If your mem’ry serves you well
We were goin’ to meet again and wait
So I’m goin’ to unpack all my things
And sit before it gets too late
No man alive will come to you
With another tale to tell
But you know that we shall meet again
If your mem’ry serves you well
This wheel’s on fire
Rolling down the road
Best notify my next of kin
This wheel shall explode!
William T. Boylan Auditorium
Monmouth University
West Long Branch, New Jersey
20 April 1997
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
Bucky Baxter (pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
What good am I if I’m like all the rest
If I just turn away, when I see how you’re dressed
If I shut myself off so I can’t hear you cry
What good am I?
What good am I if I know and don’t do
If I see and don’t say, if I look right through you
If I turn a deaf ear to the thunderin’ sky
What good am I?
April 18: Bob Dylan – If You See Her Say Hello Lakeland 1976
If you’re making love to her, watch it from the rear
You’ll never know when I’ll be back, or liable to appear
For it’s natural to dream of peace as it is for rules to break
And right now I’ve got not much to lose, so you’d better stay awake
~Bob Dylan (“Lakeland 76” lyrics to If You See Her, Say Hello)
And then, with an ease I find terrifying, Dylan moves into one of the most nakedly personal performances of his career (something like “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” but inverted, and
without the gloss of riddle and mystery): the 1976 version of “If You See Her, Say Hello.”
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, Vol 2: The Middle Years 1974-1986)
For a master of masks and distancing effects this is an extraordinary performance – no-one listening to it can feel anything other than that there is no distance at all between the author-performer and the performance.
~Andrew Muir (Troubadour: Early and Late Songs of Bob Dylan)
Brilliant, breathtaking & brave version of this great song.