86. Up to Me

“They sat together in the park / As the evening sky grew dark.”

“Our conversation was short and sweet.”

“Someone’s got it in for me / They’re planting stories in the press.”

“The festival was over.”

And:

“Everything went from bad to worse / Money never changed a thing.”

It was 1974, and Bob Dylan was writing new songs, and he sure knew how to get them started.

In all instances (except maybe Idiot Wind, in the case of which I’d put both the original and the update on the same shelf—the spooky organ in the original is the yak’s uterus) I prefer the Minneapolis band versions to the acoustic guitar and soft bass arrangements from New York. But in the New York performances there’s a ringing gorgeousness to the prominence of the open-tuned guitar sound, and on Blood on the Tracks the surviving New York recordings make a suitable contrast with the full-band Minneapolis tracks, and Up to Me was not reworked in Minneapolis, and Up to Me is a marvel, so here I am, praising the New York sound after all. I do wish the Minnesota crew had shaken Up to Me up. But I’m happy with the mellow version anyway.

Because of its solitary, peripheral existence on Biograph (prior to the thorough but, as far as I’m concerned, uninspiring documentation that Up to Me received on More Blood, More Tracks) I’ve always thought of Up to Me as an encore or epilogue to the album. Blood on the Tracks is a harrowing journey, and Buckets of Rain ends brightly (in some regards), but it’s all so good and I don’t want it to be over, so I reach for Up to Me. “Everything went from bad to worse,” the song begins, as if good-naturedly summing up the album’s journey. “Money never changed a thing…” Or if we look back a few months to Tough Mama, “I gained some recognition / But I lost my appetite.”

And so here’s our encore, the open E and B strings ringing (thank you, Eyolf Østrem), the tone deceptively cheerful, but not altogether deceptively; the cheer and the sadness are interlocked so closely that Bob could have pushed it either way. He chose cheer. And cheer is good at the road’s end. And since Sigismund Sludig has made an epilogue out of you, Up to Me, it’s good that you are cheerful.

Vignettes. Snippets of a life, an era, a love, and the listener’s heart understands these snippets’ collation even if the mind doesn’t. The heart is aided by the singer’s improbably expressive voice, full of highs and lows and laughter bitten back as often as baleful tears are. Sometimes he’s…

…astounded at himself: “I met somebody face to face / And I had to remove my hat.”

…abashed: “Crystal wanted to talk to him / I had to look the other way.”

…amused, ruefully: “I would’ve followed you in the door / But I didn’t have a ticket stub.”

…open to adventure, to the unknown, to what will hurt: “When the dawn came over the river bridge / I knew it was up to me.”

…resigned: “So, go on boys, and play your hands / Life is a pantomime.”

…self-deprecating: “In fourteen months I’ve only smiled once / And I didn’t do it consciously.”

…disarmingly honest: “It frightens me, the awful truth / Of how sweet life can be.”

…impressed and interested: “Somebody had to unlock your heart / He said it was up to me!”

But most affecting for this listener’s heart at the end. “And if we never meet again / Baby, remember me…”

The love is over. The love that had stretched out ahead, all those possibilities, all that grand journey, will never come to be, now. And for that there is no consolation. But we who come to the end of love still grasp for consolation. So we tell ourselves, “They’ve lost out.” We insist, “I was special, I was unique.” We claim, though no one asked, “The best of what we had together, they will find with no one but me.”

“No one else could play that tune / You know it was up to me.”

And we’re right. For better or worse.