96. Dead Man, Dead Man

I like a lot of the Shot of Love material more for the musical arrangements and performances than for the words. That’s certainly true here. I say this not to sleight the words, but to emphasize just how explosive and delightfully weird the band and studio sound are. I don’t know where the impetus for the Shot of Love experiment came from, but I’m not surprised that Dylan in 1981 thought the record at least as groundbreaking as Bringing It All Back Home. 

It’s instructive to compare the alternatives since, to tell the truth, as soon as Bob Dylan does reggae, I’m sold. Trouble No More gives us an early studio runthrough of Dead Man, Dead Man, seven minutes long, the main appeal of which is not the band’s groove, but Dylan’s eerie harmonica solos and the many finished, well-written, confidently-sung verses that later went unused. Live versions from 1981, of which Trouble No More offers two, are amped-up, a lot less mellow than the studio take, as befits an arena tour, but though more energetic they don’t have the smoldering quality of the studio recording. Live in 1987, Dylan and the Heartbreakers slow it down slightly; it’s an attractive arrangement, but far from explosive. They’re all reggae and they’re all fun, but the magic is on the Shot of Love take. As David Briggs would put it, it’s got the spook.

The studio arrangement is reggae but it’s a hazy, ghostly, half-departed sort of reggae, not the more traditional stylings of Man Gave Names to All the Animals, or Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right live in 1978. I love the drumming, which clearly takes its basis from reggae but transplants it somewhere else, somewhere where you’d be cautious looking over your shoulder for fear of the bizarrely-shaped, smoke-wreathed monsters you’d be bound to see dancing in your wake. In a reggae tune it’s normally the drums and bass that keep you grounded, that keep a band tight; and whatever the drummer is making the Dead Man, Dead Man band sound like, it isn’t tight. 

The offbeat, played by electric guitar and piano, is present and steady but rather understated. The organ is mixed louder, its swirls claim more attention. Bob’s vocal melodies supply the song’s melodic strength, as reggae vocal melodies should. The verses aren’t unduly catchy but the “ooh, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it” bit is (and it’s addictive; little wonder the song fades out over a stream of its repetitions) and the howl of the refrain and its build-up (a build-up that gets interestingly emphasized in the 1981 live arrangement) are terrific.

The scene the lyrics paint is akin to the album’s other landscapes of oppression (Shot of Love, Property of Jesus, Lenny Bruce, Trouble), the tone different in its partial solicitude for the spiritually moribund character the singer’s addressing. Since this is Gospel era Dylan, there are curious and charming touches, like the “bird’s nest in your hair” as a symbol of extreme stasis (see also Trouble in Mind, where the image first appeared), “the tuxedo that you’re wearing, the flower in your lapel” that the narrator, somewhat mysteriously, finds infuriating, and the way the exhortative chorus conjures up the image of someone who has been mummified.