"Jack Tarr the Sailor"

I listened to Ballad of Easy Rider yester-day (because it was Roger McGuinn's birthday), and I noticed a small ambiguity in "Jack Tarr the Sailor."  "Poor" in the line "'There goes Jack Tarr that poor sailor; he must go to sea once more'" could have the sense of "lacking money" (because as Jack himself says in the previous verse "me money was all gone") or the sense of "to be pitied" (because going to sea is something to be avoided; in the first verse, Jack says, "But a man must be blind to make up his mind to go to sea once more," and his advice in the last verse is "get married, lads, and have all night in, and go to sea no more").

"Here without You"

Yester-day, I was thinking about "Here without You" and had a small realization about the lines "Girl, you're on my mind / Nearly all of the time," which are sung to phrases something like:

"All" is sung to a half note, and because this has a longer value (two beats) than any of the surrounding notes, there's something of a sense of the duration of "all of the time."

"Eight Miles High"

I was thinking about "Eight Miles High" this morning, and I realized that there are a couple musical features in the title line that mirror the phrase.

The words are sung to an ascending melody (E F# G), and this provides a musical sense of that height.  Together, the three words are sung to a total of eight beats (two half notes and one whole note), which obviously match the "eight" in the phrase.

"Oil in My Lamp"

Originally, I noted that "Oil in My Lamp" is based on the Parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13.  That passage is still applicable, but there's a stronger resemblance between the repeated line "Give me oil in my lamp; keep me burnin', burnin', burnin'" and Luke 12:35, where Jesus tells His disciples, "Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning."

"Fido"

In the lines "Wide awake, stayin' up late / Wishin' I was not" in "Fido," there are some poetic features that complement the meaning.  There's assonance between "Wide awake" and "stayin' up late," which highlights the relationship between the two phrases, and all of this contrasts, both semantically and poetically, with "Wishin' I was not."

"Pretty Boy Floyd"

In the lines "And along come a deputy sheriff in a manner rather rude / Using vulgar words of language; his wife, she overheard" in "Pretty Boy Floyd," there's a slant rhyme between "rude" and "overheard," and this indicates the indirect manner in which Pretty Boy Floyd's wife heard the sheriff.

"You're Still on My Mind"

In the lines "The jukebox is playin' a honky tonk song / 'One more,' I keep sayin', 'and then I'll go home'" in "You're Still on My Mind," there's a slant rhyme between "song" and "home," indicating that because the narrator is "Alone and forsaken," his home is incomplete.

"Dolphin's Smile"

In the line "Rainbow's end ev'rywhere" in "Dolphin's Smile," the three syllables of "ev'rywhere" are all sung to different pitches (B A E), musically giving a sense of that breadth.

"Get to You"

"Get to You" may have been inspired in part by Elvis Presley's "Trying to Get to You," written by Rosemarie McCoy and Charles Singleton.  The title phrase is nearly the same, and the songs also have a similar structure in that each verse ends with a variation of the same line.  The verses in "Get to You" end with the lines "But I really only want to get to you," "All the time it took me tryin' to get to you" (which contains the entire phrase from Elvis's song), and "But it took me twenty years to get to you."  Most of the verses in "Trying to Get to You" end with the line "Baby, tryin' to get to you," but the last ends with "When I was tryin' to get to you."

"Get to You" was written by Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn.  I don't know if either was familiar with "Trying to Get to You," but in this interview (at ~3:17), McGuinn talks about how hearing Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel" made him want to get a guitar, so in general terms at least, Elvis was an influence.

"Goin' Back"

In the line "I think I'm goin' back to the things I learned so well in my youth" in "Goin' Back," "well" is sung with a melisma (C# B), giving a sense of degree (for "so").

"Artificial Energy"

The first two lines of "Artificial Energy" are "Sittin' all alone now / I took my ticket to ride."  Since the words in the phrase "all alone" alliterate, there's a sense of the singularity of being alone.  The phrase "ticket to ride" in the second line seems to be a nod to the Beatles song of the same title.

"My Back Pages"

In "My Back Pages," the lines "Ah, but I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now" are sung to a melody something like

The first syllable of "older" (the C#) is sung with a longer value than any of the other notes, so musically, there's a sense of that greater degree (for just the comparative adjective itself or the modifying "so much").