Expecting Rain

There's a great moment in the movie "In the Name of the Father" when a young Daniel Day Lewis and friend are fleeing Belfast one step ahead of British soldiers to avoid arrest. In a bar down by the docks, waiting for a ship across the channel, Lewis' character drops a coin into a jukebox and "LIKE A ROLLING STONE" comes blasting out, sending both characters into such ecstasy that they jump up and down.



I imagine a lot of people here have a favorite cut of a Dylan song that, no matter how many times they listen to it, always guarantees a few moments of ecstasy. It may not be his greatest song, and it may not even be your favorite Dylan song. It may be a version that he only played one time on a bootleg in a way that made it perfect just for you, better than all the other versions of that song. For reasons unknown, it always grabs you. You've played it over and over and over and every time, it's perfection. You'll never get tired of it. It may be something nobody else likes. But you know better. This one's your fetish.


Name it and place it. And if you want to explain why, if you can explain why, feel free.

'One More Cup Of Coffee'.

It's a constant reminder to me how fucking beautiful and unknowable women are.

"Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You"



version: official release, Live 75: The Rolling Thunder Review. Recorded at the Forum de Montreal, Montreal, Canada. 12/4/75.


Not especially interested in this sweet romantic little song when it was released on Nashville Skyline. But Dylan brought it out for the Rolling Thunder review as a kick-ass rocker transformed by new lyrics. I was helpless before it at first listen.


Here are the original lyrics to the Nashville Skyline version from the official website:

http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/tonight ... e-with-you


Here are the lyrics from the Rolling Thunder Review live version:


Throw my ticket in the wind
Throw my mattress out there too
Throw my letters in the sand
Cause you've got to understand
That tonight I'll be staying here with you

I could have left this town by noon
By tonight I'd've been to someplace new
But I'm feeling a little bit scattered
And your love was all that mattered
So tonight I'll be staying here with you

Get ready!

Cause tonight I'll be staying here with you.

Is it really any wonder
the changes that we put on each other's heads?
You came down on me like rolling thunder
I love my dreams in the river bed

I can hear that lonesome whistle blowin'
I hear them semis rolling too
If there's a peddler on the road, then let him have my load
Cause tonight I'll be staying here with you.


Musically, it's phenomenal, it has incredible force behind it. It crashes open and stays on you like a train bearing down the tracks. And rather than being lovely, it's become one of the horniest, most demanding songs in Bob's pantheon. "You've got to understand." It doesn't sound like he's giving her much of a choice, does it? It's intense, emphatic, urgent. Bob even barks at the woman: "Get ready!" Which may be the two sexiest words Dylan's ever put in a song. They're a shock the first time you hear them. "You came down on me like rolling thunder!" Jeez, Bob, talk dirty to me! This is the inverse of the original song, in which the singer croons "I've waited all day long." No such patience in this live version. She's been warned.

But wait. In the midst of all that "I'm going to fuck your brains out!", there's a love song. The road beckons to the singer. The whistle blows, the trucks can be heard rolling past. He'd planned to be long gone by noon. But something's not quite right. "I'm feeling a little bit scattered." It's not specific, he seems to be understating it, but he's emotionally needy. And he stays not because he's horny; he could solve that in the next town over. He stays because "Your love was all that mattered." All that mattered. "All" is quite a choice of words. Everything else is obliterated.


Strangely, there was a line in the original song that I was very fond of:

"If there's a poor boy on the street, then let him have my seat." I always loved it because of the generosity it wishes for some poor stranger.

That's gone in this version:

"If there's a peddler on the road, then let him have my load." No generosity, he just hands his burden off onto someone else.


But no matter. It's perfect. The band, the new lyrics, Bob's tremendous vocal. The way he drags out the world "rolling." The double entendres (count 'em).

I've probably played it hundreds of times since I first heard it on a bootleg more than 20 years ago. (There's even a bootleg of one of the Rolling Thunder shows from Boston that's titled "Get Ready!") And I'm just getting started. It's certainly not my favorite Dylan song. But this is the one that always grabs me. For me personally, it came with a guarantee.


Thanks to Boticelli's niece for the idea for this thread. It was because you posted some of the lyrics.

I love that moment in the movie. Fist time I saw it I remember I sent an email to a radio show asking what song it was, I said I thought it was very famous but didn't know the name nor the artist.
They answered it was "Like a rolling stone" by Bob Dylan, indeed very famous song and the presenter seemed kind of "upset" I asked such an easy question

The live Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues on the b-side of I want You.

It still never fails to astonish: how was it that a band was producing music like this in 1966? It still seems unique, ahead-of-its-time, timeless, unreal, unbelievably beautiful, ramshackle, true, mathematically precise, defiant, otherworldly, solid, ethereal, prayerful, anguished, renegade, mysterious, secretive, heart-on-sleeve, lost, determined: a dictionary of words wouldn't cover this performance. It is proof, if it were needed, that popular music can transcend its time and be art for all times; and a reminder that Dylan as an artist is up there with the immortal greats.

Jesus, one song is hard enough, but one performance?

Probably Tangled Up In Blue, there have been others that have occasionally taken it's place but every time I put it one it's like going on a journey and by the end you feel you know a little more of the story then the last time you heard it.

'Brownsville Girl' as remastered on the red box set, 2007; the way the guitars are brought to the fore on this epic sprawling cinematic epic just elevate it to the greatest sound and greatest mix of one of Dylan's greatest songs, all the more remarkable for its creation during one of his less creative periods.

Didn't know the Dylan red box had a remastered Brownsville on it! Must listen to the thing now....

You'll notice quite a difference!

The original 'Just like a woman' - firstly the anguish in his voice during 'I can't stay in here, ain't it clear?' and secondly the final gear-shift into the explosive beginning of his great harmonica solo at the end of the song. As I've said here before, sheer perfection.

"Love Minus Zero" I can not pick a version I have heard many over time. It is one of the most complete songs he ever wrote.

Three times as good as itself eh?

'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' from the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

I first heard it when it was on youtube and I'd just started listening to Dylan. Not knowing really anything about him I was curious when someone wrote:

"I find it quite poignant that the audience celebrates Dylan's return to the stage, moments after booing him off of it, and then seem quite oblivious to the fact he's singing to them", or something to that extent.

Yet this is the moment I pinpoint my obsession with Bob Dylan starting. There was so much about that statement that left me confused and even now, three years after I became a fan, still such an abundance of the man's decisions over the years amuse, bemuse and puzzle me in equal measure.

To listen to this version though is to also understand why I find the many idiosyncrasies of Dylan so appealing. He's emotional, powerful, tenacious and the delivery in this performance is one of his greatest ever vocal displays; the way he vents 'strike another match, go start anew' along with some kick-ass harmonica work makes this one Dylan performace I don't tire of.

Oh boy Rev, you and Bob sure can wax poetic about being horny, I like it!

Spanish Harlem Incident for the reasons above.

Great thread! For me it was hearing Tangled Up In Blue in 1975 on the Little Nicky Horne (or Little Horny Nick as he liked to be known ) show on Capital Radio in London. This was the time when Prog Rock ruled the primordial swamps, and that first guitar chord on TUIB was enough to grab my attention and to show my callow 14-year-old self that there was more to the musical world than Emerson, Lake & Palmer. I've loved so much of Dylan's music since then, but that was the moment which opened up music for me, and so I still have a special fondness for that song and its album which I can't ever hope to match.

"Only a Hobo." We're all hobos

You call that a kick-ass rocker? AHAHAHAHAH

I just thought he really liked coffee.

Desolation Row- the album version. Still as powerful as the first time I listened to it and always some new lyrics that strike me more than the last time. And the harmonica. Not very original but that's my own 'perfect song'.

Man on the Street always gets me, dunno why. It's got that sweet urban flksinger thing going on. Dated perhaps, but not really irrelevant - there is still a point in each person's life when they discover the true callousness of mankind.

This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSlvfms1FsQ

Maybe it's the rollicking, stop-start, jingle jangle nature of this performance. Not sure.

(If not this one, then definitely Shelter from this same performance.)

The track called "The Man In Me" never fails to set me into a super groovy fervor.

This is a good thread Rev, but I'm hard pressed to name just one song. There are different elements I love about many of Bob's songs. I'm not sure if I can sort it out to tell you the truth.

"Can't Escape From You"
This is a very powerful song I first heard it in my car the day after I bought the album . Each time I hear it I am spellbound.