May 2011 sees the 70th birthday of Bob Dylan. To celebrate, we're taking you on a journey through the lesser celebrated avenues of his back catalogue. A journey down Highway 61 that won't stop off at 'Blowin' In The Wind', 'All Along The Watchtower' or 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' but will call by...As I Went Out One Morning (1967)
So Bob Dylan has a motorbike crash in the summer of 1966 and retires from live performance, other than the odd festival or benefit here and there, for eight years and from releasing records for 18 months. That period up to the end of 1967 is one of the most fascinating of his career, for the dedication to song-writing and song-craft went into overdrive whilst hanging out with The Band at Big Pink. ‘The Basement Tapes’ material was pointedly cherry picked for titles with commercial potential then hawked out to rock & pop acts such as Manfred Mann and The Byrds. But alongside that, the country-tinged moralistic tales and fables that turned up on ‘John Wesley Harding’ were clearly honed with exquisite care. This song, like so many on the album - most notably ‘All Along The Watchtower’, appears to relate a minor incident of little consequence. The genius is in the depth, as layer upon layer of possible or improbably meanings are suggested with each successive analysis. In this encounter Tom Paine is anxious to apologise for something the damsel has done but exactly what is unclear; it could be that she’s skewered the protagonists ability to think for himself, maybe she represents temptation but equally she may stand victim of nothing more than the suspicions of those around her as she longs for escape. Equally plausible is the idea that Dylan realised that putting out these minutely detailed, open ended little stories that offered more questions than answers was enough in itself; you don’t need a correct or incorrect meaning because everything’s correct? Even the moral of the story stated at the end of ‘The Ballad Of Frankie Lee & Judas Priest’ is a bit of a red herring, not actually answering any of the specifics in a song where a character admits “nothing is revealed”. 44 years have passed since ‘As I Went Out One Morning’ first appeared and no 100% solid theory has stuck to it yet. The genius is in the fact that no one can definitively state there’s no solid meaning; Dylan always puts just enough information in to make that seem utterly improbable.
Mira Billotte is a member of Brooklyn indie-folk duo White Magic whose version of the tune appeared in 2007 on the soundtrack to abstract Dylan Biopic ‘I’m Not There’. Their version is in no way a re-interpretation, more an exactingly faithful and honest reproduction. That’s no slight either, it has to be written that on occasion Dylan did, just like the Beatles almost always did, manage to nail a definitive version of his songs that left nothing to be improved on. That’s especially true of ‘As I Went Out One Morning’, there isn't anything you can add to or subtract from the original ‘John Wesley Harding’ version that will improve it and kudos to Mira Billotte for understanding that.
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