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This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) · Six Degrees of Dylan - Audio Episodes

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colin McGady and I have a theory.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone changed what a popular song could be and every rock
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: and pop song since can be connected back to it.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is a journey through musical evolution, following the influences,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: shared ideas and unexpected encounters that connect one record to another.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Six songs, five connections, one destination.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Six Degrees of Dylan.
• 0:26
  [music]
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Before we begin, a quick listening note.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: For licensing reasons, the songs themselves aren't included in this episode.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find today's Spotify playlist linked in the post notes.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let you know when to pause and listen,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: and point you towards particular moments in each song.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Take your time, then come back when you're ready to follow the next connection.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy! Tonight, we begin with the feeling of having somewhere to belong.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Talking Heads' This Must Be The Place makes home sound like a pattern
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: the singer is still learning to trust.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our Root steps outside that room into television's City Night,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: follows Tom Verlaine into Patti Smith's band,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: and stays with Smith as she interprets Dylan.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: The birds then bring us to Like A Rolling Stone.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: The scene, writers and recording connections are documented.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: The emotional journey is my listening argument.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is the original 1983 Speaking in Tongue studio performance, in its approved 2005 remaster.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the separate repeating instrumental shapes,
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: and to the way David Byrne's voice makes the feeling move while those shapes remain.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: A love song can be tender and strange at the same time.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Pause here for Talking Heads' This Must Be The Place, then come back.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Talking Heads and Television both grew within the world of New York's CBGB.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: That shared scene is our first bridge.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I am not suggesting that one of these songs was written in reply to the other.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Television's Marquee Moon takes the idea of repetition into a much less settled space.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: We hear the full original 1977 album performance, more than 10 minutes long,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: produced by Tom Verlaine and Andy Johns.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Verlaine and Richard Lloyd play guitars, with Fred Smith on bass and Billy Fika on drums.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the opening guitar pattern and the separate lines crossing it.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then notice when the instrumental journey begins to shape the architecture of the whole record.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: The rhythm section keeps the ground beneath that exploration.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the shorter single presentation.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for the full album recording of Marquee Moon and return for a connection made
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: by one of the musicians himself.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Verlaine co-wrote Break It Up with Patti Smith and plays guitar on her original recording.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: That is a direct writing and personnel connection, rather than a resemblance I have imagined.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: The song comes from Horses in 1975, produced by John Cale.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Smith's voice tests how much pressure a rock band can carry.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the piano's movement, the answering guitar texture,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: and the voices joining the refrain.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: An individual demand starts to feel as though it has witnesses.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I hear a kinship with Dylan's ambition for language inside a popular record.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Kinship is the careful word.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: The documented bridge from television is Verlaine's actual participation.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: We are keeping the original studio recording, not a later alternate take.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Pause here for Patti Smith's Break It Up, then come back.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: The singer will stay with us, but the years and the repertoire will change.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: 32 years separate the Smith performances in our route.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Changing of the Guards is her 2007 studio cover on 12.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Dylan wrote it.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is not his original Street Legal recording.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Smith and her band make someone else's composition into a new act of performance.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to how her phrases gather over the band's forward motion.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: The images do not offer an easy map.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Figures of authority, desire, and change pass through a symbolic landscape,
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: and the story can feel urgent even when its meaning remains unsettled.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is my reading.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not a claim that the song hides one authorised political explanation.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Our Connection is an artist developing her repertoire over time.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Listen for the weight she gives a line, and for the room the arrangement leaves around it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for Patti Smith's Changing of the Guards, and come back for another interpreter of Dylan.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Dylan also wrote Chimes of Freedom.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: The Byrds recorded our next selection in April 1965, with Terry Melcher producing.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: We hear the original Mr. Tambourine Man album performance, not a later concert version.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Jim McGuinn's ringing 12 string guitar sits among the voices of that first five person group.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the guitar against the vocal blend,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: and to how the returning title gathers different human figures into a shared space.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: The brightness of the sound need not mean that the subject is comfortable.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: I hear sympathy moving beyond the people who already have security and recognition.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: That is interpretation.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dylan's authorship and the Bird's recording are documented.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: A 2007 Smith performance obviously cannot have influenced this earlier one.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Our Bridge is their shared songwriter.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Pause here for the Bird's original Chimes of Freedom, then return for Dylan himself.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: The final step puts two recordings from 1965 into conversation.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Bird's electric interpretation of Dylan leads to Dylan's own electric studio,
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like a Rolling Stone.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Wilson produced it, with Al Cooper's organ and Mike Bloomfield's guitar
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: among its defining presences.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the opening drum strike,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: then to the organ opening the chorus as the voice addresses someone
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: whose familiar protections are disappearing.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: We began with a tentative home.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: We finish with the arrangements behind belonging falling away.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: My watershed theory concerns the dramatic room a popular song can make.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: For character, ambiguity, and an uncomfortable social address.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is an editorial thesis, not proof that one record caused everything that followed.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for Bob Dylan's original Highway 61 revisited recording of Like
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: a Rolling Stone, then come back for a final thought.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: A room, a city night, a demand to break through, a changing inheritance,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: and bells sounding beyond the people already inside.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: These six recordings do not give us one compulsory history of popular music.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: They offer a conversation we can hear.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: The links run through a real scene, actual collaborators and shared compositions.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: The meaning between the records stays open.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: The exact versions and sources are in the written edition,
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: and the separate Spotify playlist is linked in the postnotes when available.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colin McGaddy.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Six Degrees of Dylan.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
• 7:13
  [music]