Dylanology No. 8 (2021/12): Christmas Time, Nighttime, Poetry Time, Life-Time

1: Christmas in the heart and in the mind - 2: The Soft-Rocking Dylan of the 80s - 3: Take me dissapperaring: Mr. Tambourine Man as Ars Poetica (5:5) - 4: Suicide in Dylan, Camus and Dostojevsky

1 · Christmas In The Heart and In the Mind

By Eyolf Østrem

It has come to my attention that there are people out there – Dylan fans even – who don’t like Christmas in the Heart.

I love it.

Finally, the ‘wolfman’ voice has found a home where it belongs: as a counterweight to the saccharine, a welcome inoculation against Mariah Carey and Wham!, a perfect way to scare the living soul out of unsuspecting innocent children, and perhaps – just perhaps – blow some meaning into these songs again.

Because surely it is hilarious. But that’s not the main reason why I’ve played this album more than any Dylan album since Time out of Mind. The reason is simple: the way he sings ‘ad Bethlehem’ in “Adeste fideles” sends shivers down my spine; his demonstration of Santa’s laughter in “Must be Santa” is the funniest thing since “Talkin’ WWIII Blues”; the sombre tone of “Do you hear what I hear?“ is stunning and a perfect counterpart to the angelic serenity of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”, perspectivizing both qualities and leaving us, not somewhere undefined in the middle, but somewhere where there is room for both sombre and serene, hilarious and breathtakingly beautiful.

Of course, it was a brilliant idea of Dylan to make a Christmas album, because it’s the last thing anyone would have expected (and, for that reason alone, perhaps not at all surprising). But Christmas in the Heart is much more than a funny idea, a joke, or, for that matter, just a nice way to do charity. It’s obvious that he loves this stuff. And somehow, amid the croaking and the frolicking, he manages to communicate this love, at least to this listener.

And when love is communicated, what more can one ask?

Dylan and Tradition

Quite a lot has been made out of the fact that this is a 1950s version of the American Christmas song tradition. Seven of the songs are from Frank Sinatra’s 1957 A Jolly Christmas album, and the album may thus be seen as the first of Dylan’s many “Sinatra” albums. Dean Martin is another source for many songs.

I won’t repeat all that has been said about that. Here, just a brief remark about harmony. If there is one thing that runs through Dylan’s entire production, all periods included, it is his consistent avoidance of the plain dominant, especially the dominant seventh: the strong harmonic tension generator, which is resolved to the key note, e.g. G7 → C. Even when he plays covers, or when he relates to fixed genres, such as the blues, he usually finds ways to modify the dominant relation and leave out the sevenths.

Not so here. In no other Dylan album will one find as many chains of dominant sevenths as here. Just a sample:

Christmas blues has F#7→B7→E7→A7→Dmaj7
I’ll be home for Christmas has Bm7-5→E7→Am7→D7→G
Here comes Santa Claus A7→Dm7→G7→C
Have yourself a merry Little Christmas, B7→E7→A7→D7→Gmaj7

This is not in itself surprising — that’s how the songs were written, and the room for taking liberties is smaller in this genre than in folk and blues. What is interesting about it is the degree to which (and the ease with which) Dylan has subordinated himself to the style, without feeling the need to make a statement about it, the way he did on Self Portrait, for example.

The same can be said about the way he treats melody: he actually sings the tunes, straight up, with none of the trademark “you couldn’t even recognize the melody” treatment. And he does it wonderfully. He takes his mastery of vocal delivery into this — for him — foreign territory, and he does it convincingly.

Dylan and Religion

The second question the album raises is: when Dylan chooses to make a Christmas album, what does he mean with it?

Is it a clear sign that he’s still a Christian, or is it a just as clear sign of the opposite; that it’s all “just” heritage?

I have no idea – the album does not really reveal anything about Dylan’s religious sentiments, and to be honest, I don’t care. What I do know is that the lyrics to “Here Comes Santa Claus”, in the version that Dylan sings, is a most fascinating mix of symbols.

From the “jingle bells” intro with the smooth, soft jazz choir, and through the first two verses, it’s classic American pop culture Christmas all the way, with reindeer, stockings and toys.

But then, in the third verse:

[He doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor]
for he loves you just the same!

One could be suspected of having mistaken the object of the imagery here for some other character associated with Christmas, and true enough: the continuation confirms the suspicion:

[Santa knows that we’re God’s children]
and that makes everything right

The Red-Coated Santa may be a nice fellow who brings a warm glow of Christmas cheer to everyone, but from here to the end of the song it is quite clear that this has something to do with God, and it is delightfully unclear if it’s Santa or someone else who comes as God’s gift to Man on Christmas Day.

This ambiguity is emphasised by the arrangement: the slow, solemn “Let’s give thanks to the Lord above” alternates with the jinglebellsy hilarity of “Cause Santa Claus comes tonight” in a way that is hard to define, theologically as well as musically. Not quite blasphemous, but also not quite as devout as it may sound.

At the same time, it’s all of those, and more. The best way I can describe this album is as a balancing act. A balancing act that you can only perform if you’re enjoying yourself and what you’re doing, perfectly unaffected by the 70,000 fathoms of thin air between you and total disaster. Dylan seems to have been staring into that abyss for quite some time, ever since he first tried to shake off the yoke of being some Generation’s Voice. Christmas in the Heart is a sign that he is finally free.

2 · Almost Done with the Night

The Soft-Rocking Dylan of the 80s

by Eyolf Østrem

In the previous issue of Dylanology, I dissected the song “Let’s Keep It Between Us” (recently released on Springtime in New York, a collection of outtakes from the early 80s) from the point of view of harmony. I demonstrated how there is a certain inherent tonal ambiguity in the song, and that this ambiguity is heightened further by the way Dylan changed the intro to the song when it was played live, compared to the now released studio rehearsal version.

In this issue, I widen the scope and regard the song in its context: Dylan’s position in the music industry in the years around 1980, and the musical themes that he seems to have been working with at the time.

The Soft Rock Connection

“This Night Won’t Last Forever” is a song in the so-called Soft Rock or Adult Contemporary genre. Written by Bill LaBounty and Roy Freeland, it was a major 1979 hit in a version by Michael Johnson. This may seem like an unlikely genre for Dylan to be meddling in (Also included on Springtime in New York is Dylan’s recording of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”, the Soft Rock anthem par excellence and an even more unlikely Dylan-cover.), but he actually recorded the song back to back with “Let’s Keep It Between Us” during the same sessions in October 1980.