82. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)

I’ll go with a numbered list for a change, and cover (1) the lyrics as an ode to the unknowability of other people, (2) the narrator’s weariness, (3) the ominousness of his destination, and (4) outstanding musical elements of the Desire recording, which, alongside if not surpassing the 1978 arrangement (available in an early and relatively tame manifestation on At Budokan), is my favorite version of the song.

1. The difficulty of crossing the void between oneself and another is a vast theme, of course, and a fruitful one. Nick Cave, to give one example, has written numerous great songs about the unknowability of his own wife. (Rings of Saturn!)

One More Cup of Coffee, which I see as Bob’s most concentrated take on the theme, originated (according to Dylan’s introductions at autumn ’78 concerts, which are best taken with about a kilo of salt) in a week he spent at a gypsy festival in southern France, where he had the chance to meet a vagabond king. Dylan does dedicate a whole verse of the song to the larger-than-life sovereign, but the main character is the princess, whose love the narrator can taste (“Your hair is smooth on the pillow where you lie”) but not keep.

The narrator is aware that they won’t stay together long: “Your loyalty is not to me, but to the stars above.” He’s been aware from the opening couplet, in which her “eyes are like two jewels in the sky,” the jewel-stars to which he perceives her allegiance adhering. He longs for her—“Your pleasure knows no limits / Your voice is like a meadowlark”—but resignedly. There is no room for him in her future. He’s an adornment to her days or a source of brief joy, perhaps, but her path leads wherever her father, the “wanderer and vagabond by trade,” goes, while the narrator’s will take him to the “valley below,” towards which he must walk alone.

The loveliness of One More Cup of Coffee is in the narrator’s forthright respect for the girl and for the fact that she doesn’t need him. He lists his grievances, but not angrily, and with no expectation that things could be otherwise. She is over there, in her world; he is over here, in his; and they have met, and that is good; but ahead there is only divergence and parting, and so be it.

Incidentally, that none of the girl’s words or thoughts are reported is either part of the way that Desire works (see also Oh Sister, Romance in Durango, Sara, and Abandoned Love, in all of which the main female character remains silent) or indicative, as the situation leads us to imagine, of the lovers’ not being able to speak the same language.

2. I hear the narrator’s weariness more in the singing than in the lyrics per se. Each refrain is delivered as with a heavy sigh, a telling pause between “before I go” and “to the valley below,” as if the narrator needs a moment to gird himself for the fact that his journey is far from over, and that his time with the wanderers and the princess was but a momentary and unsustainable respite. That the “valley below” appears in both the title and the chorus indicates that it is of central importance in the song, despite its never being mentioned in the verses.

I love the mixed modesty and determination that the narrator employs as defense against his weariness when he requests “One more cup of coffee, for the road / One more cup of coffee before I go.” Modesty, because he is not making any great demands; he has had coffee already (“one more cup”) and hopes, touchingly, only to stall a little before he sets off. And determination, because in both lines of lyrics he brings up the road ahead.

3. What kind of road? It isn’t clear from the lyrics, other than a suggestion-by-placement that the way through the valley will be like the girl’s heart, “like the ocean, mysterious and dark.” The music, particularly Scarlet Rivera’s violin, suggests as much. In 1978, the saxophone, percussion, and guitars all speak to the hazards ahead, though as befits the shifted priorities in Street-Legal, the emphasis of that arrangement is more on the danger and uncertainty of the road than on the narrator’s unwillingness to set off. On the refrains in Desire, you might catch a glimpse of the excitement, or challenge, or adventure of the journey, but mostly what you hear is the shuffling of the narrator’s feet.

The title phrase is ambiguous. A valley is usually a safe place; at least it’s not the high mountains, not the thick forest, nor the boundless ocean; and there’s no valley without a river, which means there’ll be water to drink as you journey. Probably sunlight too, at least here and there. Whereas “below” means descent, and in mythical terms, descents are perilous—see Inanna, Adon, Orpheus, Heracles.

4. It’s uncommon for me to feel that songs which the Rolling Thunder Revue band performed in 1975 have better versions elsewhere, but One More Cup of Coffee is among the exceptions: I like it more in its studio guise than live. For that matter, I prefer it live in 1978 to live in 1975; and in general this seems to be a song that Dylan has had difficulty performing poorly. I just found a brilliant and haunting performance from September 19^th, 1993 in Raleigh, NC, on my decade-old iPod Classic.

The secret weapon of the Desire and Rolling Thunder Revue bands was drummer Howie Wyeth (whose life was unfortunately at too low a point in 1978 to join the Street-Legal band, to which he had an invitation—the mind boggles), and his fluid beat and unpredictable fills open the song and carry it forward, not very steadily, but beautifully, like a small boat riding the waves on a windy day. Emmylou Harris’s vocals in the refrain underline the loneliness of the lyrics, while Dylan employs a voice that Allen Ginsberg called “Hebraic cantillation” and “ancient blood singing,” and which Dylan only ever used here, on this one recording of this one song; the wavering was already less pronounced by the time the Revue hit the road. Scarlet Rivera’s winding and melancholy violin lines are as suggestive as Dylan’s singing. And I love the metallic percussion instrument that you can hear in the right channel. It gives the impression of someone drumming along on a huge bar of gold.