27. Seven Days

A song with a strange history. It was debuted live with the Rolling Thuder Revue in 1976, and played six times total that year. It was never recorded in the studio by Dylan but given to Ron Wood (who I don’t think did too well by it). It was released in its live ’76 guise on the first Bootleg Series in 1991. Ron Wood performed it for Dylan at the 30th Anniversary Concert in October 1992. It was revived by Dylan for its twentieth anniversary (almost to the day) in 1996. It received twice as many airings that year as it had in 1976, then vanished once more, and seemingly for good. No sign of it in 2016.

Curious as its journey may have been, we’re lucky that, as a result, there are a total of nineteen distinct performances in the live Dylan archives. A song so spirited might have been hard to get right inside the mute walls of a professional recording studio, whereas the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1976, playing rougher than they had in ’75, was the perfect band to stoke the flame, and the stage the right place to let the song unfurl. Dylan had been playing with the same musicians for about a year, and he knew where their strengths lay, and I imagine that, whether consciously or unconsciously, he had written a new song to suit.

Thematically, I think of Seven Days as You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere rewritten nine years of hard, wholehearted living later. In the earlier song, the narrator’s bride was arriving as soon as tomorrow; in Seven Days, the narrator is awaiting someone more elusive, and whose relationship to him is less clear, and he has to wait longer. There also seems to be more on the line. Where the boy in You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere exudes confidence and commitment, the man in Seven Days is tense, nervous, and not as sure of himself or his world as he may sound. He’s sure of his love for the girl, but that may be because he’s quickly losing the ability to be sure of anything else. The writing of Street-Legal was only a year away.

In its imagery, Seven Days looks back to The Whistle Is Blowing. In the earlier song, we see a boy parting with a girl at a train station, in the nighttime, with the snow about to fall, and their separation likely final. The man in Seven Days is looking forward to greeting his “beautiful comrade from the north” at the station when her train pulls in. He believes that, after her dramatic “coming forth” (which I also picture happening in light snowfall, albeit in daytime) they will get together and stay together. This conviction seems to have tiptoed well over the line of fantasy. There’s none of the caution or wisdom we find in The Whistle Is Blowing (“just what’s going to happen next, well, I’m not the one to say”). The man in Seven Days seems desperate and dangerous.

I love the frantic bridge (“There’s kissing in the valley / Thieving in the alley / Fighting every inch of the way”). I’m not positive how to fit its scenes and images into those that the verses offer. Perhaps the revolution that was in the air in Tangled Up in Blue has begun. If not, then the description (“fighting every inch of the way”) is of the narrator’s inner landscape. Both versions work for me, because no matter what, the narrator is pouring his heart into every word. “Seven more days,” he screams, “all I gotta do is survive.”

His hope, though we on our side of the divide might think it deluded, is moving. “Seven more days and all that will be gone.” His image of this savior of his is a striking one: “She’s been gone / Ever since I been a child / Ever since I seen her smile / I’ve never forgotten her eyes / She had a face that could outshine the sun in the skies!” What I enjoy most of all is his look-askance, lip-biting assurance to himself that “I been good / I been good while I been waiting.” The tone is akin to that of the speaker in the epigraph Vladimir Nabokov chose for Pale Fire:

“This reminds me of the ludicrous account which he gave Mr. Langton, of the despicable state of a young gentleman of good family. ‘Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.’ And then, in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favorite cat, and said, ‘But Hodge shan’t be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot.’”

You tell yourself what you want to believe.

But we needn’t keep track of the narrator’s story to fall for the song. I think that the most commanding aspects of Seven Days—and they’re both very immediate—are, on the one hand, the Revue’s ballsy arrangement (my favorite moments of which are when they run through the riff, follow it with that one weird, heavily struck chord, keep a moment of silence, and then leap forward again as Dylan begins to howl), and on the other, Dylan’s out-of-this-world vocal performance. His voice sounds like an old train going so fast it’s about to shake itself apart. It is saturated with longing and with need. The long notes he holds at the beginning of each verse are sublime. The shouted endings to each verse are infectious, almost impossible for me not to shout along with, to the point that I don’t listen to Seven Days unless I’m outdoors somewhere without too many other people around.

The other 1976 performances are as much fun as the officially released one, but the Columbia team definitely did pick the best at their disposal; the April 21st performance, which we hear on the Bootleg Series, has the fewest hiccups. Diehard lovers of Seven Days (and I know I’m not the only one) might dig up the final ’76 version from May 4th, remarkable for its extended instrumental outro.

The 1996 anniversary revival is a different beast. It smooths away my favorite parts of the jagged Rolling Thunder Revue arrangement, but carries certain charms of its own. For one thing, if Bob Dylan in 1976 wielded his voice like a bright sword, in 1996 he holds a cheerfully burning candle: the singing is gentler, and casts more shadows. It’s interesting to hear those familiar words delivered so tenderly. And (at this point, my exploration of the “determined to stand” years is beginning to solidify into certain contours, vague and general ones to be sure, but contours nonetheless) 1996 seems to have been a great year for electric guitars. It sounds like there are three of them (Olof Björner’s site shows yes: Baxter / Dylan / Johnson), and there’s much to enjoy in their interplay. Instead of the three-minutes-on-average in 1976, Seven Days in 1996 tends to be six minutes long, and all that extra length is filled with guitars. And I’m cool with that.