Highway 61 Revisited

Certain Songs #79: Bob Dylan – “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”

January 18, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: HIghway 61 Revisted.

Year: 1965.

After the 12 minutes of world-changing craziness that preceded it on Highway 61 Revisited, the slow blues shuffle of “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry” must have felt like a relief. Here at last, was something relatively normal!! Even the lyrics were pretty much a straightforward love song, couched in railroad imagery.

Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby
Can’t buy a thrill
Well, I’ve been up all night, baby
Leanin’ on the windowsill
Well, if I die
On top of the hillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
And if I don’t make it
You know my baby will

The irony, of course, was that in its original “Phantom Engineer” version, “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry” was a raucous as “Tombstone Blues” or “From a Buick 6,” and while the garage-rock takes are definitely fun, they’re also very much like a lot of Dylan’s speedy songs, and it was clear that he was looking for musical variety for Highway 61 Revisited.

Don’t the moon look good, mama
Shinin’ through the trees?
Don’t the brakeman look good, mama
Flagging down the “Double E?”
Don’t the sun look good
Goin’ down over the seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeea?
Don’t my gal look fine
When she’s comin’ after me?

Which is good, because the slower version allows him to do some of his best singing ever, and I love the drum builds in each verse, as well as the barrelhouse piano throughout.

Now the wintertime is coming
The windows are filled with frost
I went to tell everybody
But I could not get across
Well, I wanna be your lover, baby
I don’t wanna be your bosssssssssssssssssss
Don’t say I never warned you
When your train gets lost

This was also one of the songs that got me into Dylan, as my brother Joseph – who was actually a Dylan fan before I was – used to play it in his room on acoustic guitar, and many times when I heard him play this, I would walk in and play percussion on whatever was around, usually the back side of an broken acoustic guitar.

Official Video for “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #78: Bob Dylan – “Tombstone Blues”

January 17, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Highway 61 Revisited.

Year: 1965.

If groundbreaking-single, titanic-masterpiece-that-better-writers-than-I-have-devoted-full-volumes-to “Like A Rolling Stone” was the opening salvo of Highway 61 Revisited, then “Tombstone Blues” was where everybody realized that Dylan had stepped up his game once and for all.

A warpspeed whipsaw through hallucinatory imagery, powered by rattling keyboards and Michael Bloomfield’s lightning guitar, “Tombstone Blues” was pretty much the musical equivalent of the punk rock attitude that Dylan was serving up on the album cover. It’s so studded with fucking great lines that I don’t even know which one is my favorite.

Maybe

“The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken”

“The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone”

“And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul
To the old folks home in the college”

Again and again, Dylan returns to the chorus, reminding us that while he’s clearly having more fun than everybody else in the song, he’s still deep in with everybody else.

“Mama’s in the factory
She ain’t got no shoes
Daddy’s in the alley
He is lookin’ for food
I’m in the kitchen
With the tombstone blues”

Even still, he’d better get the hell out of that kitchen ASAP or he’s liable to be impaled by a Mike Bloomfield guitar solo.

Official video for “Tombstone Blues”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #77: Bob Dylan – “Like A Rolling Stone”

January 16, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Highway 61 Revisited

Year: 1965

I almost didn’t write anything about “Like A Rolling Stone,” not because it isn’t a song that I love, but I’m not sure I have anything to add to the infinite plethora of words that have already been spilled dissecting it every which way.

How does it feel?

What can I possibly add? I mean, Greil Marcus wrote an entire fucking book about it, and I’m guessing that – unless it takes you unawares (and “Like a Rolling Stone” is pretty fucking great at taking you unawares) – you roll your eyes when it comes on the radio cos you know it so well.

How does it it feel?

I mean, as well as you’re ever going to know an eternal mystery such as “Like a Rolling Stone." So for me: three quick glimpses into that eternal mystery.

To be on your own?

First off: the absolute lushness of the original version, making all of the groundbreaking rock songs from Bringing It All Back Home seem like sketches, with Al Koopers organ vamps, Mike Bloomfield’s subtle leads and Bobby Gregg’s builds at the end of each verse, it pretty much makes everything else recorded that year seem two-dimensional.

With no direction home?

Next off: the version from the Manchester 1966 concert where – pissed (or pretending to be pissed) at being called "Judas!” – he instructs The Hawks to “PLAY FUCKING LOUD!!!” And with that, they all crash together on the song’s majestic beginning, and Dylan just spits out the lyrics, singing not from his head, but right from his everlovinmutherfucking heart. I think it’s, arguably, the most intense rock and roll performance ever.

Like a complete unknown

Finally, there’s the version in 1974’s Before The Flood. The Hawks are now The Band, and it’s a document of the biggest tour ever. No boos, only adulation. It’s also the version that Martin Scorcese got me to love. I’ve only ever seen Scorcese’s "Life Lessons" segment in 1989’s omnibus film New York Stories once or twice, but the scene where Nick Nolte paints furiously to this steamrolling version is forever etched in my brain. Prior to seeing it, I was lukewarm on Before The Flood afterwards, I was all in.

Like a rolling stone?

“Like a Rolling Stone”

“Like a Rolling Stone” Newport Folk Festival, 1965