74. This Wheel's on Fire

There’s something in the ominous tone of the Basement Tapes version of this song—and the music is not Dylan’s but Rick Danko’s, making the song, incidentally, something of a prototype for T Bone Burnett’s Lost on the River—that brings to mind late Murakami Haruki novels. Maybe it’s how, in the verses, it’s clear that there’s a looming threat, but unclear where exactly the threat lies, as if sinister things were happening just out of sight. I think of the great climax in the middle of 1Q84, when Aomame and Tengo are living through the same storm, one deep in enemy territory and one peacefully at home and in good company, yet both seized by the same tense, frightful, and mysterious mood. In that scenario, the verses of This Wheel’s on Fire would be Tengo’s: nothing much seems to be happening, nothing wrong you could point to exactly, but there’s something heavy going on somewhere, something you should know about.

Come to think of it, another reason 1Q84 comes to mind is the ending of the third verse: “And after every plan had failed / And there was nothing more to tell / You knew that we would meet again / If your memory served you well.”

The nearest we get in the verses to an outright threat is in the beginning of the third: “You’ll remember you’re the one / That called on me to call on them / To get you your favors done.” But even that is rather distant, the narrator only a middleman. More threatening is “I was going to confiscate your lace / And wrap it up in a sailor’s knot / And hide it in your case”—or not. Instead we get images of waiting (“I’m going to unpack all my things / And sit before it gets too late”), of uncertainty (“If I knew for sure that it was yours… / But it was oh so hard to tell”), of defeat (“every plan had failed”). You’d think it’d be a song of calm, like Open the Door, Homer, or I’m Not There (1956), but it isn’t, it’s a song of creeping gloom.

But the refrains are another thing entirely. They offset the murk and confusion of the verses with stark imagery: “This wheel’s on fire / Rolling down the road / Best notify my next of kin / This wheel shall explode.” Lyrically, it doesn’t explode altogether, it only will; musically, there’s a clear exclamation in the final line. Something is building: rolling, gaining speed: and soon to peak in intensity, to reach its culmination, and to go up in smoke. And the refrain is as bright as the verses are dark. The verses recall Ballad of a Thin Man, and the refrain, well, Like a Rolling [Wheel].

As a listener, I don’t need the Basement Tapes songs to cohere lyrically, since I love the alternate way they communicate, in glimpses, suggestions, non sequiturs, and jokes, and since musically they are very much whole. Here the atmosphere and the wording of the refrain seem to call up Dylan’s 1966, his drug-fueled tour, the pace he could no longer maintain, and above all the motorcycle accident that gave him the time and the excuse to get away, to be with his family, to gather the Band and play in Big Pink. But it’s all done with a wink of the eye and a tip of the hat towards some masked or faceless guest. If it’s just a motorcycle, why only one wheel? Where’s the rest of the machine? Might this not also have something to do with the flaming wheelwork of Ezekiel 10:6? John Wesley Harding was mere weeks away, after all.

The Band, with co-writer Danko on lead vocals, do a hopped-up version that sits well as the penultimate track of Music from Big Pink, Robbie Robertson’s distinctive guitar licks climbing all up and down the walls, the upbeat arrangement clearing the air like a good clap of thunder before the album closes with I Shall Be Released.

For me, though, better than either the 1967 Basement Tapes runthrough with Bob or the 1968 studio version without, is Ray Padgett’s favorite version of This Wheel’s on Fire, live in Burlington, Vermont on April 17^th, 1996. The five-piece band play like ghouls, hobbling towards the darkness of the song and leaving the light behind. J. J. Jackson and Bucky Baxter sing the refrain together with Bob but do it low and slow and hazy, so that the explosion sung of is no bigger than the last swath of bright color in a fading sunset. The electric guitars crunch through the performance like giants leaving footprints in the snow.

As someone unfamiliar with the latter years of Bob onstage (but this will be changing!) I don’t see why Winston Watson has a reputation of banging through songs. Here he treads carefully, loud when the ghouls are hungry and soft the rest of the time, especially when Dylan begins the verses with a lonesome, quiet howl; at those moments Watson sounds like Dylan’s shadow, or echo.

Grandest of all is Dylan’s harmonica, which keens like the lost soul of the company’s foremost ghoul, the one who had the most to regret in the life he left behind. The long harmonica solo, the centerpiece of the performance, is off-kilter and sharp like the mountaintops on the wasteland horizon, and the band trundle after it desperately, helplessly, and the mixture is sublime.

So thank you very much, Ray Padgett. And if you reading this happen to be a Dylan aficionado who's not aware of Ray's Flagging Down the Double E's series, I recommend it: brief, thoughtful, and inventive reflections on interesting and often unheralded corners of Dylan's career.