Dylan’s Bridges

For more than half a century, Bob Dylan has explored the song forms offered by every branch of American popular music, elaborating them and investigating their expressive possibilities. He began with stanzaic “folk” and blues structures, refined and expanded the uses of refrains, and, after a certain point during his brief but preeminent “folk rock” period, added Tin Pan Alley devices such as the bridge. Ultimately concentrating on Blonde on Blonde, the essay examines how these formal choices operate in listeners’ experience, and how they enable Dylan’s lyric, narrative, and dramatic variety. Choices of song form emerge as central manifestations of Dylan’s synoptic vision of American life.