Love is Just a 4 Letter Word
Number 60, June 1, 2024
A few years, ago I was working on a festival of Bob Dylan’s work and was asked to learn a song that was new to me, and may be new to many of you, a “sleeper” hit for Joan Baez from 1968 that Dylan himself never recorded, “Love is Just a Four Letter Word.”
The song was written in the mid 1960s and even before it was finished, Baez expressed her interest in recording it.
Background
Baez immediately took to the song, which was written by Dylan sometime around 1965, and began performing it, even before it was finished. In the film “Don’t Look Back,” a documentary of Dylan’s 1965 tour of the UK, Baez is shown in one scene singing a fragment of the then apparently still unfinished song in a hotel room late at night. She then tells Dylan, “If you finish it, I’ll sing it on a record”.
Baez first included the song on “Any Day Now,” her 1968 album of Dylan covers. She has since recorded it three additional times. Her 1968 recording was also released as a single, reaching #86 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Baez has also included the song on numerous compilations such as “The First Ten Years” and “Baez Sings Dylan,” as well as on her live album “From Every Stage.”
Dylan never released a version of his song, and, according to his website, he has never performed the song live.
Meaning of the phrase
I’ve been thinking a lot about about what Dylan meant here, though as you can see from the lyrics below, his poetry is typically verbose and enigmatic, but also revealing about how love, if it is not genuine or places labels on people, can be an empty word exercise and can ultimately fail. This cynical viewpoint is encapsulated by the phrases:
The Holy Kiss that’s supposed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke…..
On the website Quora.com, writer Mona Temchin writes:
I think [the phrase] means that anyone can say they love you. But what they say is meaningless unless their actions back it up. (And in the U.S., “four letter word” usually means an obscene curse word).
The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that love consists of four components: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. If any of these is missing, it isn’t love. No matter what the person says. Fromm emphasizes that real love focuses on the loved one; in other words, it isn’t narcissistic and selfish, like much of what we call love.
I’ve really enjoyed learning and performing this song over the years, and at this year’s Dylanfest I reprised the song, this time with my full ensemble. Vocally the tune is challenging in that the melody contains many instances of octave jumps. It’s important therefore that anyone singing this tune choose the best key so to be able to execute this wide ranging melody. As a soprano I chose the key of Bb, which necessitated that I reach down into a deeper register to find the lower notes. This was a good thing, because it allowed me a chance to channel my inner Joan B. and growl out the bottom tones, while letting fly her full vibrato on the top range.
Joan Baez recorded her Dylan tribute in a Nashville studio cutting country-inflected renditions of 16 Dylan songs. She was backed by Pete Drake, David Briggs, Norbert Putnam, Jerry Reed, Stephen Stills, and others. “Any Day Now” remains one of Baez’s essential recordings. The YouTube is hauntingly close to our earliest music video treatments of popular songs, with scenes from New York City in the 1960s taking us all back (if you were there!).
Love is Just a Four-Letter Word
Bob Dylan
Seems like only yesterday I left my mind behind
Down in the Gypsy Café with a friend of a friend of mine
She sat with a baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
A phrase in connection first with she I heard
That love is just a four-letter word.
Outside a rambling store-front window cats meowed to the break of day
Me, I kept my mouth shut, too to you I had no words to say
My experience was limited and underfed
You were talking while I hid
To the one who was the father of your kid
You probably didn’t think I did, but I heard
You say that love is just a four-letter word.
I said goodbye unnoticed pushed towards things in my own games
Drifting in and out of lifetimes unmentionable by name
Searching for my double looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried and failed at finding any door
I must have thought that there was nothing more
Absurd than that love is just a four-letter word.
Though I never knew just what you meant when you were speaking to your man
I can only think in terms of me and now I understand.
After waking enough times to think I see
The Holy Kiss that’s supposed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke its destiny
Falls on strangers travels free
Yes, I know now traps are only set by me
And I do not really need to be
Assured that love is just a four-letter word.
Strange it is to be beside you
Many years the tables turned
You’d probably not believe me
If I told you all I’ve learned
And it is very, very weird indeed
To hear words like forever, fleets
Of ships run through my mind, I cannot cheat
It’s like looking in the teacher’s face complete
I can say nothing to you but repeat what I heard
That love is just a four-letter word.
As always, thanks for reading!
Love and Blessings,

Photo by Cam Sanders
Susie
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Award-winning recording artist, Broadway singer, journalist, educator and critically-acclaimed powerhouse vocalist, Susie Glaze has been called “one of the most beautiful voices in bluegrass and folk music today” by Roz Larman of KPFK’s Folk Scene. LA Weekly voted her ensemble Best New Folk in their Best of LA Weekly for 2019, calling Susie “an incomparable vocalist.” “A flat out superb vocalist… Glaze delivers warm, amber-toned vocals that explore the psychic depth of a lyric with deft acuity and technical perfection.” As an educator, Susie has lectured at USC Thornton School of Music and Cal State Northridge on “Balladry to Bluegrass,” illuminating the historical path of ancient folk forms in the United Kingdom to the United States via immigration into the mountains of Appalachia. Susie has taught workshops since 2018 at California music camps RiverTunes and Vocáli Voice Camp. She is a current specialist in performance and historian on the work of American folk music icon, Jean Ritchie. Susie now offers private voice coaching online via the Zoom platform. www.susieglaze.com
Love is Just a 4 Letter Word
Number 60, June 1, 2024