Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions
Are they lost or are they found?
Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend
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If I could keep only one performance from the Slow Train Coming album, it would have to be the title song, “Slow Train,” much as I love to listen to “Precious Angel,” much as I am in awe of Dylan’s vocal performance on all of “When He Returns” and pieces of “I Believe in You.” But “Slow Train” is it, the white-hot core of the album, the one track that can and must be listened to again and again and again, inexhaustible, essential.
-Paul Williams (Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, Vol 2: The Middle Years 1974-1986)
Previous posts in this series:
..nothing less than Dylan’s most mature and profound song about America.
– Jann Wenner (Rolling Stone Magazine)
Slow Train:
#78 on my list of Bob Dylan’s top 200 songs.
Wikipedia:
| Single by Bob Dylan | |
|---|---|
| from the album Slow Train Coming | |
| B-side | “Do Right to Me Baby (Do Unto Others)” |
| Released | January 1980 |
| Recorded | May 3, 1979 Muscle Shoals Sound Studios |
| Genre | Hard rock, blues rock, Christian rock, gospel |
| Length | 6:02 |
| Label | Columbia Records |
| Writer(s) | Bob Dylan |
| Producer(s) | Jerry Wexler Barry Beckett |
“Slow Train” has an earlier genesis than most of the songs on Slow Train Coming. It began life as an instrumental Dylan used to warm up with on tour in late 1978. A recording of the song with some lyrics exists from a soundcheck of a December 2, 1978 show in Nashville, Tennessee, although only the chorus and a few lines from that version were retained on the ultimate recording. A studio demo was recorded in April 1979, and the album version was recorded on May 3, 1979, at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield, Alabama. Dylan previously used the symbol of holy slow train in the liner notes to his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited: “the subject matter – though meaningless as it is – has something to do with a holy slow train.”
Check out: Slow Train Coming
Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions
Are they lost or are they found
Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bendI had a woman down in Alabama
She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic
She said, “Boy, without a doubt
Have to quit your mess and straighten out
You could die down here, be just another accident statistic”
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bendAll that foreign oil controlling American soil
Look around you, it’s just bound to make you embarrassed
Sheiks walkin’ around like kings
Wearing fancy jewels and nose rings
Deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and to Paris
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bendMan’s ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more
You can’t rely no more to be standin’ around waitin’
In the home of the brave
Jefferson turnin’ over in his grave
Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bendBig-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters
Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition
But the enemy I see
Wears a cloak of decency
All nonbelievers and men stealers talkin’ in the name of religion
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bendPeople starving and thirsting, grain elevators are bursting
Oh, you know it costs more to store the food than it do to give it
They say lose your inhibitions
Follow your own ambitions
They talk about a life of brotherly love show me someone who knows how to live it
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bendWell, my baby went to Illinois with some bad-talkin’ boy she could destroy
A real suicide case, but there was nothin’ I could do to stop it
I don’t care about economy
I don’t care about astronomy
But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend
–
Performing it in 1987 he dropped the third verse.
Thank you. I suppose you’ve been reading the newspapers and watching the TV? And you see how much trouble this world is in. Madmen running loose everywhere. Anyway we, we’re not worried about that though — it doesn’t bother us — because we know this world is going to be destroyed. Christ will set up his kingdom for a thousand years in Jerusalem where the lion will lie down with the lamb — we know this is true. No doubt about it. So, it’s a slow train coming. It’s been coming for a long time, but it’s picking up speed.
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The third verse is dropped in this brilliant version.
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Check out:
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-Egil
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