The Bob Dylan Top 125 Countdown (#106-101)

Back to the Bob Dylan Top 125 Countdown: we'll soon be entering the Top 100.

At #106 is a song called Tears of Rage. It was written by Bob Dylan (lyrics) and Richard Manuel (melody). The song was first recorded in rehearsal sessions at The Band's upstate New York residence, Big Pink, in 1967, with Dylan on lead vocal and The Band backing him. These sessions were not officially released until the 1975 double-album The Basement Tapes, although they were widely bootlegged in the late 1960s and early '70s.

This is the only Dylan version I could find on YouTube. It's a live one from 1995:

This mesmerizing ballad, however, first came to the world's attention as the opening track on the Band's 1968 masterpiece, Music From Big Pink. There it is sung with agonizing grace by keyboardist Richard Manuel, who co-wrote the song with Dylan. This is the version that I absolutely love - and if this was a countdown for The Band rather than for Dylan, the song would've been much higher on the list.

Like so many of the songs Dylan wrote at Big Pink, Tears of Rage is elliptical, a string of casually surreal images that draw on the Bible and, in this case, Shakespeare's King Lear. Its tale of generational strife, tone of betrayal and opening reference to Independence Day suggest that the culture wars over Vietnam and civil rights were also on Dylan's mind. The song's repeated reminders that "life is brief" rise above cliché to a desperate moral calling, an insistence that, whatever our differences, our shared mortality must make for compassion.

Here's the excellent version by The Band:

At #105 we find a song from Dylan's best album, Blonde On Blonde (1966). Obviously 5 Believers is a roadhouse blues love song similar in melody and structure to Memphis Minnie's Me and My Chauffeur Blues, and was described by Robert Shelton as "the best R&B song on the album". Recorded in the early morning hours of the March 9–10 Nashville session under the working title Black Dog Blues, the song is driven by Robbie Robertson's guitar, Charley McCoy's harmonica and Ken Buttrey's drumming. After an initial breakdown, Dylan complained to the band that the song was "very easy, man" and that he didn't want to spend much time on it. Within four takes, the recording was done. This is the YouTube version that I've found, live in 1995. It's actually quite good.

Here's a link to the original version:

Obviously 5 Believers

At #104 is You Angel You, a song from the 1974 album Planet Waves, the album on which Dylan is supported by longtime collaborators the Band. The song was one of the relatively few straightforward love songs that Dylan wrote. In all the doom and gloom of Dylan's universe, sometimes a simple love song makes the difference. Here's the link to the song:

You Angel You

At #103 is a song called To Ramona. It is a Folk waltz and it's found on Dylan's fourth studio album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. The melody is taken from traditional Mexican folk music. To Ramona is also a nod to Rex Griffin's 1937 song The Last Letter.

Let's see what Jackson Browne has to say about it:

"There's not a word about the Civil Rights movement in this song. But to me, it's about that as clearly as a James Baldwin novel. I've always seen Ramona as a young black woman at some New York party where she doesn't feel comfortable, and there is Bob Dylan giving her emotional contact. He's specific about the erotic, her attractions. I see that woman's beautiful black face, her "cracked country lips." He's describing her in terms that take us past this scene."

"It is a song imbued with the struggle for personal freedom and the perpetual trap of co-dependence. This was a moment when people wanted a leader and spokesman. But in this song, Dylan dismantles that: "I'd forever talk to you/But soon my words/They would turn into a meaningless ring." He's always an advocate for finding your own way."

"The problem with any kind of polemic is that it's too rigid for what life really is. That is at the heart of Bob Dylan's elusiveness. He tells Ramona, "You've been fooled into thinking/That the finishin' end is at hand." But it's not. These battles will go on."

Here's a live version from YouTube:

At #102 is Sweetheart Like You. It is found on Infidels (1983), Dylan's twenty-second studio album. Produced by Mark Knopfler and Dylan himself, Infidels is seen as his return to secular music, following a conversion to Christianity, three evangelical, gospel records and a subsequent return to a less religious lifestyle.

Sweetheart Like You is misogynistic ("a woman like you should be at home"); its lyrics are at times an incomprehensible mixture of romantic and religious imagery ("They say in your father's house, there's many mansions/Each one of them got a fireproof floor"). But this closing-time benediction undercuts all that with an unmistakable tenderness. Many Dylan scholars see the song as a farewell to his Christian phase, interpreting the chorus, "What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?" as a metaphor for Jesus being maligned by the corrupt religious establishment. If so, it's an oddly touching goodbye.

For once, there's a proper video on YouTube:

Rod Stewart covered the song in 1995:

Finally for today, at #101, there is Silvio. It is the only song that stands out in a rather bad album, Dylan's twenty-fifth studio album, called Down in the Groove (1988). The song is co-written by Dylan and Robert Hunter and helping Dylan out are Grateful Dead. Perhaps it's their presence that gives the song its extra flavor. Dylan always did work well with other musicians.

We're on a lucky streak, because this too is found on YouTube:

The day after tomorrow, we'll be entering Dylan's Top 100. Tomorrow we'll be visiting another gay actor who also had a small singing career. See you then!

Quick Quiz: when should the phrase "elizabeth went from one dick to another" not be considered character defamation?