a stint backing '70s rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon , Wray went solo again, taking most of Gordon 's band (including drummer Anton Fig ) with him. But if the studio sides were a bit uneven, ( Wray recorded several albums in the '80s backed by nothing more than a clumsy drum machine), he still could pack a wallop live, and his rare forays on the stages of the world spread the message that rock & roll's original wild guitar man still had plenty of gas left in the tank.

Wray married and moved to Denmark in 1980, recording the stray album for the foreign market, and throughout the 1990s he was still capable of strapping on a guitar and making it sound nastier than anyone in his sixties had a right to. And his back catalog got a lot attention in the '90s when the grunge revolution hit, with several young, hip guitarists citing Wray as an influence, and his early work continued to be reissued under various imprints. He recorded two new albums for Ace Records, Shadowman in 1997 and Barbed Wire in 2000 and toured up until his death in Copenhagen on November 5, 2005. ~ Cub Koda & Steve Leggett, All Music Guide

What I Learned from Eyolf

One fan to tackle what Bob is talking about throughout these passages is Eyolf Ostrem, in his online essay, "What I learned from Lonnie." The entire piece is readable here, http://www.dylanchords.com/professors/lonnie.htm . Below are some interesting observations from Eyolf's essay.

"What does seem clear, judging from what he actually says and comparing it with what he does on stage, is that he's talking about the peculiar guitar style that he has developed.the little two-three-note figure solos that he has kept churning out and that.in a strange way and to a surprisingly high degree, work musically. Outgrowths of this is probably also the sing-song/"upsinging" style of the recent years: it all fits his description fairly well, of a system of infinite permutations of very simple formulas, nothing to do with improvisation or inspiration, but a schematic approach to the basic chords and melodic shapes, which can be applied to just about any song - which is what he does."

Regarding Link Wray's "Rumble"

"It makes perfect sense that Dylan has liked this. There is the unpolished character of the whole thing, which reminds one of the best moments of Highway 61. There is the soundscape of sharply differentiated parts, each with its own distinctive rhythmic pattern.Both guitars, in different ways, take the part of the drummer, as Dylan has described his own guitar playing on several occasions.

But what does it have to do with Lonnie Johnson and mathematical music?

At first sight: nothing.

At second sight: well, the number three is all over the place: the main line of the guitar is three chords - silence - three chords - etc., ended by a measure which is extended from 2x2 to 3x2 beats. The cymbals play different kinds of triplets all the time, and the bass drum plays three long and three short."

And a bit further on:

"What Link Wray does, through his use of various permutations of threes, is to create a polyphonic structure with different layers of rhythmic activity in different instrument parts, all going on at the same time, and creating a remarkable complexity within very limited means. Whether it works because of the number three or because of the raw sound, the hypnotic repetition, and the underground Rumble of ominous ta-ta-ta in the drums and the weird chromatics in the bass, barely audible as such, but mostly very disturbing - who am I to tell why it works?"

How do you feel the sound of Bob's current band, and current arrangements of the songs, reflects what is being described here? Email Your answer here!