"I've had this strange, eerie feeling that I wasn't all alone, and I'd better know it."
One of the joys of listening to a Bob Dylan record from beginning to end is finding little runs of songs that compliment each other perfectly, like mini-albums within an album. Some of my favourites are 'One More Night' and 'Tell Me That it Isn't True' on Nashville Skyline; 'Ninety Miles an Hour Down a Dead End Street', 'Shenandoah' and 'Rank Strangers to Me' from Down in the Groove; and 'Ring Them Bells', 'Man in the Long Black Coat' and 'Most of the Time' on Oh Mercy. But there's one pair that I think compliment each other better than any of these: 'Is Your Love in Vain?' and 'Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)' from Street-Legal.
Performed 31 times during Dylan's 1978 world tour and then retired forever, 'Is Your Love in Vain?' is not a song that comes up in conversation often. When it does, it's often derided as a sexist rant towards a woman, with the lines "Can you cook and sow, make flowers grow/Do you understand my pain?" coming in for particular criticism. Granted, if you look at the song in those terms, the lyrics don't come off very well. However, that's not how I hear this song: I hear it as being addressed to God.
The official story of Bob Dylan's conversion to Christianity, as related by the man himself during his 1979 performance in San Diego, is that a fan at Dylan's concert in the same venue the previous year - noticing that Dylan appeared unwell - had thrown a small silver cross onto the stage. Dylan picked it up and kept it, and the following evening in Tucson was visited in his hotel room by, as he told Robert Hilburn in November 1980, "a presence in the room that couldn't have been anyone other than Jesus". In May of that year he had described this experience in detail in an interview with Karen Hughes:
"Jesus put his hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down and picked me up."
I don't doubt that what Dylan describes is true, but there is evidence to suggest that he was already headed in this direction before these fateful events in San Diego and Tucson. During a December 1977 interview with Jonathan Cott, a short discussion about God and religion yielded this revelation from Dylan:
"You know, I'll tell you: lately I've been catching myself. I've been in some scenes, an I say: "Holy shit! I'm not here alone." I've never had that feeling before the past few months. I've had this strange, eerie feeling that I wasn't all alone, and I'd better know it."
That, to my ears at least, is what 'Is Your Love in Vain?' concerns itself with: feeling an unearthly presence in your life and asking the the questions that might pop into one's mind during such a situation. The narrator makes it clear that he's more than a little sceptical about this new arrival in his life:
Well I've been to the mountain and I've been in the wind
I've been in and out of happiness.
I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings
And I've never been too impressed.
Or, in other, words "I've been around the block a few times and got this far by myself, why should I need your help now?". Why indeed. However, the narrator - like the narrators of the other songs on Street-Legal - comes across as being at the end of his rope and in need of a helping hand. He seems to realise this in the following verse, proclaiming "Alright, I'll take a chance, I will fall in love with you."
The troublesome "Can you cook and sow, make flowers grow" lines, meanwhile, are - as I hear them - a reference to God's ability to create, and also a challenge: show me you are who you say you are. This particular theme continues into the following track, 'Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)'.
Before looking at 'Senor' itself, it's worth talking about the extraordinary manner in which Dylan took to introducing this song during the 1978 World Tour. Initially brief, this introduction gradually grew longer and longer throughout the year until it essentially became a short story, delivered with band playing softly behind him. Here's the version of the tale that Dylan delivered in Charlotte, North Carolina on 10th December 1978:
"I was riding on a train one time from Durango, Mexico to San Diego. I fell asleep on the train and woke up in this town called Monterey. And there was, I guess it was about past midnight. Not too much happening, but just maybe around that time. And a family was getting off the train. An old man was stepping up on the platform to get up on the train. And he came down the aisle and took a seat across the aisle from me. Meantime the train was still in the station. Anyway, I was watching this whole thing through the window which was turned into a long mirror. And finally I felt a strange vibration and I had to turn to look at this man. He wasn't wearing anything but a blanket. So I turned my head to look at him. Both his eyes were on fire, I could easily see that, and there was smoke coming out of his nostrils. I said well this is the man I had to talk to. So I turned back to look out the mirror again. I finally got up the courage to talk to him. And the train started moving an the conversation went something like this."
The general premise of 'Senor' is not far removed from 'Is Your Love in Vain?': both songs relate an encounter with a being of immense power, and express an uncertainty as to whether this being can be trusted. Both songs are almost entirely comprised of questions, with the narrator begging this mysterious presence to provide him with answers. And both songs end with the narrator submitting to this presence. "I just gotta pick myself up of the floor / I'm ready when you are, Senor".
Unlike 'Is Your Love in Vain?', however, there is an awful, creeping feeling that the 'Senor' in question may not be who he says he is. It's almost as if the two songs represent the different possible outcomes of a single choice, which brings to mind a line from a song that Dylan would write a year later: "it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord".
Interestingly, I was unexpectedly reminded of both of these songs while listening to Dylan's new album Rough and Rowdy Ways. Track four is 'I've Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You', in which the narrator pledges himself to an unnamed companion who has stuck with him through thick and thin; while the following track is 'Black Rider', in which the singer is hounded by the sinister title character, who seems determined to make our hero stray from his path:
Black rider, black rider, all dressed in black
I'm walking away, you try to make me look back
My heart is at rest, I'd like to keep it that way
I don't wanna fight, at least not today
Go home to your wife, stop visiting mine
One of these days, I'll forget to be kind
I can't help but hear these two new songs as sequels to 'Is Your Love in Vain?' and 'Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)', and their placement right beside each other only makes the comparison more irresistible. Where those earlier songs were filled with questions, Dylan - more than four decades later - may have finally provided the answers.
No comments:
Post a Comment