(Some of these comments were submitted directly to Skeleton Keys. Some were culled from the newsgroup, rec.music.dylan. Some I have obtained permission to present here. Some I have not. If your comment is among the latter and you do not wish your words to appear here, let me know and I will remove the comment immediately.)

God Damned Amazing

Resin sharp dirges funnel shoved through my system...taken as production product from studio syndrome.. but on second hearing, god damned amazing! Sick of a lot of things...and it's life and life ONLY! I'd complain but no body listens,.. but on second hearing, god damned amazing! Bob. Why am I so numb and you so raw? Your songs take me to depths somewhere I don't know. Is this art? 

That how it is when things disintegrate? Hot House Blues like. Slamming strings, drums for Cold Irons Bound. Sound out of time... on second hearing, god damned amazing!

Is it pathos? Is it kinda pathetic? On second hearing it's god damned amazing! More than the sum of its parts. -- John McNulty 

Contract With The Lord

Dark Night of the Soul: That period in life when depression takes hold and the human raises his eyes to the sky  and asks "Why hast thou forsaken me?" Everything is broken. All that was relied upon for comfort has been proven to be temporal. And what's worse, they're gone. I see this album as a story of a man. I would encapsulate the story this way: Love is gone and I'm sick of it anyway. I'm walking down the road and all I can think of is what I have lost. And I'm standin' in a doorway cryin''. Lord, I've done every thing I know to get closer to you, but I'm still a million miles away. How do I get to heaven anyway? You know, Lord, my life was just fine 'till I fell in love with you. I was born here and I'll die here against my will I know it looks like I'm movin' but I'm standin' still. I can see the end comin' and there's nothing I can do about it. So I'm heading for the mountains, away from the corruption, deceit, and lies. Maybe there I can make you feel my love. Maybe there I can find redemption. But I can't wait though I know where I need to be: the Highlands, and maybe I'll figure out how to get there someday. --Frank

Dangerous

It's my understanding that there is SO MUCH truth in Time Out Of Mind that it's  a very dangerous album. Quite dangerous. He is showing us a vision which not everyone will be able to withstand. The MTV crowd will not have a clue concerning this masterpiece. 

Bob has poured out his heart and soul, his very essence, in this work. I am very thankful and appreciative of that.

This album reminds me of the descriptions of the hidden garden of Kabbalah. Some enter and die; some enter and leave insane; and only a handful enter and leave in peace. --Peace, Mystic

Cool But No Guitar

I agree on the point that Lanois did a great job in 'understanding' Dylan's songs they wanted to record. It's all very  COOL and laid-back. I guess you could easily ruin each Time Out Of Mind song by trying to put too much in them, musically. They had to be recorded the way Eastwood acts: coolness and sensibility mysteriously combined! And they were.  ButI just don't like what seems to be the earmark of Lanois-productions: that meaningful wavering and echoing. Give one or to songs that kind of special-effect, if you like. 

I appreciated it in "Man in the Long Black Coat". But I don't like the whole CD to be plunged in that Lanois-heavy-syrup-sound. Imagine these fine musicians play on 'real' instruments, just about the way they play electrically. Or Imagine Dylan solo with his guitar! But I'm afraid that would have been a huge amount of work, to arrange 70
minutes of good guitar-accompaniment. 

Well, after two completely acoustic albums, TIME OUT OF MIND is just the logical variation. --Samuel Portmann

Bob 1, Lanois 0

BOB HAS REINVENTED HIMSELF ONCE AGAIN BUT DANIEL LANOIS AND HIS FRIENDS NO! VOICE, DRUMS, GUITARS ARE UGLY RECORDED, DRUMS SOUND LIKE AN EMPTY BUCKET, GUITARS ARE TOO FAR, HAMMOND ORGAN IS OFTEN TOO LOW OR TOO HIGH. MAYBE THE MIXING WAS SO BAD MADE !--CIAO, ALBERTO

Not The Usual Jive

This is a very different Dylan than I am used to. In TIME OUT OF MIND is an expression of loss unlike the man's  usual jive. I mean the narrator's of Zimmy's songs are usually in the driver's seat. Loss and love is tinged with remorse the loss comes from the narrator's own mistakes in the relationship, his intransigence, his cheating, his stupidity in not seeing the worth of what was in front of him/her. But the narrator is confronted with the loss in a very different way on TIME OUT OF MIND. One senses that it was all completely out of his control. There is an echo of this in "I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn" but here he fleshes out the implications of such an  act. It is a new twist and one that is interesting given what has come in the past. To my friend who said "what do you do with a 17 minute song that has no lead verse", I say, Sometimes you paint the sky, sometimes the sea. --Miguel

Old Fogie

You can only worship the past for so long. Dylan is the guy who blew the old fogies away playing "Maggie's Farm"  with electric guitar at Newport; It is sad to see him wallowing in the past, aping the old music, singing about how the party's over and his eyesight's bad. My eyesight's bad too, but I don't whine about it.--"R. Kalia"

Really Spooky

It's only appropriate that I've been walking with Time Out of Mind in my head, and my headphones. Okay, I admit  I've had it for a while now, keeping a promise not to talk about it until it was officially released. The first few times I was  overwhelmed with a purely emotional response. It took four listens before I got all the way through it without crying like a fool. Seeing Bob in St. Paul (Aug. 29) acting very glad to be alive--downright exuberant, really--helped me get past that. Then I noticed the way the music was coming from all over the place, a guitar way off in the distance, percussion somewhere else. Really spooky, especially coming through headphones. Great for the mood of the album. Bluesy, jazzy, rockabilly. But I have to differ with Bob's comment to the effect that this album is more about the music than the lyrics. Huh-uh. It's about those wonderful words and images, and the way he performs them. I swear, he could turn any word in the dictionary into onomatopoeia. The air "burrrrnz." The  voice on Time Out Of Mind is apparently new and startling to some reviewers, but not to concert goers. The album is all of a piece. That's the feeling I had when I first listened to Blood on the Tracks. But this one is even more that way. It seems kind of strange to hear single songs from it played on the radio, after listening to the whole album several times. (Well, it seems strange to hear ANY Dylan songs on the radio in these parts, but that's another story. Bob Dylan songs, that is.) --Sandy Ramer

What's In A Name?

I have to say I like the title. Time Out of Mind implies a reversal of Mind Out of Time, where the life is seen as nearing its finish. But at the same time, this notion implies that there was something enjoyable in the journey, something that makes the voice mourn that it is out of time. Time Out of Mind, on the other hand, implies that the deep suffering and anguish presented in just about every song and every line of this album constitutes a being lost, both physically, mentally, and in terms of a time-displacement sense.

I definitely do not think this album should be given a title of one of the songs. This album is obviously too important to do that. It needs an identity separate from one of the songs, otherwise that would seem to put a greater weight on one of them, which should, in this case, not be done. --Rcsjones

Was It A Mangy Dog?

Well, I just finished listening for the first time to a selection of songs from the new cd. All I can say is, thank God for Bob Dylan. I had to walk the dog anyway, so I picked the first four songs, along with Not Dark Yet (because I couldn't resist the title), and Highlands (because it's 17 minutes), and put them on one side of a tape (without sneaking a listen). Then I headed out under the stars to some fields and wood where no one was around, let the dog roam, and pushed play. I am just so grateful he's still writing music.  It was beautiful. And if anything hearkens back to that 60's muse that Dylan has since reflected upon as something past, it's Highlands. It's as if he time traveled back to those days in Big Pink, without losing his age and experience in the process, for one more song. Now I can look forward to hearing the rest. I think maybe as I lay down to sleep, which is possibly my favorite way of listening to that voice of his.--Rick 

I Must Be Guilty Of Something...

Of course the plus is - we now have new great Dylan record performances. At what point do we assess the minuses ? 1.  Where is the powerful use of the harmonica ? Not Dark Yet is a magnificent insight. With blues harmonica it would be a masterpiece. 2. Where is the truly original Dylan melody? I know that blues variations are limiting but Dylan's musical creativity can usually produce an outstanding tune. 3. There was no need for the padding. Highlands is a an example. The waitress scene is important but D. would normally encapsulate this into a couple of verses. 4. There are a number of cliches/awkward phrases which are left as they are rather than the clever twist than D. can give them. - winds of change, rock me etc.(Million Miles),on your case ( ! ! ). If any one thing lifts the songs to a new level it has to be the sound. Earlier posters have referred to this as a blues sound and this can not be accidental. The nearest I can remember to it is the  Howling Wolf electric Chicago band but with keyboards and even they have a distinct early Hammond sound. I can also sense a bit of Link Wray rubble in there.--Pearson66

Selling Out To Grandmothers

On Time out of Mind, Dylan merely reworks his own (old) songs, into something that isn't too powerful for the average  American listener. Or in other words, Dylan merely WATERS DOWN TREMENDOUSLY his past material, in order for GRANDMOTHERS, CHILDREN, HANDICAPPED PEOPLE, AND OTHER WEAK MINDS to not have nervous  breakdowns in listening Dylan's material, which was powerful and kicking ass in the pass. LOVE SICK sounds like a song that was left off the Oh Mercy album; DIRT ROAD BLUES sounds like a simple organ based number; STANDING IN THE DOORWAY sounds like a reworked version of "Seen a Shooting Star Tonight"; MILLION MILES sounds like a reworked version of "Mr. Jones"; TRYING TO GET TO HEAVEN sounds like a song remaining from the Under the Red Sky album sessions, although also sounding like a reworked version of "Desolation Row" too; TILL I FELL IN LOVE WITH YOU sounds like a reworked version of "Wiggle Wiggle"; NOT DARK YET sounds like a reworked version of "Lay Lady Lay"; COLD IRONS BOUND sounds a number inspired from the Rolling Stones' "Jumping Jack Flash" song; MAKE YOU FEEL MY LOVE sounds like a reworked version of "Forever Yours" off of Empire Burlesque; CAN'T WAIT I have no comments; HIGHLANDS seems like a song inspired from what the Rolling Stones' released as "I just can't be satisfied" when they were starting out in the business; And that's it for those 11 songs. In conclusion, TIME OUT OF MY MIND is designed FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE TOO WEAK TO HEAR THE REAL THING. The real thing being ALL of Dylan's previous albums.--mfcam 

Why Can't We Go Too?

Been listening to it all day whenever I could in the car (a lot of driving). Fantastic! Magnificent! As usual, the popular press,  the blurb writers and hypes just don't get it. All these songs about the blues, and about various and sundry women? Forget it!... This work is a continuation and advance upon the road he's been heading a long time. What happens when you  have a close call with death? Resurrection! My, what an interesting topic. For some time Dylan has realized that living this long means heading for transcendence, involving shedding away of the Self, or all those Selves. The "you" in these songs is once again not so much some woman, Sara or any other, but those to whom he sings, and for whom he writes, self-consciously the Zeitgeist, the poet in the deepest sense of our times -- to US. Much in the songs is either about how his fate is to leave us behind, as he winds down the darkest part of the road. Or, about those who have already left HIM behind -- Allen, Jerry, most recently -- and have left him standing in the Doorway (Heaven's Gate), crying, blues around his head. But he's venturing on out there, into the dead streets, from where he'll still watch, and tell us what it's like, out there "20 miles out of town, cold irons bound." He'd like to get to the Highlands where he won't have to think about it anymore, but he can't even see that other side from here yet. The words, they say, are so plain and simple compared to his notorious earlier poetry...but that totally misses the point. Poetry is an art of IDEAS, not words, and in these "simple" lines are ideas  that are profound enough to express religion - the kind he now admits is really his only one - the religion of the meanings in the songs, and what sense of the transcendent they bring him to. Jokerman plays a nightingale tune, birds fly high by the light of the moon! -- Roger Mexico 

Maybe He'd Just Rather Be Alone

This ranks with Dylan's best. It's almost haunting. I found the theme of searching throughout all of TIME OUT OF MIND.  Overall - I see it as wanting the old to get the hell out of his life and wanting to be with the new. What's stopping him from being with the new love- friends (imposing their own opinions), circumstances, jealously of people. Musically it is real bluesy really great. --Roserut 

Another Birth Of The Blues

More thoughts on TIME OUT OF MIND: this is a blues record, and in fact, this is the most important thing to happen to  American blues music since Robert Cray. In the 60's, after the chess guys made a blues a permanent and prestigious part of American music, The Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, took the blues into five divergent directions. As enjoyable and innovative as these directions proved to be, along came Robert Cragifnd reminded us about the roots. During the post Cray period, even those five, at least those still alive, even followed suit. Call it retro, call it roots rock, but that's where we headed. Dylan of course didn't need Robert Cray to lead the way. Dylan has always dabbled in the blues. Nearly every record always had a blues cut. These blues cuts stood out not just for being  different musically from the other songs on the record, but the lyrics tended to be less poetic, more plain spoken. I mean compare, Bob Dylan's Blues, to the poetic strains in Hard Rains A Gonna Fall, both on the same record. Compare Black Crow Blues to Chines of Freedom, compare on The Road Again to Mr. Tambourine Man or Love Minus Zero. Again and again, songs like New Pony, When You Gonna Wake Up, Meet Me In The Morning, Down Along The Cove, Real You at Last, Pledging My Time, showed the bluesy side of Dylan, marked by plain spoken lyrics and a solid blues Licks. With TIME OUT OF MIND, Dylan has made an entire record of his blues dabbling. And, the lyrics, while amazing meditations on death and loss, two perennial blues themes, are direct and with little alliteration. He is also taking blues a step beyond Robert Cray's retro approach. He's mixing rockabilly, Van Morrison soul, and cabaret music into the blues stew. 

The result  is the most cookin' album in many a year. It's an amazing achievement, but unlike records such as Nashville Skyline, Slow Train and Saved, Dylan is not experimenting with a musical genre. He is an accomplished blues man, had been striving towards this since his earliest recordings, even though it was not initially his number one goal. Yes, country and gospel were long parts of Dylan's bag of tricks, but never to the same degree as the blues. One can say, with World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You, Dylan came full circle, re- examining the dark folk music that served as his transition from the Golden Chords Zimmerman to the Folk Kid named after Dylan Thomas. With TIME OUT OF MIND, Dylan has enlarged  that circle. Now, anything is possible. --TIMHRK

Quintessential

TIME OUT OF MIND was released here today and it's every bit as good as I wished. This is probably the quintessence of all that Dylan has ever done, you hear WORLD GONE WRONG, "Shake Sugaree", all of the Gospel albums and so on till down to his first record. Standing in the Doorway and Tryin' to Get to Heaven nearly made me cry, I could feel the lump in my throat... (This would have been a first, since I was on public transport when it happened.) O Joy! --Christian

How Immediate Can You Get?

Right now I'm listening to TIME OUT OF MIND for the first time and it really is fantastic. Bob's voice is in good shape and  reminds me of his singing on Oh Mercy. But whereas Oh Mercy was joyful and high-spirited, TIME OUT OF MIND is a very sad, very depressing album. The music fits the lyrics like a glove. The sound is very dense and tight and although the  album was not recorded in New Orleans you can almost feel the warm humidity of Louisiana night. Sometimes the spare instrumentation reminds me of a late period Tom Waits album but basically it's just blues, Bob's 1997 blues. It's so dark, that I started getting depressed the very second Love Sick started to play on portable CD player. But as I said  above: It's a great album, his best in a decade and I can't stop listening to it. --Andreas

Bob Dylan's Blues

"I've got to know that I'm singing something with truth to it. My songs are different than anybody else's songs. Other artists  can get by on their voices and their style, but my songs speak volumes, and all I have to is lay them down correctly, lyrically, and they'll do what they need to do...Environment affects me a great deal. A lot of the songs were written after the sun went down. And I like storms, I like to stay up during a storm. I get very meditative sometimes, and this one phrase was going through my head: 'Work while the day lasts, because the night of death cometh when no man can work.' I don't recall where I heard it. I like preaching, I hear a lot of preaching, and I probably just heard it somewhere. Maybe it's in Psalms, it beats me. But it wouldn't let me go. I was, like, what does that phrase mean? But it was at the forefront of my mind, for a long period of time, and I think a lot of that is instilled into this record...I wasn't interested in making a record that took the songs and made them into a contemporary setting. My music, my songs, they have very little to do with technology. They either work or they don't work. Daniel and I made that record 'Oh Mercy' a while back, and that was pretty good at the time. But these songs, I felt, were more all-encompassing...Many of my records are more or less blueprints for the songs. This time, I didn't want blueprints, I wanted the real thing. When the songs are done right they're done right, and that's it. They're written in stone when they're done right...We all know what the thing should sound like. We're just getting further and further away from it. I wanted something that goes through the technology and comes out the other end before the technology knows what it's doing...I can't help those feelings. I'm not going to try to make a fake Pollyanna view. Why would I even want to? And I'm not going to deny them just because they might be a little dismal to look at. I try to let it speak for itself, but I'm not emotionally involved in it. I can deliver the message. I learned a while ago not to get personally involved, because if you're personally involved you're going to go over the top...There's a lot of clever people around who write songs. My songs, what makes them different is that there's a foundation to them. That's why they're still around, that's why my songs are still being performed. It's not because they're such great songs. They don't fall into the commercial category. They're not written to be performed by other people. But they're standing on a strong foundation, and subliminally that's what people are hearing. Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book. All my  beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from 'Let Me Rest on That Peaceful Mountain' to 'Keep on the Sunny Side.' You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs. I believe in Hank Williams singing 'I Saw the Light.' I've seen the light, too...But when you get beyond a certain year, after you go on for a certain number of years, you realize, hey, life is kind of short anyway. And you might as well say the way you feel." - Bob Dylan (from the New York Times)

Naked Poetics

Some comments on TIME OUT OF MIND. It seems to me that this album is the logical extension and culmination of  everything Dylan has been working towards over the past decade. Good As I Been To You and WORLD GONE WRONG (and all those covers that populate the Never Ending Tour)are celebrations of (mostly) American roots music. Traditionally, the lyric content of these songs is visceral and direct, and no less powerful for its simplicity. Indeed, this music is powerful precisely because of its simplicity, its rawness, honesty, nakedness. Dylan has recorded perhaps his most revealing album here and it's no coincidence that the idiom he chose is the blues. As for those who complain it is not as "poetic" as earlier albums, Dylan long ago described a poem as a naked person. He has never stood as naked as he does on this album. Therefore, if we accept Dylan's own definition, what we have here is arguably his most poetic work.-- "Mark O."

The Quick And The Dead

Quick response on TIME OUT OF MIND: it's over produced, to the point where at times I can't hear Dylan. Too much  noise, not enough Dylan. --sailsw

Dylan Realized...

TIME OUT OF MIND is the realization of what Bob has been moving towards for (at least) the last decade, but more likely  for his entire life. anyone who has yet to hear it is in for a truly masterful work, a masterpiece. I pity the souls who can't get past bob's 60's music. they have repeatedly missed out on greatness. as good as his 60's stuff is, it is but a small part of a much greater whole. bob has always grown and at a rate much faster than his peers, critics, fans...But, TIME OUT OF MIND may not be an easy listen for some, and these folks must listen again...and listen with an open mind. much has been written of these songs' lyrics being banal, almost trivial. no, Bob is not bombarding us with majestic bells of bolts or spoon feeding us Casanova, he is doing what he always done. he is giving us himself, standing naked before the world under a midnight moon. -- danv

Speechless!

My Impressions of Time Out Of Mind: I'm nearly speechless! I was able to get my cd today after weeks of anticipatio. I run a record store, and after hearing music all day I just don't do that anymore! Anyway, I'm through my second playing of the new album, and for once my expectations have been exceeded with Dylan. This album really is a masterwork. Finally, Dylan is back with engaging vocals....the blues idioms he's dabbled in now come to the forefront and become the main palette. He really has become the heir to the lineage of the greatest blues singers in the 20th century-Guthrie to Muddy-and who really thought he could burst forth with such power. The lyrics have been criticized for being simplistic- but this is the language of folk and blues. Daniel has done a great job placing these songs in such engaging surroundings. TIME OUT OF MIND is certainly a night album...this is not what you'd pop on jogging at 8 am. The mixing of guitars and keys, sometimes even seeming out of meter (lovesick)  come forth and reward over repeated listenings. Damn, this is fun! -- KillMkLuv

...But Flawed

OK, folks....here it goes: I've been listening to TIME OUT OF MIND for a couple of weeks now. I managed to score the whole thing on CD on Sept. 10th and have heard the whole thing through at least a dozen times now. This is no longer the Dylan influenced by Rimbaud or Ginsburg and the Beats, but much more a Dylan influenced by Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and the blues roots of americana. Much of the lyrical imagery is stripped and direct, honest and autobiographical. Of course, this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who has been listening to anything Bob has released in the last 10 yrs, but there is an eery mix of maturity and resignation on this release that I've never heard before. The production is fantastic, with Dylan's voice being up-front in a mix of various layered instrumentation that is at once typical Lanois, yet unlike Lanois....something more advanced. The sound and production is much like Oh Mercy, with the high points higher and the lows lower. In summary, what we have here is a flawed masterpiece. Flawed because at 72 minutes, it's a bit long in the tooth. Leave off "Make you Feel My Love" and "Highlands", and you have a 50 minute classic, better than Oh Mercy and Dylan's best since "Infidels" --Unknown

Who Can Sing The Blues Like Blind Willie McTell? 

As Dylan observed, with painful regret, no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell and he's been dead for a long  time now. But in Time Out Of Mind, Blind Willie McTell does live. Along with Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Charlie Parker, Big Bill Broozy, Ma Rainey, Lightning Hopkins, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Jelly Roll Morton and Elvis Presley. Tenacious and obstinate as haunts that bang on the door but won't let you see them. But how to invoke this music and these men and not merely mimic them? By the Dylan process of brutalizing his musicians (forcing them to follow his unpredictable lead), a range of them this time as vast as North America, and the by brutalizing the producer as well, once again, Daniel Lanois. Lanois had the feel (as proved in Oh Mercy) but his rules needed to be broken as well (as proved in Oh Mercy), to force him as well to catch up with the sound (of three bands playing simultaneously). And what Dylan says in the songs, he can now simply say it, without fancy craft or artifice or even opinion: I'm sick of love. I'm in the thick of it. -- John D. Williams 

Bring Me a Higher Love? 

I appreciated Frank's "Contract With the Lord" idea, as I thought I was alone with Reb Stephen Pickering to see  something consistently theological in Dylan's love song lyrics. Much like the Solomonic Song of Songs and in the Sufi poetry of Jalaludin Rumi, I like to think of this type of relationship being explored. Which is not to say that more earthly interpretations are less valid. We can see these things situationally and thus probe more deeply, not only the particular
art of the experience, but where each of us may be in life from moment to moment, as time out of mind, like a drop of water in the deep blue sea. -- Rhus@aol.com

Amazing

I was sitting in a dark room, in the midst of a huge party, and just listened. He's amazing, and even after all these years.-- Megan

Sick of a Higher Love?

For instance, one can take Love Sick as a song about what it really means to have faith in God. Long after all of the  supposed) benefits of belief have been ground away by life, you stand naked and bleeding and stripped of all pretense. And all that's left is Love. Even when it makes you sick and you can't take it anymore. Because that is what love is. Continuing to examine this song in this way: "Did I hear someone tell a lie? Did I hear someone's distant cry? I spoke like a child You destroyed me with a smile While i was sleepin' I'm sick of love that I'm in the thick of it This kind of love, I'm so sick of it" Disillusionment wasn't supposed to be part of the deal. Everything was supposed to be roses. After all, didn't I evangelize for you? Didn't I proclaim your sovereignty from the highest palpit? Where's mine, now? (Did you ever wonder, just what God requires? You think he's just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires? When you gonna wake up, boy?) "Sometimes the silence can be like thunder Sometimes I wanna take to the road and plunder Could you ever be true I think of you And I wonder" Frustration. "I'm sick of love, I wish I'd never met you I'm sick of love, I'm tryin' to forget you" But he can't. He's already started on this road and he knows what it means. It is not transitory, it is a rock. Besides, it's all that's left. "I just don't know what to do I'd give anything to Be with you" A twist you say? No. There is nothing else. Some hear Ecclesiastes in Time Out Of Mind and I'm sure that's true. But I also hear St. John of the Cross: "Sometimes they minimize their faults, and at other times they become discouraged by them, since they felt they were already saints, and they become impatient and angry with themselves, which is yet another fault. They are often extremely anxious that God remove their faults and imperfections, but their motive is personal peace rather than God. They fail to realize that were God to remove their faults they might very well become more proud and presumptuous. They dislike praising anyone else, but they love to receive praise, and sometimes they even seek it. In this they resemble the foolish virgins who had to seek oil from others when their own lamps were extinguished" Do I think that this work represents Dylan's Dark Night? I don't know. It is a story about someone's loss of faith in the world and embracing of something more permanent. Perhaps it's Bob's story. Or mine. --Frank

LIVE!

Bob at Wembley: Lovesick, as much as I have heard this on the album [50 times or more?] I didnt expected it to sound so powerful. A solid rock of a sound from the top of a mountain of stone [with some echo? ] again Bob's voice a little too low in the mix from my position. but what a group sound, never heard anything like it from Bob before. Straight into Rainy Day with a fixed mask of a grin, lots of bows and nods and gone. --David.

Twist Ending 

I just want to suggest that the sheer brilliance of Love Sick is not apparent until the very last line, which is like the last sentence of a novel that makes everything that has come before it take on an an entirely different meaning. --Richard Hart

Used But Not Used Up 

Love Sick - the first thought that ran through my mind was Love Sick or Sick of Women. The line "this kind of love, I'm so sick of it" - it reminds of someone that has been used and taken advantage of and yet at the end of the song is seeking true love. --Roserut

Muse and Music

From the tramping of the drums that begins this song, the footsteps themselves begin, taken over then by the chilling organ, in a rhythm spooky and otherworldly, and Dylan enters..."I'm walking. Down streets that are dead." And the ghostly journey begins...the shadows have life here, and the voices are distant, weeping, lies. So too begins the most dreadful
love story told, of a man and a woman, or a man and his muse? 

Growing Sickness? 

Love Sick---not the greatest way start the disc with. At first, i didn't like it all, although it has a way of growing on you. The first of several tunes on this release that reflect on emptiness and a personal despair from Dylan that makes it almost hard to listen to.--Mark Henteleff

Searching

Dirt Road Blues - Again searching for something that has eluded him all his life. --Roserut

Graveyard Woman?

Dirt Road Blues reminds me of a honky tonk From a Buick 6. --PBLACKCAT 

But No Roy?

Dirt Road Blues----a great little blues number. A light musical flavor backed with lyrics that cry out for love. Not far off from something he might have written for the Wilburys,  yet paying homage to the country blues of the 50's.--Mark Henteleff

For Whom The Bell Tolls

There's a couple of lines in ' Standing in the Doorway' that bear a little examination, because they show just how brilliant Bob is as a lyricist. 'When the last rays of daylight go down, Buddy you'll roll no more, I can hear the church bells ringing in the yard, Wonder who their ringing for...' Now this is an incredibly sly and witty group of lines. These are at the same time the sort of so- called simple lyrics that some of the more dim-witted people out here are complaining about, because they're not wordy and 'poetic.' OK - 'When the last rays of daylight go down' - obvious, the end of his life - 'Buddy you'll roll no more.' Then, this wonderful couplet follows it- 'I hear the church bells ringing in the yard, I wonder who they're ringing for...' So, the narrator, his attention diverted, hears church bells. He wonders who's died. He's been musing on his mortality, and the bells echo that. But those lines harken directly back to the famous John Donne passage, 'never send to know for who the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.' So the narrator, inadvertently, is answering his own question - the bells are tolling for him, the narrator - yet, as a character within the song, the narrator isn't aware of the irony of his own words. The irony instead is coming to us from the songwriter and singer, Bob, who is standing outside the song, in an omniscient voice - and at the same time he is singing it, and it's about him. Get it? No small wonder he always says he doesn't know who he is. --Bill (call me anything) Routhier

Beautiful Pain

It is truly astounding what intensely meaningful music this man is still creating for a world often bereft of spirit and meaning. "Standing in the Doorway" makes me cry and it makes me waltz around the room, sometimes alternately, sometimes simultaneously...--Karen

Abandoned

Standing In The Doorway - About being abandoned but yet still seeking that true love. --Roserut

Dark, Great Phrasing

Standing in the Doorway is slowed down and dark, great phrasing: "I've got no place left to turn, I've got nothing left to burn", "don't know if I saw you if I would kiss you or kill you. It probably don't matter to you anyhow". --PBLACKCAT

Warding Off the Ravages

A painful, painful song. This misery is so racked up at the door, and even if the flesh falls off of his face, yes, there will be someone to care, and why is that so painful? Because he is essentially alone, even when warding off the ravages, playing his gay guitar, smoking his cheap cigar...--John D. Williams

...And Some Interesting Guitar Work

Standing in the Doorway--- another song about being broken hearted and another that grew on me. A pretty good ballad with some interesting guitar work. --Mark Henteleff

Brilliant

This is kind of weird because I haven't seen people talking too much about this tune. But after my first few listens, I keep coming back to Million Miles. I think this is a brilliant blues tune. This is a classic, and it rivals some of the greatest blues tunes ever written. --JCONN

Muddy

Million Miles conjures up Muddy Waters with some great blues. So far this is just a great album.-- PBLACKCAT

Gritty 

Million Miles----the theme again of estrangement. A very nice gritty, slow blues tune. --Mark Henteleff

Dangerous While Driving

After five days of listening, I've decided that Bob's new album suffers from 2 things- 1)"Tryin' to Get to Heaven" and 2) digital technology. Back in the days of vinyl, cassette, or (gasp!) 8-track, it took a bit of effort to repeat a song. Now, however, all I have to do is press a button to hear "Tryin'..." again, and I CAN'T ESCAPE THIS SONG!!!!! The lyrics and the vocal continue to floor me every time I play it. When I have to drive somewhere, I'm converting the travel time into the number of times I can hear this song on the way (and I find myself driving more slowly) I'm hoping to get past Track 5 so I can finally hear what all the fuss over "Highlands" is about.--Mark 

Wonderful Singing

Two posts this morning about how wonderful the singing is on "Trying to Get to Heaven," and I just wanted to add another. I've been rewinding the last two verses and listening to them over and over -- they're wonderful. I especially love the way he sings "I been all around the world, boys," and "I been to Sugar town, I shook the sugar down" -- also the way the drum kicks in behind that last line. It's Jim Keltner, I guess, who has been around almost as long as Dylan.--A Bienen

Folk Traditions

Now here is my take on the "lonesome valley" line in "Trying To Get To Heaven". While the phrase "that lonesome valley" obviously invokes the old spiritual, I would like to add that the FORM of the line: I've been walkin' that lonesome  valley calls into play yet another song, "Hard Traveling'," by Woody Guthrie, in which Guthrie sings: I've been walking that Lincoln highway, I thought you knowed, I've been hittin' that 66, Way down the road Heavy load and a worried mind, lookin' for a woman that's hard to find, I've been hittin' some hard travelin', lord [note to non-Americans: the Lincoln Highway (Highway 30; the old northern route) and Highway 66 (the old southern route) were traveled by "Dust Bowl  Refugees" headed west during the 1930s.] 

Guthrie was OBVIOUSLY quoting/rearranging the "Lonesome Valley" spiritual in his song "Hard Travelin'" -- and Dylan plays with his knowledge of this by copying Guthrie's FORM, but restoring the altered Lincoln Highway lyric to the ORIGINAL Lonesome Valley lyric, while conflating his search for a woman with a search for Heaven's door. Another Guthrie song that takes an old religious tune and secularizes it is "I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore," which Guthrie re-worked as the dust-bowl ballad, "I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore." In the original, religious version: This world is not my home, I'm only passing through My treasures are laid up some where beyond the blue The angels beckon me from Heaven's open door And I can't feel at home in this world  anymore. (The laying up of treasures refers to a sermon Jesus gave about where one's treasures are laid up, there one will go.) 

In the gospel song we have shades of both Dylan's "Trying to Get to Heaven" ("before they close the door") and his earlier "Knocking on Heaven's Door" -- but then we must consider Guthrie's take on the old gospel song: I ain't got no home, I'm just a-ramblin' round I'm just a wand'rin' worker, I roam from town to town. The police make it hard wherever I may go And I ain't got no home in this world anymore. My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road A hot and dusty road that a million feet done trod; Rich man took my home and drove me from my door And I ain't got no home in this world anymore. Was a-farmin' on the share, and always I was poor My crops I laid into the banker's store; My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor And I ain't got no home in this world anymore. Now as I look round, it's mighty plain to see The world is such a great and a funny place to be; The gamblin' man is rich and the workin' man is poor And I ain't got no home in this world anymore. Guthrie lays up his crops not at heaven's door, but in the banker's store. But check out that final verse -- here we find the "gambling man" -- who also appears in the previously cited Guthrie song "Hard Traveling" in the line: I've been havin' some hard travelin', hard ramblin', hard gamblin' This gambler also appears in Dylan's "Trying to Get to Heaven" -- in a verse that evokes the old gospel song "This train is Bound For Glory," that being the song-title Woody Guthrie chose to reference as the title of his own autobiography! 

Here's a verse from Guthrie's  version of "Bound For Glory": This train don't carry no gamblers, this train, This train don't carry no gamblers, this train, This train don't carry no gamblers No hypocrites, no midnight ramblers, This train is bound for glory, this train. -- and Dylan, from "Trying To Get To Heaven": Some trains don't pull no gamblers No midnight ramblers like they did before.

Then there is another Dylan's line in the same song: I'm just going down the road feeling bad -- and again the link to Guthrie is written in concrete, not floated on the wind, for that line is also Guthrie's, from a song called "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad": I'm going down the road feeling bad I'm going down the road feeling bad I'm going down the road feeling bad, Lord, Lord And I ain't gonna be treated this-a-way. 

Oh, and let's not forget Dylan's lines People on the platforms Waiting for the trains Those are taken from Guthrie's "Poor Boy," in which he sings: I'm standing on a platform Smoking a big cigar Waiting for some old freight train Carrying an empty car (Hey -- that cigar belongs in "Standing In the Doorway," not "Trying To Get To Heaven" ;-)) 

But wait! -- the very next verse of Guthrie's "Poor Boy" is I rode her down to Danville town Got stuck on a Danville girl You bet your life she was a pearl She wore that Danville curl -- and that brings us to Dylan's "New Danville Girl" and her twin-sister, the "Brownsville Girl," who is asked to: Take me all around the world Evidently the Brownsville Girl complied with Dylan's request, because in "Tring To Get To Heaven," he sings: I been all around the world, boys And that, I believe is enough "train spotting" for this post!!! --catherine yronwode

Death Wish

Tryin' to Get To Heaven - Almost like a death wish. --Roserut

Eerie 

Tryin' to Get to Heaven---Great song. "Just when you thought you've lost it all, you find out you can lose a little more". A real getting ready to die theme here. Eerie to listen to in light of his sickness a while back. --Mark Henteleff

Was Fine Until...

'Till I Fell In Love With You - Was fine until he met this person and now nothing is the same. --Roserut

Simple Yet Profound

Great blues number with some nice interplay between guitar and electric piano. Lyrically simple, yet profound.--Mark  Henteleff

Choking Back the Tears

I'm in my mid-forties and am shocked at how deeply "Not Dark Yet" moves me even after repeated listenings. I'm finally able to choke back the tears and as the impact of that tune recesses into the smoke rings, "Tryin' to Get To Heaven" is closing in on the leader. It'll be a long time before this CD moves from the front of the rack...--Tom 

Yes! Yes!

This song is my early most favorite of this album. I agree. The voice on this track completely obliterated me. I was  peechless just pacing around my apartment saying "yes, yes, that's it right there" --Dave 

Still a Glimmer of Hope...?

Not Dark Yet - Sees the lights dimming but there's still a glimmer of hope.--Roserut 

Not a Hint of Hope...? 

Not Dark Yet---A masterpiece. Right up there with Brownsville Girl or Every Grain of Sand as one of Dylan's best in the last 15 years of so. With a melody similar to Most of the Time, this haunting song has the kind of power that Every Grain has, with the spiritual overtones of that song being replaced by complete resignation and abject despair..."my sense of humanity has gone down the drain". Brilliant, yet dark in a way I've never heard from Bob before....not a hint of hope here.--Mark Henteleff

Bad Mix

...such a great song...such a bad mix. Guess we'll just have to wait for Genuine Bootleg Series Volume 10. (ha ha)--Jefrey Furlong 

Dylan On The Lam, Part I

I've seen quite a bit of conjecture on this one, but the answer seems obvious to me. Irons (as in shackles....like on a chain gang)....they are cold, and the slave or prisoner is bound to them.....hence, "20 miles out of town, cold irons bound". In fact, in my old days at the correctional facility....me and my mates used to use the expression quite often, as in "he's down,
man....cold irons bound".--Mark H. 

Dylan On The Lam, Part II

Now one take I have on this is the narrator has indeed committed a crime. The crime? He's murdered the woman he  couldn't have in hopes that it would erase her from his mind, but it didn't work. "Some things last longer than you think they will Some kind of things you can never kill" Either he's already been caught and is headed for the cold irons directly or he's
reflecting on the inevitability that he will get caught. Then again, another take is he's about to commit a crime due to frustration of losing his love, IE. he's hooked up with criminals out of desperation. --Marc Blaker

...Or Holed Up Somewhere

Thinking of a Cold Irons Bound. It's believed that Bob wrote these songs while stranded during a storm in Minnesota. Cold, Iron, get it. This sounds pretty likely. The song seems to be about heading away from some place, going to some place  that may even be worse. Hell, the whole record is like that. A friend of mine suggested that Cold Irons might mean like  prison, locked in irons, that sort of thing. The narrator may be heading to prison. However, I would think that if it was a heading to prison song, there would be more clues about prison or doing crime. Anyway, I'm inclined to think it's about going to hide out in a stark cold mountain range, which is better than the pain love he leaves behind at least. In any event, I am diggin' on this song a long, has a latter day Waits feel to it, also a little reminiscent in the beginning of Basement Tapes Odds and End. It really GROOVES. --TIMHRK

Slavery?

I may be mistaken (entirely possible) but I thought that Cold Irons Bound was a reference to an old slave song of the same name, referring to being sold into slavery. However, I can't find it in the traditional song search on the web.--JM

Or Just Plain Bouncy?

Cold Irons Bound----Great blues number with some great riffs and a bouncy melody. Should be the single from this disc, if they have one. Could be a great Stones tune. --Mark Henteleff

Nakedly Yearning

I have seen a few posters that said "Make You Feel My Love" made them cry. "Cry? C'mon, really?" I thought to myself. When I heard the song for the first time on the 30th, I knew I liked it but I couldn't imagine crying because of it. I did not find it cliched or plain or sappy or any of the other negative comments about it that I had been reading in reviews. I liked it but it certainly wasn't the best song on the album. Or at least not yet. (That jaw dropping distinction belonged to "Not Dark Yet" which still manages to freeze time with each listening.) 

It was not until my second week of owning Time Out Of Mind that I was truly struck by the song. It was October. A month I had dreaded for almost a year. A woman that I still love was married this month. I had not seen her in many years. Months ago I saw her pictured in the engagements section of my  paper. I am sure she has completely forgotten me but she has never left my mind. I was writing a friend a letter, sorting through some of my emotions and listening to Time Out Of Mind as I wrote. 

By the time I began writing about my love and her coming wedding, "Make You Feel My Love" was starting. At first it was just background music. It didn't reach me. Then I stopped writing, leaned back in my chair and started listening. Now, admittedly I was in a weak state of mind already, but the song pushed me right over the edge. Dylan was speaking for me. Singing my thoughts exactly. It was an experience like none I ever had. At least not in song. One reviewer described this song as "nakedly yearning" That is the perfect description. I know this will be hard to believe, I would not believe it myself if I hadn't been there, but the second, the very second Bob sang, "tears" in the line, "... and there is no one there to dry your tears" was exactly when my first tear fell. After this point I broke down completely. Every line that followed echoed a distinct feeling of my own. "I would never do you wrong" "No doubt in my mind where you belong" "I could make you happy, make your dreams come true"  and on and on. 

In my entire life no song has ever connected to me so directly the way this song has. Bob's songs mean a great deal to me and they have affected me in many different ways but no song ever reached me like this one has. Every time I hear it now it brings back that memory. And the piano and organ combo on this song made me feel like I was at church. But I wasn't sure if I was attending a wedding ceremony or a funeral. The music on this track lifts me above  everything, like floating above a procession, and Bob's voice, brings me back down to earth with sadness. Forcing me to feel what I have left behind. How I was left behind. "I know you haven't made you mind up yet" he sings, but I know she has. When I decided to write this down I put "Make You Feel My Love" on repeat play and it is doing it to me again. Spinning me overboard. I never knew a song could do this to me. Thank you Bob. You have given me new eyes and I can see just how close everything really is to me. 

...Not Especially Benevolent...

Concerning To Make You Feel My Love, I certainly do not think this is a Hallmark song. Just look at the title. It does not seem to be especially benevolent. He is going to "MAKE" her feel his love. To me this is almost a rape image. --rcsjones

...Perhaps Malevolent...? 

Finally, someone else who sees this song as a desperate and somewhat sinister manifestation of the singer's need to  make" someone else feel an affection that is apparently not reciprocated. Notice that he isn't trying to get her to love him, only prove to her how much he loves her, even to the point of stalking her. I think the song is sad and chilling. The people who dismiss it as Hallmark sentimentality are missing the boat. On top of all that, notice the sad and mournful way he sings it, as if he knows he has absolutely no chance at all to be with her. --John Howells

It's HIM That's Black and Blue, Not HER... 

The thing that strikes me is that he's already describing the miseries of unrequited love (hungry, black and blue, crawling down the avenue, nothing he wouldn't do) in this supposedly "sappy romantic ballad"... lovesick all right! so I don't get the rape image -- it's him that's black and blue, not her, and all that crawling just so she'll acknowledge his feelings, I don't think he mentions getting anything in return. No expectations, just "I'll never give up". (oh, by the way, I thought this was a "sappy romantic ballad" the first 20 or so times I heard it). "You ain't seen nothin' like me yet" indeed!--Tricia 

Bob vs Billy Part I

I have great respect for Dylan as a song writer. I think Billy must feel that way as well. I know Bob has been a big influence on Billy's music and song writing style! If I were to pick which version I like better I would go with Billy Joel's. I think Billy did more with the song. Bob did a great strip down version, but Billy put more power and passion into it! All respect to Dylan, but Billy took the ball and ran with this one!! --rockmenow

Attempting Connection

I think "Make You Feel My Love" *does* fit in with the rest of the album -- you have the threat of hard times in "Not Dark Yet," then the actual hard times and isolation in "Cold Irons Bound," then an offer of salvation to the person in "cold irons" -- namely, "a warm embrace" and the winds of change blowing "wild and free." In short, you have a woman or man trying to get through to someone whose nerves are "vacant and numb." --spjohnny

SEXY!

And I'm not ashamed to say that I *like* Make You Feel My Love. A simple, classic, memorable very sexy love song. Other women agree? Seems like it's been men who've been bashing it. Also, I can imagine Bob singing it *to* his fans. Wouldn't ya like to be in the front row if that happens! "You ain't seen nothing like me yet." Now that's the truth. How about "go to the ends of the earth for you." Some people out there in the outback are probably saying, "it's about time." --Sandy Ramer

Billy's Trivia

To Make You Feel My Love is easily the weakest track on this album. The other songs have their share of clunky lines and cliched phrases but To Make You Feel My Love sounds like it was written by Hallmark (to paraphrase one reviewer). If Billy Joel's version were a hit then this would be interesting as the demo, but as it stands, I could do without it. --Bruxist

Bob vs Billy Part II

Make You Feel My Love - This is much better than Joel's version and to me a song of hope - a new love - not the old.-- Roserut

No Riddles, Pure Emotion

An already underrated song: critics love to dislike this song because of its overly emotional, and at times cheesy, lyrics. But Dylan makes the song powerful and sincere. Like in I Threw I All Away, Dylan is able to turn a seemingly simple and Hallmark-like" song into an emotional giant. The inflections in his voice make you feel that he is genuinely serious about the words that he speaks. This emotional honesty and simplicity draws you in. There are no riddles here: just pure emotion.

Does Garth Brooks Care? 

Make you Feel My Love----terrible song. Should have been left off. Trite, mushy, and gutless. One of Dylan's worst.  Something that sounds like Billy Joel or Bryan Adams would have come up with.--Mark Henteleff

The Man!

To the rest of the female Dylan fans out there: Is it just me or does "Can't Wait"; knock the wind out of you? Bob is THE MAN! 

Losing Hope...?

Can't Wait - Losing patience. Losing hope. Must go on if something don't change. --Roserut 

Finding Hope...?

Can't Wait----a Muddy Waters kind of declaration---"I'm your Man". Great slow and funky blues number with some nice and dare I say....hopeful lyrics.-- Mark Henteleff

Talking Blues

DO we realize what an amazing achievement Highlands is? Dylan has taken the Talking blues genre, one that he solidified early on in his folk career and has only touched on sporadically since, and brought to a new level. Talking New York City blues, Talking Bare Mountain Massacre, Talking World War III Blues, and the two I Shall Be Free's, Dylan took this sub genre of American folk music, added more politics, lots of humor and a dab of poetry. That poetry increased, and he went on to do Frankie Lee & Judas Priest, Clothes Line Saga, Three Angels. The humor increased too, although some may argue it was unintentional. Brownsville Girl may also be considered a talking blues number, although despite it's title, TV Talking Song is not. Talking Blues I guess is marked by a simple melody, a vocal more spoken than sung, and a narration that tells story. 

Dylan takes the I is Another dictum into a new stratosphere with Highland. There's  dreamscapes that becomes reality, and the narrator within a narrator is similar to Beckett Novels, like Malloy, or the Meta-fictions of Paul Auster, or some of the games played by people like Claude Simon, Phillip Roth, and even Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. But in my opinion, the simplicity just works better as LITERATURE in highlands than all them writers.

From the fascinating scene with the waitress to the wandering narrator, bitter, morose, heading to the undiscovered  country. HE's brought back the talking blues, but is also cognizant of both music and literary trends. It's Dylan's most successful long song, and in the end, the talking blues that is about real BLUES. --TIMHRK

Mad, Funny and Scary...

I'm flabbergasted at this attitude toward the waitress sequence....first, after two listens, that's *all* I remember about the song---(that and the line about "someone asked me if I'm registered to vote..") what the hell else happens of interest in "Highlands"? Second, maybe we've all forgotten since he pretty much stopped exhibiting it in his songs after the motorcycle accident, but Dylan can be *hilarious*---and this sequence is the best bit of his surreal, zany humor since "115th Dream"---think that, "Memphis Blues Again," or even "Thin Man" when you hear this sequence---Dylan capturing a mad, funny, but also scary dialogue with depth and precision....*don't understand"* what people's problems are with the waitress....--Brian Doherty

...But Did She Get Tipped?

OK, I can't resist. So here is my self-indulgent, totally meaningless, obviously incorrect analysis of the waitress scene:  Without dissecting every single word (which I could if you really wanted me too-- ha ha) I see the scene as a metaphor for the pressures put upon Dylan to create the type of art that he did 25-35 years ago. The waitress represents the critics, the music industry, the fans (us), and they are constantly demanding a masterpiece...NOW! Well Bob keeps coming up with  flippant excuses, not wanting to get into the real, and very serious reasons why he just can't do that anymore. (...we try to be who we were...sooner or later you come to the realization that we're *not* who we were-- B.D.,Newsweek) Finally, when Dylan gives in and draws the picture, a very minimalistic picture (i.e. Good As I Been To You, World Gone Wrong, Time Out Of Mind?) the waitress is furious and exclaims that it doesn't look like her, (this is wrong, this isn't Dylan) Bob says, Oh, but it IS. It is now. --Jefrey Furlong

Robert Burns and Jack Nicholson

Highlands: Great walkin' along story. As for some of the predictable (or outrageous) rhymes--that's part of the fun. Someone posted the Robert Burns poem, "My Hearts in the Highlands." Bob takes those images and turns them into something  much more lush and vivid. When he wrote the conversation with the waitress, I can't help but think that he was  remembering his pal Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. Hey, did you notice on the inside photo of Bob sitting by a coffee table, in the background, a pair of long white shiny legs? :-) A tiny joke? --Sandy Ramer

Neverending Tune?

I'm not kidding. I could listen to Highlands all day long. It's one of those achievements where one thinks 'why hasn't  anyone done that before?' It has a rhythm and a sound to it that doesn't have to end, and Bob's voice - it's great. I heard that it originally was more like 50 minutes long - this is the short version. I'd love to be able to hear the longer one. When it comes to a song like this, the longer the better. You were right, Bob, everyone else was wrong - as usual. --"Kara A."

Time Doth Hang

"Highlands" is an incredible, incredible song. How it so subtly glides from woodsy folk to city blues is incredible, and the lyrics--"for an instant" or 16:23 worth of them "time doth hang." As someone else said, mesmerizing. --Glynne

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Highlands - I think of his farm in Minnesota as the Highlands in this song. Where his heart is really at and the restaurant encounter just another stupid encounter along the way. --Roserut

Snoresville

Highlands----over 16 minutes of sheer snoresville. Kind of a slowed down "Meet Me in the Morning"; melody that goes nowhere musically or lyrically. A boring narrative of a really boring encounter. Bad way to end the disc....another tune that should have been shelved. 

Saroyan's High

Agreed that Highlands does not literally mean that D. is referring to Scotland as Alan Fraser and others have noted there are too many inconsistencies . (Although the specific reference to Aberdeen threw me.) I have seen Saroyan's  Highlands" once as a play rather than a book. I have taught English Lit since 1971 in the UK and have never used it as a text here. If it is a widely read high school text in the US it is clearly a very important reference point. My memory of this and some short stories is of a writer describing people facing up to a world in which little can be done. A general acceptance of grim reality but written with some romanticizing of their lot. If catherine yronwode's link is correct does this mean that D. is adopting this position, a general despair with even religious optimism missing. If this is the case it would make Highlands more important than I first thought. --Tony Pearson

Reading Music Part I

I have gone back and re-read the several hard-boiled egg scenes in "The Human Comedy" with a view to comparing  them to the hard-boiled egg reference in "Highlands" and I can't shake the idea that there is a connection. I may be out in left field here, but in the novel...

Thomas Spangler is a telegraph office manager in the little town of Ithaca, California, during the Second World War. For seven days he has kept a "lucky hard-boiled egg" in his pocket. (Shades of Lucky Wilbury, Dylan's pseudonym.) While giving a down-and-out would-be thief (typical Dylan character, the thief) his money, Spangler removes the egg from his pocket. He tells the thief that it is "lucky" and then places it on his desk. Later, he contemplates the lucky egg as he dreams of love and marriage to his beautiful girlfriend, Diana Steed. Dylan's "Highlands" verse - I see people in the park forgettin their troubles and their woes They re drinking and a-dancing, wearing bright colored clothes All the young men with the young women looking so good I d trade places with any of them in a minute if I could --

-- has a direct parallel in a chapter of "The Human Comedy" in which Spangler and Diana Steed forget the troubles and woes of the war for a while and drive through the town park, where immigrants of five different nationalities are holding picnics and wearing brightly colored ethnic clothing ("Each group had its own kind of music and dancing.") Strangely, the illustration that heads this chapter is not of the park scene but of Spangler gazing raptly at the lucky hard-boiled egg!

In another scene, Diana sees the egg on Spangler's desk. "Oh, darling," she said, "what a clever paperweight! What is it" "It's an egg," Spagler said. "A real egg. I keep it for luck." This "real egg" that seems to be a "clever paperweight" is,  as Dylan says in "Highlands, "exactly the way that it seems" -- and thus it is remarkable.

In another thread, I mentioned the relationship between "Highlands" and dreams. The song itself contains the line  "Windows were shaking all night in my dreams." One early song "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" ("I was riding on the Mayflower") shares the melody and the waitress with "Highlands" and another early song, "Bob Dylan's Dream" ("I wish, I wish, I wish in vain") shares the nostalgic sorrow for lost youth and lost friends. But there is another link between "Highlands" and dreams -- in Saroyan's "Human Comedy," believe it or not. An early chapter in the book is called "Death, Don't Go to Ithaca!" and in it Homer Macauley, a 14 year old telegram delivery boy who works for Spangler, dreams that his own twin-self appears flying down "out of a black cloud" in the sky, dressed as a telegraph messenger and riding a bicycle. This doppleganger (a veritable wicked messenger) is bringing death to his home town, so Homer, who is also flying through the "dark clouds" on a bicycle, tries to outrace his twin, for "nothing in the whole world was more important that to keep this messenger from Ithaca."

The "two riders" (Saroyan's term, but familiar through Dylan's use of it in the apocalyptic, Strom- riven "All Along the  Watchtower") race on until Homer falls behind. While Death rides onward, Homer begins to sob in terror as his bicycle falls from the sky. The prevalence of twins, mirror-images and storm-clouds in Dylan's apocalyptic dream-visions is too well-known to need further discussion. But that's not the end of the dream -- or the dream imagery. 

In "Highlands," the only "women author" the narrator tells the waitress he has read is Erica Jong, best known for her novel "Fear of Flying" -- and that book, despite the title, is in a large part about sex. There is very little sex in Saroyan's works, but a taste of it follows immediately upon Homer's nightmarish fear of flying, for next he next dreams of a beautiful tree-lined stream in the sunlight, "a wilderness of grass and bough" which could double for Burns' Highlands or Dylan's, "where the Aberdeen waters flow" and "where the wind whispers to the buckeye trees and rocks." A young girl, Helen Eliot, appears on the stream-side path and without speaking, she and Homer take their clothes off, swim together, and fall asleep on the river bank, a dream within the dream. (And yes, here we see Robert Burns again, with "flow gently, Sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.")

Toward the end of the novel, Homer finds a penny in the street and is told that it is "lucky." Now, like Spangler, he too has a lucky charm to keep away death. But all too soon Spangler's mentor, the old telegraph operator Grogan, is stricken with a heart attack while typing out the War Department death-notice for Marcus Macauley, the brother of the telegraph messenger Homer Macauley. Homer thinks Grogan is drunk, so he runs to a nearby restaurant to buy coffee to revive the  old man, but the counterman tells him they are "fresh out" and won't have any more for a while. As Dylan has his waitress say about the hard-boiled egg: "We ain't got any, you picked the wrong time to come." 

Homer runs back to the telegraph office and realizes that Grogan is dead. Just then Spangler walks in, finds the dead Grogan and the frightened Homer -- and hears the telegraph keys rattling out the unreceived message. He sits down and  calmly finishes typing out the incomplete telegram. Then "his hand fell idly on the hard-boiled egg which he kept for good luck." In a "desperate stupor," he eats the egg and throws the shell away. 

The hard-boiled egg did not keep death away from Ithaca. Homer takes the death-message and the two leave the telegraph office together. As they walk, Homer asks Spangler, much as Dylan asks throughout this entire album, "What's a man going to do? What can I do about it? What can I say? How does a man go on living? Who does he love?" 

Meanwhile, a wounded soldier has arrived in Ithaca. This man, who walks with a limp, is Tobey George, an orphan who has no relatives and no home, but who has listened to the nostalgic stories told by the now-dead soldier Marcus Macauley while they were serving together overseas. As night falls, Tobey comes upon Homer and Spangler, who are pitching horseshoes in the dusk because Homer cannot yet go home and tell his mother that Marcus is dead. I can't do the scene justice -- you'll have to read the book -- but the speech that the displaced and homeless Tobey gives, which contains the lines, I'll go home little by little...I'll walk around some more and then I'll go home-- is deeply in the spirit of Dylan's. My hearts in the highlands I m gonna go there when I feel good enough to go.  '

Do I see a causal relationship between the novel and the song? No, but I see Saroyan and Dylan both quoting Burns, the quintessential nostalgiaist, and I see Dylan evoking many images from Saroyan's book, whether through coincidence, buried school-room memories, or intention, I do not know. 

There are references in "Highlands" to many other songs and books, of course (it is as thick with imagery as "Visions of Johanna," and that is saying a lot), and maybe we can all get together and line it out some day, line by line...but for now, here are two random other bits that don't relate to Saroyan: Wouldn't know the difference between a real blonde and a fake-- this is a nod to "Blonde on Blonde" (very obvious, but I haven't read anyone else's mention of it yet; forgive me if it has already been posted). Feel like I m driftin , driftin from scene to scene-- this is an homage to the famous song "Driftin' and Driftin'" by Charles Brown: Well, I'm driftin' an' driftin', like a ship out on the sea -- which, when you reinstate Brown's "sea" for Dylan's "scene," leads VERY nicely back into "I was ridin' on the Mayflower when I thought I spied some land" -- the opening line of "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream," which  supplies the tune for Highlands.--catherine yronwode

Reading Music Part II

Okay, so I didn't go to sleep, I just started re-reading William Saroyan's "The Human Comedy." See other threads I posted earlier tonight (it's dawn now) for a great deal of exegesis on hard boiled eggs and the many images of dreams embedded in this novel -- and how they remind me of "Highlands." Anyway, there's more---

About halfway through the story, while Marcus Macauley is at an Army base in North Carolina "playing the song called "A Dream" to the orphan Tobey George, Thomas Spangler (the telegraph office manager who keeps a "hard-boiled egg which he believed brought him good luck -- or at least kept away anything like extremely bad luck") takes his girlfriend Diana Steed to a movie. When the film starts, Spangler decides to leave because it is a hospital drama and he is trying (in vain, as we will learn) to avoid anything that can remind him of the world's pain, loss, and sorrow. As he pushes past the seated patrons, Diana in tow, he speaks cryptically to a young boy who is watching the film. 

What he says is incongruous and is never explained in the course of the story: -----"YOU"LL get to heaven," Spangler said to the boy, and then to Diana, "Come on, come on, don't stand in the boy's way." Now the boy spoke to Spangler. "What did you say, mister?" he said. "Heaven! -- Heaven!" Spangler said. "I say you'll get there." 

The boy wasn't sure he  understood what Spangler meant. "Have you got the time?" he said.  "No, I haven't," Spangler said, "but it's still early."  "Yes, sir," the boy said. -----The kid is trying to get to Heaven before they close the door -- and lucky for him, it's not dark yet (but it's getting there). 

There is much, much more in the book that evokes Dylan, but if I typed it all out, you wouldn't have the fun of reading it yourselves. Here's another tidbit, a scene that carries an energy similar to TIME OUT OF MIND with a cadence not unlike "Brownsville Girl": A would-be thief holds a gun on Spangler and then goes into a two- page monologue that begins: "I've got no alibis. I'm responsible for everything...I can't live the kind of life I want to live and I don't feel like living any other kind." Saroyan's loquacious thief is not your common, everyday highwayman, by the way -- for he soon makes a startling  confession: "My favorite [author] was William Blake. Maybe you know his stuff. Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Donne, Dickens, Thackery -- *all* of them. I read every book my father had -- some of them twice." [Kinda like that movie that starred Gregory Peck...]

Sorry, I'm getting carried away here. But when the literary thief revealed that he had "contempt for the pathetic as well as for the proud" I sang out - "and we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing!" Dylan has to have read this book. --cat yronwode