80. Romance in Durango

“Ecstasy feels like dirt after listening to this song,” says Last.fm user forsakethd.

It begins with one of the best opening lines and images in Dylan’s catalogue, the bright, alliterative, enveloping snapshot of “Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun.”

The summer Desire was recorded is said to have been an extremely hot one, and you can hear the languor in the way the musicians play. Romance in Durango has the most langorous sound of all, which is appropriate, since it has the most musicians playing. Little wonder, too, that by the time temperatures started cooling down in autumn, and the Rolling Thunder Revue was touring, everyone had a lot more energy to muster for performances. Romance in Durango live with the Revue is an entirely different kind of beast, sinuous and brave. Clinton Heylin argues that familiarity probably also had something to do with the change, the lyrics being almost entirely a Jacques Levy rather than Dylan/Levy affair, and Romance in Durango a product of the earliest Desire sessions, Bob singing the recorded version from a lyric sheet.

As in Diamond Ring, the pathos of Romance in Durango lies in contrast. On the one hand, there’s the narrator’s charm and bluster. It’s worth remembering that he has murdered a man, and was probably quite aware of what he was doing while he was doing it, since the scene can recreate itself so vividly in his dreams;  for all that, he’s endearing in his optimism (“Sold my guitar to the baker’s son / For a few crumbs and a place to hide / But I can get another one”), in the tenderness of the tone with which he comforts and encourages his companion, and in the gorgeous colors and sounds and shapes he is sensitive to, not only as he crafts his dreamed-up Durango for Magdalena’s benefit, but even among the dusty, uninspiring landmarks of the present desert journey (“Past the Aztec ruins and the ghosts of our people / Hoofbeats like castanets on stone”). And he’s a responsible man, a level-headed man, not the immature youngster of Diamond Ring. When he reflects on the murder that set him on this trail of flight, he thinks, “The dogs are barking and what’s done is done.” And what will come will come.

On the other hand is the threat of pursuit, which at song’s end materializes into reality. This underside of the song is remarkable in that the music gives no indication of looming darkness. In Goldsmith’s arrangement of Diamond Ring, he injects some sadness into the refrain; here there’s nothing but major chords and good cheer, and in the Desire version, there’s even one final chorus after the fateful final verse. This is Dylan as trickster, as Coyote, teasing the listener with the music he set to Levy’s unhappy tale, like Roger Waters leading Pink Floyd through the frolic that is Free Four, one of his most abject lyrics. In the Rolling Thunder performances, the only chill Romance in Durango has is the one that comes as the band sings out “We may not make it through the night!” and, just like that, with one more chord change over the stretched-out “night,” the song ends. This is Dylan outdoing himself, realizing that he can grab a listener by the throat even harder if he omits the last refrain.

What makes the ending of the live versions even more affecting is that Dylan & co. don’t sing “we won’t make it through the night” or “we’re not gonna make it through the night,” but “we may not make it through the night.” Fatally shot, the narrator still wants to keep Magdalena’s heart up, still refuses to admit—to her at least, while he himself wonders, “Oh, can it be that I am slain?”—that a bad end has come, that it’s happening right now, that this is where his life ends. No, in his last moments he is guiding Magdalena’s aim as she grabs hold of his gun: a futile gesture, surely, for the killing of Ramon doesn’t seem likely to have landed the narrator only the single pursuer. But he’s still trying to proffer hope, no matter how thin, and as he dies he continues to thinks about Magdalena, not about himself.

It’s a Shakespearean tragedy in miniature: if the narrator had cared with all his heart about his woman, he would not have killed Ramon; but having made that one mistake, the only thing he can do is try to outrun his fate, and then accept it when outrunning it proves impossible; and as he accepts it—like King Lear, like Antony—he wins the listener over completely. “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” Even if they’re angels as ragged as the Rolling Thunder Revue.

I don’t want to close this write-up without pointing out how many delightful details the Revue performances hold, from Dylan’s shout of “BELLS!” to Howie Wyeth and Rob Stoner mimicing the lethal gunshot after Dylan sings “Was that the thunder that I heard?” , to the way Dylan brings in each rollicking chorus with a full-throated, open-hearted “Nooooooooooooo LLORES” while the backing singers roar away alongside. I don’t think a lyricist could hope for a more sympathetic rendering of their words. Jacques Levy must have been thrilled.