One of Bob Dylan’s many quirks is that he periodically fails to appreciate some of his best material. He left “Farewell, Angelina” off “Bringin’ It All Back Home.” “Blind Willie McTell” would be an obscure demo if The Band hadn’t rescued it from oblivion. And he dashed off this apocalyptic lament in 1985 only because he needed something quiet and acoustic to close the nearly finished and heavily produced (and now generally scorned) “Empire Burlesque” LP.
Returning to his hotel after midnight, “As I stepped out of the elevator, a call girl was coming toward me in the hallway — pale yellow hair wearing a fox coat — high heeled shoes that could pierce your heart,” Dylan wrote in his autobiography. “She had blue circles around her eyes, black eyeliner, dark eyes. She looked like she’d been beaten up and was afraid that she’d get beat up again. In her hand, crimson purple wine in a glass. ‘I’m just dying for a drink,’ she said as she passed me in the hall. She had a beautifulness, but not for this kind of world.”
Dylan has performed it only a handful of times live. The first time, in Sydney, Australia, in 1986, he couldn’t remember the words. He didn’t try it again until 1995 with Patti Smith, but the version preserved on YouTube is ruined by a New York audience that applauds after each verse. Dozens of people cover it, especially in concert, but the audio is poor on most of them. This version, from a 2014 Dylan tribute album, is the closest I could find that captures the starkness of the “Empire Burlesque” version, which is blocked on YouTube.
Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside
They’re drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide
I live in another world where life and death are memorized
Where the earth is strung with lover’s pearls and all I see are dark eyes.
A cock is crowing far away and another soldier’s deep in prayer
Some mother’s child has gone astray, she can’t find him anywhere
But I hear another drum beating for the dead that rise
Whom nature’s beast fear as they come and all I see are dark eyes.
They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes
They tell me revenge is sweet, from where they stand I’m sure it is
But I feel nothing for their game, where beauty goes unrecognized
All I feel is heat and flame, and all I see are dark eyes.
Oh, the French girl, she’s in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel
Hunger pays a heavy prize to the falling god of speed and steel
Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies
A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.