Redirecting to a newer version of this post….

Stayin’ up for days in the Chelsea Hotel,
Writin’ “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” for you.
~”Sara” (Bob Dylan)

That song is an example of a song… it started out as just a little thing, Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, but I got carried away, somewhere along the line. I just sat down at a table and started writing. At the session itself. And I just got carried away with the whole thing… I just started writing and I couldn’t stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning.
~Bob Dylan (to Jann Wenner Nov 1969)

This is the best song I’ve ever written.
~Bob Dylan (to Robert Shelton)

@ #49 on my list of Dylan’s 200 best songs. Recorded @ Columbia Music Row Studios – Nashville, Tennessee – February 16, 4-5.30 am.

Session list:

1. I’ll Keep It With Mine
2. I’ll Keep It With Mine
3. I’ll Keep It With Mine
4. I’ll Keep It With Mine
5. I’ll Keep It With Mine
6. I’ll Keep It With Mine
7. I’ll Keep It With Mine
8. I’ll Keep It With Mine
9. I’ll Keep It With Mine
10. I’ll Keep It With Mine
11. Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
12. Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
13. Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
14. Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands

Spotify:

Musicians on songs 11-14:

• Bob Dylan (guitar, harmonica, vocal)
• Charlie McCoy (guitar)
• Wayne Moss (guitar)
• Joe South (guitar, bass)
• Al Kooper (organ)
• Hargus “Pig” Robbins (piano)
• Kenneth Buttrey (drums)
  

Wikipedia:

Released	May 16, 1966
Recorded	February 16, 1966
Genre	Folk rock
Length	11:22
Label	Columbia
Writer	Bob Dylan

“Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” is a song by Bob Dylan. First released on the album Blonde on Blonde in 1966, the song lasts 11 minutes and 22 seconds, and occupied the whole of side four of the double album.

On February 15, the session began at 6 p.m., but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics, while the musicians played cards, napped, and chatted. Finally, at 4 a.m., Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition, “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”. Drummer Kenny Buttrey recalled, “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?” The finished song clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the album. Four takes of the song were completed, but were mainly rehearsals; take 2 is also interrupted.

Many critics have noted the similarity of ‘Lowlands’ to ‘Lownds’, the name of Dylan’s wife Sara, and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton wrote that “Sad Eyed Lady” was a “wedding song” for Sara Lownds, whom Dylan had married just three months earlier.

Lyrics

With your mercury mouth in the missionary times
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes
Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?
With your pockets well protected at last
And your streetcar visions which you place on the grass
And your flesh like silk, and your face like glass
Who among them do they think could carry you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace
And your basement clothes and your hollow face
Who among them can think he could outguess you?
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims
And your matchbook songs and your gypsy hymns
Who among them would try to impress you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

The kings of Tyrus with their convict list
Are waiting in line for their geranium kiss
And you wouldn’t know it would happen like this
But who among them really wants just to kiss you?
With your childhood flames on your midnight rug
And your Spanish manners and your mother’s drugs
And your cowboy mouth and your curfew plugs
Who among them do you think could resist you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide
To show you the dead angels that they used to hide
But why did they pick you to sympathize with their side?
Oh, how could they ever mistake you?
They wished you’d accepted the blame for the farm
But with the sea at your feet and the phony false alarm
And with the child of a hoodlum wrapped up in your arms
How could they ever, ever persuade you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row
And your magazine-husband who one day just had to go
And your gentleness now, which you just can’t help but show
Who among them do you think would employ you?
Now you stand with your thief, you’re on his parole
With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold
And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul
Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

However, it was a song he occasionally liked to rehearse. There is a haltingly marvelous stab at it in Dylan’s 1977 movie, Renaldo and Clara, part of the lengthy “Woman in White” sequence. Derived from 1975 rehearsals with Rolling Thunder core musicians Scarlet Rivera, Rob Stoner, and Howie Wyeth, Dylan mixes up his lines, and slurs everything but the chorus, yet still seems on the verge of tapping into that wild mercury moment again.
~Clinton Heylin (Revolution in the air)

Check out:  Bob Dylan’s 200 best songs

Check Out: Bob Dylan recording sessions

References:

• Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions – Part One – by Michael Krogsgaard
• Still On The Road – Olof Björner

-Egil