63. Brownsville Girl

This is Dylan’s widest and grandest song, wide and grand as the landscapes of the North American west where it’s set. The song Joey, despite Howie Wyeth’s drumfills in the refrains, doesn’t have quite the same lift, and definitely not the same poignance; whereas Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, Highlands, and Murder Most Foul all have much softer music accompanying their similarly long and loose narratives. The Dylan song that most closely approximates the amazing way the stars come spreading across (and falling from) the Brownsville Girl sky is Tempest, and that, no doubt, is one of the reasons that the more I listen to Tempest the more it feels, as per Ralf Sauter, like a musical return to Bob’s ’80s, to the likes of Shot of Love and Knocked Out Loaded. Lyrically too, for that matter, Tempest sounds a lot like it could have been a direct follow-up to Infidels—surviving in a ruthless world, indeed!

Brownsville Girl is Ralf Sauter’s single favorite Bob Dylan song. It’s also the first song (of two) that Bob named in 2017 when his interviewer asked, “Which one of your songs do you think did not get the attention it deserved?” True enough. When you look at the average, imperfectly researched list of the best Dylan songs, it’s all ’60s and Blood on the Tracks, sometimes Every Grain of Sand, sometimes Not Dark Yet, but no sign of Brownsville Girl. Among those who’ve poked around in all corners of the Dylan discography, however, exploring even the deep ’80s, Brownsville Girl is duly celebrated. Jim Beviglia had it at #33.

Ralf might hit me, actually, for putting it this low. Forgive me, Ralf! Whenever I can listen properly, all the way through, giving it my full attention, Brownsville Girl feels like a top ten’ner. But—at least for now—neither my mind nor my heart can supply the story’s (intentionally) missing links very well. I love listening to the song; the elevated moments clutch at my throat, the jokes make me smile, but I don’t understand much about the song as a whole. Yes, its lingering mystery is part of its appeal, but unlike Dylan songs that I feel I have broken into thanks to some insight or other, some experience or other, Brownsville Girl keeps me at bay.

Ah, but all the same, what don’t these eleven minutes have! Even Steve Douglas is here, albeit mixed low, making his only post-Street-Legal appearance with Dylan. Steve Madaio, who played trumpet on Is Your Love in Vain?, is back too. The Queens of Rhythm add catchy “ha ha ha”s over the instrumental breaks, bursts of “ooooohs” to ease in the chorus, and ironic commentary on Dylan’s words, my favorite bits being (of course) the perfectly-timed “Oh yeah?” and their welcoming, appreciative yowl after the narrator boasts, “Hang on to me, baby, and let’s hope that the roof stays on!”—as well as helping to make sure that the song’s wonderful refrain leaves an impression.

The tune is bright and dusty. The story is sad and shaggy. The vocals are Dylan in peak form, slippery and playful. I shouldn’t forget to add that the lyrics are a collaboration with the great Sam Shepard, the playwright, also of the Holy Modal Rounders (and if you’re curious about Sam Shepard’s songwriting outside of Brownsville Girl, see Peter Stampfel’s fantastic record Dook of the Beatniks, where he covers Shepard’s Take a Message to Omie), although Dylan made various emendations to the original collaborative text when the song was redone for Knocked Out Loaded, having failed to clinch a spot on Empire Burlesque.

I will never get to the bottom of the rich and explosive way Dylan delivers some of Brownsville Girl’s lines: “When I saw you break down in front of the judge and cry real tears” … “If there’s an original thought out there, I could use it right now” … “I’ll see him in anything, so I’ll stand in line” … “She’s got that dark rhythm in her soul” … “All I remember about it was Gregory Peck and the way people moved.” And two longer sections.

First, the way the song opens: the narrator, with total conviction, recites the plot of a western he’d “seen one time.” But as Clinton Heylin points out, the lines he recites differ significantly from the original movie script, and they do so for the better, as if having passed through the smelting fire of the narrator’s mind and memory, the film’s characters had come out that much wiser.

The other moment is when the narrator and a new woman, not the vanished Brownsville Girl, are “driving the car and the sun is coming up over the Rockies.” In a soliloquy, the narrator explains to the Brownsville Girl, whose absence haunts him, that the woman who’s actually present beside him, in the seat next to his, isn’t very important, and that she herself knows it, knows that though “I ain’t in the mood anymore to remember the time when I was your only man” (so he claims), the new woman “don’t want to remind me,” because—and practically howling, with the Queens of Rhythm about to make their own refrain-ushering howl, the narrator yells out—“SHE KNOWS THIS CAR WOULD GO OUT OF CONTROL!” He can say what he wants to say, selecting words that seem to play it cool, but singing those same words out, he can’t hold himself back.

Throughout the song, and no matter how fragmented and incomplete the story may be, Dylan’s delivery is such that there’s no way not to listen, not to want to hear what’s next. Thus Brownsville Girl, punctuated by those wide-open refrains, all saturated with longing, goes by in a flash for all its length, like the scenery when you’re on the interstate out west and the speed limit’s 75, so you’re going ten over…

I have a great memory of sitting with Björn Waller in a bar in downtown Manhattan, and him explaining to me how he sees Brownsville Girl as the concluding piece of a thematic trilogy: Shelter from the Storm, Caribbean Wind, and this. I remember being thrilled, spellbound, and convinced by what I heard. I only wish I remembered all his insights.

Ah! Now see! Some digging has turned up a sliver of the interpretation I heard that evening. Thank you, Andrew Muir, for putting old issues of JUDAS! up online. In “Time to Keep Up with the Times,” Björn rhetorically glosses the line “I can’t remember who I was or what part I was supposed to play” : “Is [the narrator] the young kid breaking all the rules, is he the wise Marshal who lays down the law, or is he the old man who’s served his purpose and been overtaken by a younger generation?”