77. Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

Not a very lofty placement for Jim Beviglia’s #1 favorite Dylan song (and come to think of it, how many songs have appeared on both our lists so far? Three?), but that’s how these things go, and it’s great that they go that way. Only in this manner can a variety of songs find its designated listeners. Dylan wrote Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for—Sara Lowndes, yes, if we’re to trust the lyrics of the song Sara—but also for me, and even more so for Jim.

In S. Y. Agnon’s novel A Guest for the Night, the narrator sits in a beit midrash and reads. He reflects:

“I sat silent before the book, and the book unsealed its lips and revealed to me things I had never heard before. When I was tired of studying I thought many thoughts, and this is one of them: Many generations ago a wise man wrote a book and he did not know of this man who sits here, but in the end all his words prove to be meant for him.”

In 1966 sometime, Bob Dylan wrote a song, and as he wrote it, he thought the thoughts he thought, but the song speaks to whom it will, through all the years that it exists, accessible, somewhere in the world. Sad Eyed Lady may speak less to S. Sludig than it does to J. Beviglia, but the last thing this fact makes Sad Eyed Lady is a worse song. Where music’s concerned, I think subjectivity beats (supposed) objectivity way more than half the time and, when I was a new fan peeking into the world of Dylan scholarship, it frustrated me to find how often published writing on our bard (or popular music writing in general, for that matter) makes use of distended opinions masquerading as informed judgements, statements like “this song is a travesty” or “clearly one of Dylan’s greatest achievements,” etc. Nonsense. I say take the gifts you’re given and be glad, and leave the others to those for whom they’re intended. (Christopher Ricks in Dylan’s Visions of Sin is a paragon for all us music-minded scribblers in this regard.)

Dylan sings Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands in a voice too drawling and leisurely for me to love, but unlike, say, the vocals on much of Before the Flood or Real Live, the singing never crosses over into the territory where it would interfere with my enjoyment of what I’m hearing. I do like how the slow stretching of syllables interacts with the light-footed band (all praise the great Kenny Buttrey), and I love how the band plays this particular cut. They sound like the lowlands Bob sings of, on a misty day.

Since I picture those lowlands as wide and open, it’s wonderful that the song is eleven and a half minutes long. The band can play and play and play. The way Buttrey’s beat shifts from the tapping on the ride cymbal in the verses, to the kick and snare work of the swells of the refrain, to the hi-hat flourish with which he returns to the ride tapping, and the very occasional variations in the ride cymbal rhythm—the way the drumbeat morphs, then, is all the variety I need, and there’s still the guitars, the soft and gorgeous organ… what not-quite-satisfied fan of Dylan’s singing on this track could really demand more of him when the band is this subtle, this angelic, and has this much room to explore—when there’s this much else to pay attention to?

Having said so, I’ll add that although I am endlessly fascinated by the technique that Peter Mills, the formidable, calls “through-composition”—in plainer terms, I’m an album guy, who if time allows will listen to a full album rather than a playlist of single tracks, and who if time doesn’t allow will usually listen to an album side rather than a few songs selected at random—I love listening to Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands on repeat.

I may not understand what the verses say about the person the narrator loves (Ralf Sauter: “Is ‘midnight rug’ what I think it is or would that be too crude…?”), but I’m impressed by how much he has to say, and I do enjoy attending to the stream of incomprehensible images. Besides, what the narrator doesn’t communicate, the band does, and what the band doesn’t communicate, the fantastic harmonica solo at song (and album)’s end does.

I do think I catch the spirit, if not the exact import, of what Dylan has to say in the refrain. The title phrase is mellifluous, and in its case I like the delay with which Blonde on Blonde Bob enunciates his words. It’s a beautiful image, too, which posits the beloved as a kind of queen, but a queen with worries, with a troubled heart, with something unfulfilled at her center. And not only the queen, but the whole court, and the court prophets, are sad eyed too. “No man comes” to that land; does that mean that none is supposed to come? But the narrator does, or at least approaches, and approaches with quiet confidence, because he believes that he may be the one who belongs there (“Thanks for the sadness you took from her eyes,” sings L. Cohen of Famous Blue Raincoat, who doesn’t share the confidence of the narrator of Sad Eyed Lady, “I thought it was there for good so I never tried”), but also with loving humility. Humility is not an easy state to maintain. It tips over so easily into falsehood, so that one keeps the appearance of being humble while something other seethes beneath the surface. But not here; here I’m convinced. “My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums / Shall I leave them at your gate / Or, sad eyed lady, should I wait?” (Just typing these lines sent a chill down my spine!)

The narrator brings the gifts; he poses the question; but he understands, and without sacrificing his own dignity, accepts that the answer is his lady’s to make.