Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

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Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
Bob Dylan
publication May 16, 1966
length 11:23
Genre (s) Folk rock , folk
Author (s) Bob Dylan
Label Columbia Records
album Blonde on blonde

Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands is an eleven-minute verse epic with which Bob Dylan ended his seventh studio album, Blonde on Blonde, in 1966.

Emergence

Dylan was frustrated with slow progress on Blonde on Blonde and accepted producer Bob Johnston's suggestion to move the recording sessions from New York to Nashville . As a result, the guitarist Robbie Robertson and the organ player Al Kooper were involved in the recordings.

Work on Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands began shortly after Dylan's wedding to Sara Lowndes . On February 15, 1966, the session didn't start until 6 p.m.; Dylan was still working on the lyrics while the musicians passed the time. The actual recordings only began at four in the morning.

The band rehearsed the piece while Dylan was still working on the structure. Drummer Kenny Buttrey later remarked: “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? "

A total of four takes of the song were recorded, but not all of them are complete. Take 2, for example, was interrupted. The finished song turned out to be a slow folk rocker, with a running time of over eleven minutes. Finally, he should fill out the entire fourth page of the double LP . Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands is one of six Dylan's songs that run for over ten minutes.

The lyrics

The song consists of five stanzas, all of which consist of 13 lines of verse with a refrain. The unusual rhyme schma can be described with AAABCCCBDDDEE, FFFBGGGBDDDEE etc., where DDDEE represents the refrain repeated five times. Dylan uses the poetic freedom for the rhymes used, for example in lowlands - comes - drums .

According to the 1976 song Sara on the Desire album , Dylan wrote the piece for his new wife, Sara Lowndes. Even before that, the song had been described by biographers, critics and fans as a kind of wedding song . The lyrics live mostly from describing the attributes of the ominous Sad Eyed Lady , followed by a rhetorical question and the refrain . The addressed lady herself does not have a say in the song. The bottom line is that the lyrical self expresses great affection and love for the woman sung about.

Even before Dylan's official assurance that he had written the piece for his new wife, music journalists pointed out the anomalies that speak for it. Lowndes' vita was easy to relate to the lyrics; for example the passage about the magazine husband, from whom the lady divorced - a reference to her first marriage.

occupation

The song in Dylan's oeuvre

Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands is considered by many music critics and fans to be one of Dylan's best works. The British music magazine Uncut put the song in their list of the best songs by Bob Dylan at number 10, Mojo even listed it at number 3 in their version.

Cover versions

  • Joan Baez released the song in December 1968 on her double LP Any Day Now .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wilentz, Sean (2009): Bob Dylan In America. The Bodley Head, p. 126, ISBN 978-1-84792-150-5
  2. ^ Heylin, Clinton (2003): Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited. Perennial Currents, p. 241, ISBN 0-06-052569-X
  3. ↑ http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/Uncut_P2.htm#Dylan
  4. ↑ http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/mojo_p4.htm#Bob%20Dylan%20Songs