45. Blind Willie McTell

Or, as Peter Stampfel might have titled it, New St. James Infirmary.

Blind Willie McTell is a song that has generated so much discussion in Dylan circles that I don’t presume to have anything insightful to add. I can write a little about my personal experience with the tune, though.

I don’t think I was aware of it as a big deal until Jim Beviglia named it Dylan’s second best song, and was much celebrated for doing so. (Then the great debate began: what would his #1 be, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands or Jokerman? Which of the two would he spurn?). I hadn’t heard it yet, at the time, but I thought it was cool that a Dylan song from the ’80s should reach such a high position on Jim’s list.

When my chronological exploration reached Infidels, I listened to the Bootleg Series version and then to the electric outtake, so vehemently beloved by Clinton Heylin. Like Heylin, I was taken with the electric version: with the cough at the beginning, and with Dylan’s piano playing, and with his fantastic harmonica breaks, and with his far-out-on-edge singing. Maybe, if a full-band version had been polished to the sheen the other Infidels songs received on the album, I would end up preferring Blind Willie McTell in its electric guise. But as is, I remain spellbound by the dark and quiet, somber version that graced the original Bootleg Series, in which only Mark Knopfler and Dylan play. This is partly because I love Knopfler so much as a lead guitarist for Dylan, and nowhere else does he fill that role so completely as when he is the only other musician playing along. But it’s also because I think the song’s grim lyrics are scarier when they’re delivered hushed than when they’re shouted, even with the fearsome conviction that possesses Dylan on the electric Infidels outtake.

The Band (featuring three of five original members) recorded their own wonderful rendition on the 1993 album Jericho (and really, go listen to it if you haven’t! It’s got typically amazing singing, harmonies, drums, organ, and best of all, a long and striking instrumental riff-led outro), and supposedly that’s what got Bob playing the song live (four years later…). Praise be to the Band, then, not only for their excellent, majestic, rootsy interpretation, but for opening the doors to the intriguing versions Dylan has performed over the years. A few of these include:

August 5, 1997 — like an electric guitar suite.

April 15, 2007 — in which Bob plays the circus organ too tastefully for me, but the organ is nonetheless awesome when (at last!) it arrives, duetting with a guitar for a cool little riff that runs through one verse.

August 8, 2009 — George Receli does a great swaggering drumbeat and Dylan’s delivery has echoes of the tarnished prophet vibe of Precious Angel, Slow Train, and Gonna Change My Way of Thinking. Marvelous outro too, with the circus organ leading the way (mixed too low, but audible, so count me a grateful listener).

March 31, 2014 — which, suitably creepy harmonica solo at the end aside, sounds like a “Love And Theft” outtake that has crawled, loose-limbed but grinning, straight out of the 2001 time vortex.

June 17, 2017 — my favorite of this bunch because of the incredible organ and piano work. The runs of little organ melodies are reminiscent of the “eerie theme”/”creepy things are happening” music in the fantastic Japanese anime adaptation of Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll books, which ran on Polish children’s TV when my siblings and I were young.

Each of these is sung with both force and sensitivity, and in the case of the March 2014 performance, all insinuating-like.

For all the impressive and varied live reimaginations I’ve heard, though, what endures most strongly in this listener’s heart is the lonesome, craggy, and haunted Dylan/Knopfler 1983 performance. I don’t think Bob has ever written or performed a ghostlier tune. Death Is Not the End comes to mind, but it doesn’t quite match Blind Willie McTell for what David Briggs, Neil Young’s old partner in crime, called spook—as in Will to Love, Don’t Spook the Horse…

Black Rider also comes to mind. So maybe Black Rider. But it’s too soon to tell.