Expecting Rain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMWLjgPTR_c

Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out but when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky

People see me all the time and they just can’t remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts
Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at
I couldn’t believe after all these years, you didn’t know me better than that
Sweet lady

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth
Blowing down the backroads headin’ south
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe

I ran into the fortune-teller, who said beware of lightning that might strike
I haven’t known peace and quiet for so long I can’t remember what it’s like
There’s a lone soldier on the cross, smoke pourin’ out of a boxcar door
You didn’t know it, you didn’t think it could be done, in the final end he won the wars
After losin’ every battle

I woke up on the roadside, daydreamin’ ’bout the way things sometimes are
Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are makin’ me see stars
You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies
One day you’ll be in the ditch, flies buzzin’ around your eyes
Blood on your saddle

Idiot wind, blowing through the flowers on your tomb
Blowing through the curtains in your room
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe

It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn’t enough to change my heart
Now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top
You’re on the bottom

I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind
I can’t remember your face anymore, your mouth has changed, your eyes
don’t look into mine
The priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone-faced while the
building burned
I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the
springtime turned
Slowly into Autumn

Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe

I can’t feel you anymore, I can’t even touch the books you’ve read
Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishin’ I was somebody else instead
Down the highway, down the tracks, down the road to ecstasy
I followed you beneath the stars, hounded by your memory
And all your ragin’ glory

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I’m finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me
You’ll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above
And I’ll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry

Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We’re idiots, babe
It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves


“That was a song i wanted to make as a painting. A lot of people thought that song, that album Blood on the Tracks, pertained to me. Because it seemed to at the time. It didn’t pertain to me. It was just a concept of putting in images that defy time – yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I wanted to make them all connect in some kind of strange way. I’ve read that that album had to do with my divorce. Well, I didn’t get divorced till four years after that. I thought I might have gone a little bit too far with ‘Idiot Wind.’ I might have changed some of it. I didn’t really think I was giving away too much; I thought that it seemed so personal that people would think it was about so-and-so who was close to me. it wasn’t. But you can put all these words together and that’s where it falls. You can’t help where it falls. I didn’t feel that one was too personal, but I felt it ‘seemed’ too personal. Which might be the same thing. I don’t know. But it never was ‘painful.’ ‘Cause usually with those kinds of things, if you think you’re too close to something, you’re giving away too much of your feelings, well, your feelings are going to change a month later and you’re going to look back and say, “‘What did I do that for?"

Bob Dylan

An amazing creation of words and imagery, this song might be Bob's quintessential masterpiece for me. To quote Robert Shelton Idiot Wind is 'a ranting truth attack, an expression of the narrator’s personal disorder, ruefulness, and suspicion in an equally disturbed society in which people’s spoken words are in apposition to their real emotions … a portrayal of a milieu where gossiping and backstabbing have replaced caring and believing.'
Of course there is nothing more perfect than the ones from 1976. Changing drastically throughout the year just as it changed from Minneapolis to New York, 1976 started slow and solemn. At times it would primarily be Bob at the piano with Guam chilling behind him until the choruses.
But by the time they hit the last show at Fort Collins, it had become the furious storm heard on Hard Rain.
I myself prefer one from a little over a week earlier in Texas, a version that slowly builds to an amazing finish and definitely surpasses Hard Rain and all others for me...

Fort Worth Texas
May 16 1976
http://www.sendspace.com/file/bkm7dn

So what's everyone's feelings about this one?
Does anyone prefer the early one found on Bootleg 1?
Does anyone like any from 1992...a year I have rarely delved into?
Does anyone DISLIKE THE SONG??
Nevermind....let's talk bout it...

Always a big fan of it. Very vicious.

Favorite version is BS1.

Love this one.

I tend to prefer the album version or the New York version over the 'Hard Rain' one, though they're all great. What the New York version does so well is draw out the sadness behind all of the rage. It also feels more intense to me, which is funny, because it's so dialed down from pretty much every other version of the song. Sometimes less is more. The last verse makes the song for me regardless. To turn it on the narrator at the end is perfect, one of those little Dylan things.

My favourite Dylan song - there are a couple of 1992 performances that define who he is and his relevance. San Jose 1992. Drunken, out of tune, teetering, clangorous and like a chainsaw being thrown into a jet engine - but it resolves itself into 3 minutes of the most perfect music. There's no gap between thought and expression. And it's a masterful song, in that it's unfuckupable. It takes in the whole world with its anger, compassion, lust, jealousy and memories just out of reach, not to be shared. The BS version, the Hard Rain version, the official version, the splashy 1992 versions. Just brilliant

'Idiot Wind' - Original NY studio take
'Idiot Wind' - Half-speed remaster album
'Idiot Wind' - Hard Rain video
'Idiot Wind' - Fort Worth, 5th May 1976 (Hold The Fort For What It's Worth)

The gospel of the heart, chapters 1 to 4.

If someone completely new to Bob Dylan were to ask me why I liked him so much, I'd give them a disk with these 4 versions of this one song on it. And if they still couldn't figure it out, I'd fill their ears with concrete.

Bennyboy, you're my favourite poster, possibly because, like me, you think 74-76 was Dylan's absolute zenith. That's his best period; his best tour; BOTT his best album; and this is his best song. Hold The Fort was the first bootleg I bought (in 1993 when I was 16)

I love you too. Common sense is in short supply round these parts, so draw up a seat and join me, in a toast to rocking good taste.

All together now: WHAT'S GOOD IS BAD, WHAT'S BAD IS GOOD, YOU'LL FIND OUT WHEN YOU REACH THE TOP.....

This is brilliant:

http://www.transkrypt.de/lyrix/layouts/ ... wind1.html

I've got it on the wall in my bathroom. Print, laminate, enjoy!

what a song

ACENESS TO THE MAX!! Thanks for that mate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9HPnhIhiQg&feature=related

Pure genius. Whichever way you cut it. To write it, and then to perform it so soaringly

One of his greatest songs - no doubt about it. The very essence of vitriol.

Didn't he actually cry during a 92 version?

This is on youtube, it says it is some kind of a demo from '74 ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP5e6J8f ... re=related

The Hard Rain version is the greatest performance of anything by any human in the history of the universe.

This may sound unbelievable, but it's true.

Beethoven and Mozart's debuts of their great symphonies were performed by a plethora of undoubtedly talented and undoubtedly passionate musicians as well as an equally passionate conductor in the great halls of Europe. The high points of the Beatles and The Stones were europhoric romps of rock and roll between a group of performers.

The Idiot Wind of Hard Rain is just one man alone and isolated, even surrounded by his band, bleeding and writhing from divorce - supposedly with Sara in the wings - spitting the words out like bullets in a rainy, half empty stadium in Colorado. Beautiful.

I used to like Idiot Wind. Now I don't think I like it any more. Well, because Bob is being such an a-hole and stuff. I don't think Bob should sing that song any more. It is time for him to grow up.

Just a thought.

IMO the best version of this song, beating out all three officially released versions, is the take that was originally selected for the album and appeared on test pressings, before Dylan decided to re-record half the album in Minneapolis. Note that this is a different take from the one on BS2 (in fact, none of the NY session songs on that set are the same takes as the test pressing, they're all alternates) and IMO much superior. Instead of a ranty, shouty diatribe it's an aching lament that makes me feel a lot more sympathy for the singer. I always get shivers when he sings these lines, which were later excised:

You close your eyes and part your lips, and slip your fingers from your glove
You can have the best there is, but it's gonna cost you all your love;
You won't get it for money

He sounds like he's gonna cry by the time he reaches the end of that. The whole thing just moves me more on an emotional level than any other rendition I've heard. Listen to the quivering organ that swells on the choruses!

Idiot Wind [organ version from BOTT test pressing]
FLAC: http://www.sendspace.com/file/f105ty
Apple Lossless: http://www.sendspace.com/file/vb6ljk
MP3 LAME VBR -V0: http://www.sendspace.com/file/edc5fe

BLEGH! to the Hard Rain version for me, no offense. I can rarely get through the album version these days, either. The half speed vinyl remaster is an improvement over the sped-up common release version, to be sure, but he's still just a little too off key in places for it not to be grating. When I'm really pissed off, maybe. Some of the 1992 performances have their moments, but none that I've heard really holds it together throughout the whole song.

It's been a while but my recollection is, the one I liked the best, this was when I used to like it, was the one on the album. This is because, as I recall, this was the one where Bob was the worst.

Haha. I don't have anything against it on principle. I love to mull those lyrics over

I totally agree.

+1

I hate this friggin' song, and I never listen to it. Save all the hatred and self-loathing for your shrink, Bob, you caused all your own problems, and I don't wanna hear about it. Am I supposed to feel sorry for an arrogant, rich, self-centered artist who couldn't keep it in his pants?

Classic. Little concerned about turf infringement no doubt.

I love the song. At the moment, at least, I prefer the BS1-3 version, which is mesmerising. The bit about the chauffer and him resigning an' all grates a bit as the image belongs in his 60s surreal period, but otherwise I love it. BOTT version is great, too. What always gets me is the line, "Smoke pouring out of a box-car door". I have no idea what it's doing there. What has it got to do with anything? But what an image! It helps that I have no idea what a box-car is.