The confusing song Bob Dylan wrote for Eric Clapton
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
The origin of songs can be inexplicable to even the person responsible for bringing them to the earth. While this seems a farcical notion due to the words and melodies escaping out of their brains, the beautifully bewildering nature of songwriting can even confuse great minds like Bob Dylan, who never understood the meaning behind one of his inventions.
Dylan isn’t alone in experiencing this strange phenomenon. Many artists merely see themselves as a vehicle for music creation rather than being responsible for driving a creative vision from start to finish in their mould. Admittedly, that sentence above does sound rather pretentious and self-aggrandising. But this quote from Noel Gallagher perfectly captures the sentiment: “I’ve got no control over the music that I make. I’m not adept enough as a musician to go into a studio and say, ‘You know what, I wanna make a fucking jazz album.’ I can’t do that. All I can do is sit with a guitar and wait and hope for something to happen. That’s what I do.”
Gallagher continued: “I call it going fishing. I sit by the river with the guitar, and if I get a catch, that’s great. And that’s what I do. It comes from somewhere within. I’m not brilliant – I can’t read music. I’m not a great guitarist. I’m not a great singer. I’m not great at anything. You know? I’m great at being me and doing what I do, and that’s it.”
Dylan knows this sensation all too well, including on the track ‘Sign Language’, which he generously donated to Eric Clapton’s fourth solo album, No Reason To Cry. As a record, the English guitarist has mixed feelings about it because of the addiction troubles he was fighting while making the LP. However, from a musical standpoint, it’s an impressive feat.
Much of No Reason To Cry was recorded at the legendary Shangri-La studio in Malibu. Rick Rubin purchased the property for $2million in 2011, and in recent years, he has brought the biggest names in music to the Californian studio. Despite Rubin’s current involvement, Shangri-La’s musical history pre-dates him by decades, and in 1976, it was the headquarters of The Band.
It was a strange time in Dylan’s life, as he was on his Rolling Thunder Revue Tour. When he had some time off the road, he’d head down to Shangri-La, as it was local to his Malibu at home. It was a utopia for artists, with accomplished musicians filling the hallways at any given time of the day, and Dylan’s unannounced studio visits made Clapton’s stay even more worthwhile.
According to the booklet in Bob Dylan’s box set, The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991, “Dylan dropped by and was just hanging out, living in a tent at the bottom of the garden. He would sneak into the studio to see what was going on. Dylan offered his new, unrecorded song ‘Seven Days’ to Clapton. Clapton passed on it, but Ron Wood took him up on the offer and released it on his third solo album Gimme Some Neck.”
While it was puzzling why Dylan lived in a tent, it undoubtedly adds to the mysterious image surrounding him. Although Clapton rejected ‘Seven Days’, he did accept ‘Sign Language’. The track splurted out of Dylan in one session, and even he couldn’t explain its meaning, but that didn’t matter to Clapton, who instantly fell in love with it.
In his memoirs, he explained: “One day he came in and offered me a song called ‘Sign Language,’ which he had played for me in New York. He told me he had written the whole song down at one sitting, without even understanding what it was about.”
Clapton continued: “I said I didn’t care what it was about. I just loved the words and the melody, and the chord sequence was great. Since Bob doesn’t restrict himself to any one way of doing a song, we recorded it three different ways, with me duetting with him.”
While neither Clapton nor Dylan could explain precisely what ‘Sign Language’ means, it doesn’t matter. Songs take on a unique meaning for every listener after they’ve been filtered from a different perspective. As long as the track connects with the heart of those who hear it, the people and feelings who inspired it to be born are secondary.
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