Dylan's Songs

• Author: Philip N. Meyer
• Pages: 22-23

22 || ABA JOURNAL APRIL 2019

EDITED BY KEVIN DAVIS,

LIANE JACKSON

Practice

Dylan’s Songs

Lawyers can learn from this folk master, who cleverly retrofi ts

traditional melodies

By Philip N. Meyer

For me, the most important law

songs, the ones that are close st to my

heart, are of ten not about lawyers at

all but instead a bout themes of justice

and injustice. The most rema rkable

of these songs are by our two g reatest

folk poets: Bruce Spring steen and Bob

Dylan.

Of the two, I tip towar d Dylan as the

greater of our troubadour-p oets, in part

because of the intelle ctual quality of

his lyrics ab out law and justice and the

diverse topicalit y of his law songs. Also,

because of Dyla n’s fearless abil ity to

work outside of the rules of pop song-

writing, to go b eyond constraints and

forms of popular song str ucture, and

to shamelessly borrow/steal or adapt

pitch-perfect tra ditional melodies ret-

rofi tted to storie s and poetic visions

about justice and injustic e in America.

In the best of his medita tions on

American just ice and injustice, Dylan

has an uncan ny ability to shift perspec-

tives e ortlessly w ithin songs. Like a

skilled tria l attorney in a closing argu-

ment, Dylan oft en steps outside the

story he is telli ng, as if looking down

from a vast dist ance or back across

time upon the events depicted w ithin

the songs. He never loses the threa d or

drive of the narr ative, connecting lyr-

ics and melodies with u niversal themes

about law and our longing for justice.

Indeed, Dylan’s songs about Americ an

justice and injustice h ave renewed

meanings in the da rk shadows of our

own time.

Two songs from Dylan’s oeuvre—the

fi rst an early 1960s s tory-song, the sec-

ond a 1980s poetic vision—sugge st sev-

eral story telling lessons about the art of

adaptation that ar e especially relevant

for lawyer-stor ytellers today.

‘PERCY’S SONG’

Dylan’s “Percy’s Song” (1963) is a

remarkable work of creative a daptation

and alchemy. In “Percy’s Song,” Dylan

transforms see mingly incongruous nar-

rative pieces: Dylan’s autobiographica l

material about a f riend who was badly

injured in an automobile acc ident, a

melody borrowed from an ea rly dark

and fatalist ic English/Scotch ballad

(“The Twa Sisters” or “The Wind and

Rain” in Francis Jame s Child’s collec-

tion of folk ballads), and a thematic idea

about the cold fi nality of lega l judg-

ments, lifted f rom a di erent English

Child ballad , “Geordie.” (In “Geordie,”

a wife pleads uns uccessfully to a judge

to spare the life of her husband a fter he

is condemned to death for ki lling the

king’s deer to feed his fam ily.) The bor-

rowed melody, story, lyrics and theme

are repackage d in Dylan’s fi rst-person

voice, the story res et inside a present-

day American cou rthouse. The formal

syntax, s tructured repetitions a nd mel-

ody from the origina l English ballad are

retained in D ylan’s adaptation.

The sixteen verse s (stan zas) of the

song tell the story of a na meless friend

of Dylan’s who has been convic ted of

vehicular mansl aughter resulting from

the deaths of four people in an automo -

bile accide nt.

A crash on the highway

Flew the car to a fi eld

Turn, turn, turn a gain

There was four pers ons killed

And he was at the whe el

Turn, turn to the rain

And the wind

The nameless friend ha s been,

improbably, sentenced to 99 years for

manslaughter when Dyla n arrives on

the scene. In the judge’s chambers,

Dylan pleads on beha lf of his friend, a

good man who “wouldn’t har m a life.”

The sentencing judge tells Dyla n that

he has arrived “ too late, too late. For his

case it is sealed , his sentence is passed

and it cannot be repea led.” Dylan per-

sists in his plea , “But he ain’t no crimi-

nal, and his cri me it is none ... What

happened to him could happen to a ny-

one.” The judge then asks Dylan to leave

his chambers. A fter, Dylan plays the

story over and over on his g uitar, but he

can fi nd no meaning or justice w ithin it.

And I played my guitar

Through the night to the day

Turn, turn, turn a gain

And the only tune

My guitar could play

Was, “Oh the Cruel Ra in

And the Wind”

Thematically, akin t o “Geordie,” the

story contras ts the fi nality and severity

of legal judgments, applying t he king’s

(written) law that often ca n not be rec-

onciled with fu ndamental notions of

Storytelling