Following up Bob Dylan with another “Blue” song: When the Stars Go Blue by Ryan Adams (one of the many sensitive singer-songwriters I listened to who turned out to be a full-time shithead). Although it was a bigger hit when Bono and The Corrs covered it.
I’ve paired that with Semisonic’s only hit Closing Time as they have almost identical choruses.
There are at least five options when it comes to the best Bob Dylan album. And I’ve cycled through all of them. But currently it’s Blood on the Tracks. So here’s an arrangement of the opening track.
This tab is very straightforward. It’s mostly strummed with a few notes picked out here and there. The only big challenge is the stretch up to the 7th fret in bars 11 and 13. If you’re struggling with that, you can just play the note at the 5th fret and no one will notice.
The arrangement plays through the verse twice and ends with a solo. The solo is very loosely based on the harmonic part at the end of the original but is mostly just me bashing out whatever I feel like.
I hope you brought a change of clothes because your eyes are about to piss tears thanks to Andy Dwyer’s heartbreaking tribute to Li’l Sebastian.
The trickiest part of playing this is fighting through the tears. There are also some quick bits of picking and a rogue bar of 2/4 on “horsiest friend” near the end.
If you want to play along with the original, put a capo on the second fret.
Back when I spent entire days watching MTV, this song and More Than Words made up a good 30% of the airtime. I got heartily sick of it at the time. But I’ve mellowed on it.
The tune is very simple. Four chords and the melody doesn’t go higher than the third fret. The only slightly unusual part is on the “Yeah, yeah”s in bars 13, 15 and 17. If you want to make that super-simple, you can replace 5500 with 2000 and 543x with 003x and it won’t sound much different.
The original starts with an instrumental version of the chorus. But, since we’re playing that later, I came up with an intro based on the chords. Feel free to ditch it and come up with your own.
I had always assumed the first verse was mocking George Harrison’s Taxman. But it appears Sunny Afternoon was released a couple of months before Taxman. So phenomenally rich people moaning about taxes must have been the rage at the time. Thank god that’s over.
The tune starts off with a bit of a stretch but an otherwise simple descending riff. Be sure to release the pressure with your fretting hand shortly after playing to keep the notes short. The melody is reasonably straightforward as well.
The problems only start when you have to combine the descending run with the melody notes in bars 35 to 40.