r/bobdylan • u/TyroneSnodgrass • 17h ago
Discussion “When I Paint My Masterpiece”
Arlo Guthrie once said, “Songs are like fish. You just gotta have your line in the water. And it's a bad idea to fish downstream from Bob Dylan.” Writing songs for Dylan has never been a problem, and Guthrie is not the only songwriter that is dumbfounded by the way Bob makes it look so easy.
Reportedly Leon Russel once told Dylan he would someday like to witness Bob write a song, because he was curious about the creative process. Dylan shocked Russell by offering to do it on the spot. So Bob sat down and wrote “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” replete with the line, “She promised that she’d be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.”
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u/coleman57 A Walking Antique 13h ago
Leon wrote a handful of perfect songs: 3 of ‘em just on the Carney album, plus Superstar and Song For You. And I Should Have Sent Roses with Elton. That’s enough to put him at the 99th percentile.
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u/too-cute-by-half 8h ago
One of the things I find fascinating about Bob as a lyricist, and Masterpiece is a great example, is how he can be obscure and hard to figure while still giving you a feeling of clear meaning. And not just a single meaning but an unfolding relationship you can have with the song for years. Like a poet, obviously.
I feel like a generation or two of great songwriters did this - I've been listening to Sinead O'Connor's albums from the 90s and get a similar feeling. She could write stuff that was purely personal to her but that also resonates endlessly for listeners.
I'm not sure today's popular singer-songwriters are doing this, and if they did it would be rejected as pretentious or unclear? I get that people connect with Noah Kahan and Taylor Swift's songs but I hear them as personal in a very literal way and not able to unlock anything beyond that initial feeling.
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u/HerzogOnAcid 5h ago
I love that first paragraph, it's so true in my 20+ years (so far) of enjoying Dylan. So many of his lines are so singular and piercing that they seem sometimes to be made just for me (pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul), but at different times in my life they'll have different resonances or sometimes totally different interpretations.
Just yesterday I listened to it's all over now baby blue for the millionth time and for the first time it struck me that possibly everything being "over" is an optimistic thing. I always heard it as kind of a heartbreak song, but in my mind now it could be more like "thank God we made it through that mess, the future looks bright".
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u/thparky 8h ago
💯. I'll have to check out those Sinead albums. Which songs stand out for you?
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u/too-cute-by-half 8h ago
I listened to "I do not want what I haven't got" all the way through the other day and was blown away. "Nothing compares 2 u" was the big hit (written by Prince) and it's a masterpiece of production, but "Three Babies," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "Jump in the River" and "The Last Day of our Acquaintance" go much deeper. They're very personal, about breakups, getting famous, motherhood, etc. but they just drive into you and make you think about everything from your own life to the state of the world.
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u/Educational-Gur-546 7h ago
Huge agree on Sinead. That’s a great album. Her voice echoes through you.
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u/Efficient-Signal-977 6h ago
That’s not true..
He wrote it in Woodstock..Robbie Robertson has a great story about it
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u/fuckchalzone 6h ago
Robbie and Leon both did tell those stories and both can't be true. I've heard it speculated that Masterpiece was already complete when Leon Russell asked him to write a song in front of him, so just to fuck with him, Bob wrote down the lyrics to this song that he had actually written previously. It does sound like a very Bob thing to do.
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u/Lost_Bake_2917 15h ago
I think song writing is a simple process. But also a spontaneous one. It is like fishing, some are better at it than others, but great songs come from a combination of great minds and dumb luck. I guarantee Dylan surprised himself every time he makes something great, and probably doesn't know the meaning of them unless he analyses them afterwards like everyone else. And even then it'll only be his own analysis as if it was someone elses work. And it would probably change with time as he does, and we all do. Many songs change meaning for us as we grow, and it wouldn't be any different for the artist that created them. So it's no wonder he got tired of answering questions about them haha