Bob Dylan introduced bridges in the structure of some of his songs on this album. The bridge in “Temporary Like Achilles” escapes from the piece’s harmonic logic by providing a color “pop.” Is this the influence of the British Invasion? The final take was recorded during the second marathon session on March 9 between 9 p.m. and midnight.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Bob Dylan has never performed “Temporary Like Achilles” live.
Absolutely Sweet Marie
Bob Dylan / 4:57
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Robbie Robertson: guitar
Wayne Moss: guitar (?)
Charlie McCoy: guitar (?)
Joe South: guitar (?)
Al Kooper: organ
Henry Strzelecki: bass
Kenneth Buttrey: drums
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville: March 8, 1966
Technical Team
Producer: Bob Johnston
Genesis and Lyrics
This song combines two characteristic elements of Dylan’s art: a series of sexual metaphors and surreal poetry. The unfortunate narrator’s frustration is quite clear in the first verse: “Well, your railroad gate, you know I just can’t jump it / Sometimes it gets so hard, you see / I’m just sitting here beating on my trumpet / With all these promises you left for me / But where are you tonight, sweet Marie?” Surrealist poetry, meanwhile, manifests itself in characters typical of Dylan’s singular theater, in this case a riverboat captain or a Persian drunkard. Like many of Dylan’s other songs from the mid-sixties, such as “Queen Jane Approximately” on Highway 61 Revisited, “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine),” “Temporary Like Achilles,” and “Obviously 5 Believers,” the adverb in the title of “Absolutely Sweet Marie” ends with the letter y.
Production
Although Dylan had arrived in the studio by 9:30 p.m. on March 7, he and his band recorded “Absolutely Sweet Marie” in a single three-hour session starting at 1 a.m. on March 8. It was the only song of the session recorded in just one take. It is the first song of the second set of Nashville sessions (the first set was between February 14 and 17). “Absolutely Sweet Marie” is a mid-tempo rock song echoing the sound of the British Invasion. Kenneth Buttrey leads the band on drums—said Al Kooper, “the beat is amazing, and that’s what makes the track work.”24 Dylan accompanies himself on the acoustic guitar and provides an exquisite harmonica part in G. Al Kooper’s organ part is essential to highlight Buttrey’s drum playing. Aside from Robbie Robertson and Dylan on guitar, it is impossible to tell if other guitarists were involved. Dylan, who included a bridge in all his songs of the time, used the one in this song to create a pop sensibility. He performed “Absolutely Sweet Marie” on the opening night of his Never Ending Tour in Concord, California, on June 7, 1988.
COVERS
Many artists covered “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” including the Flamin’ Groovies (Jumpin’ in the Night, 1979), George Harrison (The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, 1993), Clifton Chenier (Blues on Blonde on Blonde 2003), and Ducks Deluxe (Box of Shorts, 2009).
4th Time Around
Bob Dylan / 4:35
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Wayne Moss: guitar
Charlie McCoy: guitar, bass, harmonica (?)
Joe South: bass
Al Kooper: organ (?)
Kenneth Buttrey: drums
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville: February 14, 1966
Technical Team
Producer: Bob Johnston
Genesis and Lyrics
Does this song refer to a lovers’ dispute? “When she said / ‘Don’t waste your words, they’re just lies’ / I cried she was deaf.” Beyond this argument, Dylan plays with images and striking sexual innuendo in the tradition of the founding fathers of blues. The style is singular. In the first three stanzas, the narrator addresses his mistress in the third person, “she,” but in the last stanza the second person, “you.” “And [I] brought it to you / And you, you took me in.” Like the song “Positively Fourth Street,” “4th Time Around” may also refer to West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, where Dylan began his New York career.
Production
“4th Time Around” was the first song recorded in Nashville. It seems to have been difficult to cut, since it required no less than twenty takes. Al Kooper remembers saying after listening to the cut: “I thought it was very ballsy of Dylan to do ‘4th Time Around.’ I asked him about it—I said, it sounds so much like ‘Norwegian Wood,’ and he said, ‘Well, actually, “Norwegian Wood” sounds a lot like this!’”24 In 2012 at a conference at Belmont University in Nashville, Kooper explained that when he expressed concern about a possible lawsuit by the Beatles, Dylan told him that the Fab Four’s “Norwegian Wood” was inspired by his song, which he had played for them in private and that, therefore, they would not sue him.
The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” was released on the album Rubber Soul in December 1965, just two months before the recording of “4th Time Around.” Both songs share a similar melodic line. The orchestration, however, is totally different. Dylan gives his song a 3/4 Tex-Mex color, particularly through the arpeggios of the two acoustic guitars (nylon stringed), played by Wayne Moss and Charlie McCoy. Michael Krogsgaard has noted that the session sheets show that McCoy also played harmonica, but this is inaudible in the mix, as is Al Kooper’s piano part. Dylan played acoustic guitar (steel stringed), and provided a very good harmonica solo in E.
“4th Time Around” was Nashville’s opening and closing session. Indeed, on June 16, 1966, one month after the official release of the album Blonde on Blonde, an overdub session was scheduled with McCoy on harpsichord and Kenneth Buttrey on drums. Unfortunately, the result of this recording is unknown. There is an excellent acoustic and live version of “4th Time Around” on The Bootleg Series Volume 4: Live 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert (1998).
ENAMORED OF NUMBERS
Bob Dylan likes songs with numbers in the title; “4th Time Around” is not the only one. There are other examples: “Alberta #1,” “Alberta #2,” “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” “From a Buick 6,” “Highway 61 Revisited,” “Obviously 5 Believers,” “Positively 4th Street,” “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” “Seven Curses,” “Workingman’s Blues #2”…
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
At 3:34 we hear bassist Joe South anticipating the chord changes. Unfortunately, he is the only one.
Obviously 5 Believers
Bob Dylan / 3:36
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Charlie McCoy: harmonica
Robbie Robertson: guitar
Wayne Moss: guitar
Joe South: guitar
Al Kooper: organ
Hargus Robbins: piano
Henry Strzelecki: bass
Kenneth Buttrey: drums
(?): maracas
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville: March 10, 1966
Technical Team
Producer: Bob Johnston
Genesis and Lyrics
“Obviously 5 Believers” is the last track on side three of Blonde on Blonde. It is a bluesy love song about loneliness, the lost loved one. The song is similar in melody and structure to Memphis Minnie’s “Me and My Chauffeur Blues,” already cited as a source of inspiration for “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat.” Who are these “Fifteen jugglers / Fifteen jugglers / Five believers / Five believers / All dressed like men”? Dylan sings of them as if they were friends. But maybe he is just interested in the sound of the words. “Obviously 5 Believers” is a blues-rock song, closer to Highway 61 Revisited’s songs than to those of Blonde on Blonde.
Production
It is ironic that after insinuating that Lennon was inspired by “4th Time Around” to write “Norwegian Wood,” Dylan took the
harmonica riff played on Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl,” this time played on guitar by Robbie Robertson. Chicago blues is once again the dominant influence on “Obviously 5 Believers,” and clearly manifested by Robertson’s very inspired solos on his six-string guitar. He said, “And it was at that point that the guys in Nashville accepted me, because I was doing something that none of them did, so I don’t think they felt I was treading on their territory.”24 Bob played rhythmic guitars, abandoning his harmonica in favor of Charlie McCoy, who delivered a very bluesy signature line that shows him to be a master of the style. The rhythm of the song is reinforced by two other guitars, the piano played on the off beat, and the organ in a low register buried in the mix. The bass and drums are both extremely effective, accompanied by an unidentified musician playing maracas. Dylan complained to the band, “This is very easy, man” and “I don’t wanna spend no time with this song, man.”68 This looks easy on paper, but the performance lacks precision. For instance, in the second verse the guitar riffs are executed poorly. However, “Obviously 5 Believers,” recorded under the working title “Black Dog Blues,” is an excellent blues-rock song. It was recorded in four takes, one of three songs recorded between midnight and 3 a.m. on March 10, 1966.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
In the third verse, Dylan sings, “I got my black dog barkin’.” In blues, as in British folklore, a black dog is a symbol of death. Nick Drake, for example, used it in his song “Black Eyed Dog” (1974).
Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
Bob Dylan / 11:21
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Wayne Moss: guitar
Charlie McCoy: guitar
Al Kooper: organ
Hargus Robbins: piano
Joe South: bass
Kenneth Buttrey: drums, tambourine
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville: February 16, 1966
Technical Team
Producer: Bob Johnston
Genesis and Lyrics
In his paean to his wife Sara on the album Desire (1976), Bob Dylan claimed that he wrote “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” when he was living at the Chelsea Hotel: “Stayin’ up for days in the Chelsea Hotel, / Writin’ ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ for you.” Several testimonies reveal that Dylan wrote the song in February 1966, even if he revised the text repeatedly right up until he recorded it. In 1969, he told Jann Wenner, “It started out as just a little thing… but I got carried away somewhere along the line… At the session itself… I just started writing and I couldn’t stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning.”20 Joan Baez believed (or hoped) that “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” was dedicated to her because she had performed a song called “Lowlands” since 1959. Eugene Stelzig, a worthy rival to the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, wrote “the sad-eyed lady is a personification of Dylan’s anima,”69 a feminine representation in the imagination of the songwriter.
In fact, Bob Dylan had composed the song for Sara, whom he had married in a private civil ceremony three months earlier on November 22, 1965. He acknowledges it in his own way when he plays on the similarity of sound between “Lowlands” and “Lownds,” Sara’s name from her first marriage. He proves it vividly in every line of the long poem, which exalts the physical and intellectual virtues of his beloved. Dylan told Shelton after recording it that it was “the best song I ever wrote.”53
“Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” occupies the whole fourth side of Blonde on Blonde. The song moves into the upper reaches of Dylan’s imagination. On a poetic level, it shows the triple influence of Blake, Rimbaud, and Ginsberg. In terms of spirituality and psychedelic experience, the influence of Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary is felt. Dylan sings in the first verse, “With your mercury mouth in the missionary times / And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes / And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes / Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?” This hymn to love defies rationality. The words are linked together to create a timeless and insistent melody, taking the listener to distant lands, where echo “Arabian drums,” where “the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide / To show you the dead angels that they used to hide,” “where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes.”
Production
“Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” was recorded between 4 and 5:30 a.m. on February 16, 1966, in four takes, including one uncompleted one. The last cut was chosen for the album. Kris Kristofferson, who was at the time a guard at the Nashville studio, said, “I saw Dylan sitting out in the studio at the piano, writing all night long by himself. Dark glasses on. All the musicians played cards… while he was out there writing.”70 It was about 4 a.m. when Dylan was finally ready, but this was not necessarily the case for other musicians. “After you’ve tried to stay awake ’til four o’clock in the morning, to play something so slow and long was really tough,” Charlie McCoy recalled.68
Before starting the recording, Dylan called the musicians together and outlined the structure of the song, a classic combination of two verses and a chorus. He also told them that after each of his harmonica solos they needed to fill in. He began with a verbal flood of verses to the surprise of all the musicians. Kenneth Buttrey, who thought he was starting a standard piece double or triple time, began to wonder. “If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody’s just peaking it up ’cause we thought, ‘Man, this is it… This is gonna be the last chorus and we’ve gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel… After about ten minutes of this thing we’re cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?”15
“Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” is an excellent example of the fine collaboration between all these musicians who had actually only just begun playing together. Dylan provided drawling and almost hypnotic vocals, full of imagery and dreamlike perceptions rolling in top of each other throughout the song’s eleven minutes. He performed one of his longest harmonica solos (in D) while accompanying himself on acoustic. At 7:03 there are hints of an insert on the line “ever persuaded you.” The word ever is truncated, and the drum sound suddenly changes. This is most likely the result of the bonding between this take and a preceding one. Wayne Moss and Charlie McCoy played the other two guitars, a classical nylon-string guitar and an acoustic steel string played high on the neck (with capo). Al Kooper’s organ part is irreplaceable, as is Hargus Robbins’s sober but effective piano and Joe South’s bass. The piece owes its homogeneity to Kenneth Buttrey, who played primarily a Charleston rhythm (with hi-hat) and tambourine (except for the chorus), ensuring that the rhythmic pulse provides the tension necessary for the whole song. Bob Johnston recalls that when he and Dylan went into the control room to hear what they had just recorded, “It was one of the prettiest things I ever heard in my life.”61 Roger Waters of Pink Floyd has said, “‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ sort of changed my life. When I heard that, I thought, if Bob can do [such a lengthy song], I can do it… it’s a whole album. And it in no way gets dull or boring. You just get more and more engrossed. It becomes more and more hypnotic, the longer it goes on.”15 Bob Dylan has never sung “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” in concert, other than a single live performance during the “Woman in White” sequence of his film Renaldo & Clara (1978).
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
The chord changes of “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” influenced the music of George Harrison’s song “Long, Long, Long,” released on the 1968 album The Beatles.
METALLIC ECHO
The second verse of “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” begins, “With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace.” This is probably a reference to Sara’s
father, who had worked in the steel industry.
Blonde on Blonde Outtakes
Even though the recording sessions for Blonde on Blonde took two weeks, stretched out over a period of six months, and a total of fifteen songs were eventually published, there were in the end only four outtakes. This is further evidence of the songwriter’s lack of direction and the performers’ fatigue at that time. All were recorded in New York before Dylan finished the album in Nashville. At the suggestion of producer Bob Johnston, Dylan, Al Kooper, and Robbie Robertson moved to Columbia Recording Studios in Nashville.
I’ll Keep It With Mine
Bob Dylan / 3:46
Musicians: Bob Dylan: vocals, piano; Robbie Robertson: guitar; Al Kooper: organ; Rick Danko: bass; Bobby Gregg: drums / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: January 27, 1966 / Producer: Bob Johnston / Sound Engineers: Roy Halee, Pete Dauria, and Larry Keyes / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 2) / Release Date: March 26, 1991
In the liner notes to the Judy Collins LP Judy Collins Sings Dylan… Just Like a Woman (1993), Dylan said that he wrote “I’ll Keep It with Mine” for her. She released it as a single in 1965. He had also offered it to Nico, the Velvet Underground singer and Andy Warhol’s muse, who recorded a sublime version of it for her first solo album, Chelsea Girl, released in 1967.
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 32