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Bob Dylan: Tempest

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Columbia Records
Released: 2012.09.10
Time:
 68:31
Category: Folk, Country
Producer(s): Bob Dylan
Rating: *****..... (7/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.bobdylan.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2013
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Duquesne Whistle (B.Dylan/R.Hunter) - 5:43
[2] Soon After Midnight (B.Dylan) - 3:27
[3] Narrow Way (B.Dylan) - 7:28
[4] Long and Wasted Years (B.Dylan) - 3:46
[5] Pay in Blood (B.Dylan) - 5:09
[6] Scarlet Town (B.Dylan) - 7:17
[7] Early Roman Kings (B.Dylan) - 5:16
[8] Tin Angel (B.Dylan) - 9:05
[9] Tempest (B.Dylan) - 13:54
[10] Roll on John (B.Dylan) - 7:25

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bob Dylan - Guitar, Piano, Vocals, Producer

Tony Garnier - Bass Guitar
Donnie Herron - Steel Guitar, Banjo, Violin, Mandolin
David Hidalgo - Guitar, Accordion, Violin
Stu Kimball - Guitar
George G. Receli - Drums
Charlie Sexton - Guitar

Scott Litt - Engineering, Recording, Mixing
Dana Nielsen - Recording, Mixing

Coco Shinomiya - Package Design
William Claxton - Back Cover Photography
John Shearer - Booklet Photography
A. Längauer - Front Cover Photography
Albert Watson - Additional Booklet Photograph

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded in January-March 2012 at Groove Masters Studios in Santa Monica, California.

Tempest is the thirty-fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 10, 2012 by Columbia Records. The album was recorded at Jackson Browne's Groove Masters Studios in Santa Monica, California. Dylan wrote all of the songs himself with the exception of the track "Duquesne Whistle", which he co-wrote with Robert Hunter. Tempest was very well received by music critics, who praised its traditional music influences and Dylan's dark lyrics. The album peaked at number three on the Billboard 200.



Columbia Records announced today that Bob Dylan’s new studio album, Tempest, will be released in September. Featuring ten new and original Bob Dylan songs, the release of Tempest coincides with the 50th Anniversary of the artist’s eponymous debut album, which was released by Columbia in 1962.

Tempest is available for pre-order now on iTunes and Amazon. The new album, produced by Jack Frost, is the 35thth studio set from Bob Dylan, and follows 2009’s worldwide best-seller, Together Through Life.

Bob Dylan’s four previous studio albums have been universally hailed as among the best of his storied career, achieving new levels of commercial success and critical acclaim for the artist. The Platinum-selling Time Out Of Mind from 1997 earned multiple Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year, while “Love and Theft” continued Dylan’s Platinum streak and earned several Grammy nominations and a statue for Best Contemporary Folk album.

Modern Times, released in 2006, became one of the artist’s most popular albums, selling more than 2.5 million copies worldwide and earning Dylan two more Grammys. Together Through Life became the artist’s first album to debut at #1 in both the U. S. and the UK, as well as in five other countries, on its way to surpassing sales of one million copies.

Those four releases fell within a 12-year creative span that also included the recording of an Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning composition, “Things Have Changed,” from the film Wonder Boys, in 2001; a worldwide best-selling memoir, Chronicles Vol. 1, which spent 19 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, in 2004, and a Martin Scorsese-directed documentary, No Direction Home, in 2005. Bob Dylan also released his first collection of holiday standards, Christmas In The Heart, in 2009, with all of the artist’s royalties from that album being donated to hunger charities around the world.

This year, Bob Dylan was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. He was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” He was also the recipient of the French Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1990, Sweden’s Polar Music Award in 2000 and several Doctorates including the University of St. Andrews and Princeton University as well as numerous other honors.

bobdylan.com



Bob Dylan's 35th album begins with a train whistle exploding in his mind. He sees an old oak tree he used to climb and imagines a woman smiling through a fence. He hears the voice of "the mother of our Lord" – and still, that whistle, screaming "like the sky's gonna blow apart." It's astonishing, " Duquesne Whistle" suggests, how much can be channeled through a simple sound.

That notion defines Dylan's career, and especially his output of the past decade – music built from traditional forms and drawing on eternal themes: love, struggle, death. With its jazzy, pre-rock groove, "Duquesne Whistle" could be from any of Dylan's last three albums, 2001's Love and Theft, 2006's Modern Times or 2009's Together Through Life. But then the song ends, Dylan gets off' the train and soon one of his weirdest albums ever truly starts. Tempest is musically varied and full of curveballs. It may also be the single darkest record in Dylan's catalog.

The body count alone distinguishes it, with songs about the Titanic disaster ("Tempest"), a three-way murder-suicide ("Tin Angel") and the assassination of his old acquaintance John Lennon ("Roll On, John"). "Pay in Blood" is a portrait of raging evil delivered in snarling vocals – Dylan is so close-miked you can practically hear the phlegm rattle. "Early Roman Kings," with David Hidalgo's cantina-blues accordion, conjures "lecherous and treacherous" despots "in their sharkskin suits."

Lyrically, Dylan is at the top of his game, joking around, dropping wordplay and allegories that evade pat readings and quoting other folks' words like a freestyle rapper on fire. "Narrow Way" is one of Dylan's most potent rockers in years, and it borrows a chorus from the Mississippi Sheiks' 1934 blues "You'll Work Down to Me Someday." "Scarlet Town" draws on verses by 19th-century Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier; and allusions to Louis Armstrong and the Isley Brothers pop up elsewhere.

The two most powerful cuts here are rooted in fact. At nearly 14 minutes, "Tempest" is epic – 45 verses (with no chorus) about the sinking of the Titanic, set to an Irish melody with accordion and fiddle. Historical accuracy is beyond the point; the reference to Leonardo DiCaprio feels truer to folk tradition than his absence would be. Meanwhile, the scenes are horrifying: passengers plunging into icy waters; "Dead bodies already floating/In the double-bottomed hull"; some men turning murderous; another offering his lifeboat seat to a crippled child. The metaphor is inescapable: a seemingly unsinkable behemoth going down amid small acts of bravery that change little, rich and poor doomed equally.

"Roll On, John," the closing song, was written for a man who wrestled with the oppressiveness of fame and deification as much as Dylan has. "I heard the news today, oh, boy," he sings, referencing Lennon's murder and a Beatles lyric in a voice that throbs with survivor's guilt. It's a prayer from one great artist to another, and a reminder that Dylan now stands virtually alone among his 1960s peers. His own final act, meanwhile, rolls on. It's a thing to behold.

Will Hermes - August 30, 2012
RollingStone.com



It seems redundant to apply more adjectives to Bob Dylan's singing voice-- easily the most infamous rasp in American music, a cultivated tangle of disdain and nicotine and bad love-- but it remains the defining characteristic of his work, as essential to his legacy as vowels or the acoustic guitar. Dylan's long-lauded backing band, which has helped define much of his later work, may crank out a first-rate iteration of honky-tonk bar-rock, but it's primarily a canvas. His voice is so unique (even when it's approximating other voices) that I crave it the same way I might crave, say, an apple: It's a thing unlike any other thing, a whole food, a singular expression.

Still, on Tempest, his latest album, Bob Dylan mostly sounds insane. That volatility can yield tremendous rewards-- on the ferocious "Pay in Blood", it clarifies his nihilism, his cruelty-- but it can also be distractingly unruly, inching toward self-mockery, all wild undulation and hairball-retch. Which would be okay-- embraced, even!-- if the rest of Tempest didn't feel so rote. Here it is, again: the gargle, the zinger, the rollicking blues riff. The formula that made Time Out of Mind through Modern Times such a thrilling stretch feels exhausted now, and Dylan relies on his own gruffness as a substitute for real intent; he knows he doesn't have to work very hard to sound present, and so he doesn't, and so he isn't.

Lyrically, he's sharpest when eulogizing mangled relationships ("One time, for one brief day, I was the man for you," he seethes on "Long and Wasted Years"), and the best cuts here are the ones that directly address lingering heartache. On "Soon After Midnight", he speaks to an absent lover: "It's now or never, more than ever/ When I met you, I didn't think you would do/ It's soon after midnight, and I don't want nobody but you," he sings. It's a classic Blood on the Tracks-era barb, vitriol mixed with real longing-- rage and love, rage at love. Likewise, on "Narrow Way", he admits inferiority ("I can't work up to you/ You'll surely have to work down to me someday"), then accuses his girl of certain cruelties ("You broke my heart/ I was your friend 'til now... You got too many lovers").

At just under 14 minutes, the album's epic title track is also its longest (worth noting: It outruns "Desolation Row" (11:20) and "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" (11:22), but not "Highlands" (16:31), Time Out of Mind's sprawling closer), a sober and meandering meditation on the sinking of the Titanic. In the pantheon of grand, gory tragedies, the dismembering of the Titanic via iceberg is a catastrophic entry, sure, but its legend still trumps its carnage, making it worth wondering why Bob Dylan, in particular, would suddenly revisit it a solid century on. In her essay "7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38", Joan Didion, writing both of the Titanic and of Howard Hughes, hints at the inescapable glee of schadenfreude, how we (quietly) relish the beautiful becoming the damned: "Our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrate something deep in the grain, something unadmitted," she writes. "How the mighty are fallen."

"Tempest" is based at least in part on "The Titanic" (or "When That Great Ship Went Down"), an old folk song that likely originated around 1915 in Hackleburg, Alabama, and has since been recorded by Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and others. In his notes for the 1997 reissue of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Folkways archivist Jeff Place notes that some African-Americans viewed the Titanic's dissolution as a kind of "divine retribution," given that blacks were resolutely banished from the ship (indeed, the version recorded by William and Versey Smith for the Anthology is conspicuously spirited). Here, though, Dylan is earnest, nearly deferential. It's not schadenfreude, or retribution, or even a social commentary; it's a long, sad, straightforward narrative, complete with a "little crippled child," self-sacrifice, hearts at peace, and a final glug of brandy as the ship slips under. "There is no understanding... the judgment of God's hand," Dylan announces, and I suppose that's as reasonable an explanation as any, although it's also a disappointingly pedestrian conclusion from an artist as acerbic (and populist) as Bob Dylan.

And so it's revealed that death-- mass death, helpless death, inevitable death-- is the real story here, and Tempest, for all its detours toward sadness and alienation, is very much a record about The End. Whom we loved, who failed us, and what it all means in the face of our own inevitable demise. Dylan's long been enamored with Appalachian murder ballads-- those gruesome, Celtic-born parables designed to dissuade potential sinners from indulging their darker whims-- but he's finally learned, at 71, that death doesn't necessarily come with a lesson, sometimes it just comes. Tempest's moving closing track, "Roll on John", a remembrance of John Lennon, suffers from a few flaccid clichés ("You burned so bright!"), but at least Dylan finally sounds engaged, his garbled vocals heavy with sorrow and helplessness. In that sense, it's a fitting coda for an album bogged down with resignation.

Amanda Petrusich - September 13, 2012
© 2014 Pitchfork Media



Bob Dylan's new album arrives and – as has become traditional – you can hardly hear the old boy for the clank of five-star reviews hitting the table. Connoisseurs of the latterday Dylan review will be pleased to learn that 2012 brings a fine vintage, with many old friends present and correct. There's been a strong showing from the How Did He Do That? faction, marvelling at the superhuman leaps of imaginative daring that have led Dylan not only to mention Leonardo DiCaprio in a song about the Titanic, but also to use the line "I read the news today, oh boy" in a song about John Lennon's murder.

One of their number has claimed Tempest to be among Dylan's "weirdest albums ever", a pretty bold claim given that it follows Christmas in the Heart, which came with a free set of Christmas cards and featured Dylan rasping his way through Here Comes Santa Claus. It seems a bolder claim still when you actually listen to Tempest. The music is the same stew of beautifully played blues, rockabilly, folk and country as every Dylan album for the last 12 years: styles you might call pre-rock or, perhaps more pertinently, pre-him. Bob Dylan, it seems, is determined to see out his days playing pop music from the era before Bob Dylan changed pop music for good, as if he'd rather forget that he ever did so. The weirdest thing about Tempest might be its cover, which looks unaccountably like a perfume ad in a Sunday supplement.

Hot on their heels come the Hilarious Lyrics massive, rock criticism's answer to those people who claim to spend every morning in hysterics at the latest installment of Doonesbury. They keep telling you how incredibly funny Dylan lyrics that aren't remotely funny are. This time around, they've been killing themselves at the side-splitting one-liner: "I'm not dead yet, my bell still rings".

On one hand, this stuff is baffling. You look at the guy approvingly comparing Tempest's 14-minute, 45-verse title track to 1965's Desolation Row and think: what are you talking about? Doesn't it diminish one of Dylan's masterpieces – a song that drags the listener through a phantasmagoria of imagery so vivid you barely notice its length – to compare it with this, which offers flashes of brilliance and occasional great lines, but ultimately goes on a bit? On the other, perhaps the response tells you something about Dylan's career, full of riddles and contradictions, the artist never exactly reticent in letting people know they'd called it wrong. As said career reaches its home straight, nobody wants to be clueless old Mr Jones, of Ballad of a Thin Man fame: better to insist you know what's happening here even when not much actually is.
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The problem is that a decade of blanket praise writes white and might discourage people from bothering with Tempest, which would be a pity. It has failings, not least Roll On John, a tribute to the slain Beatle that certainly makes you miss him: were he around to hear it, you suspect his face would be quite a picture. Given that Dylan's now had 32 years to ruminate on his friend's life and death, you might hope he'd come up with something a little more incisive than "come together right now over me … Lord, you know how hard it can be", which, frankly, is like something Noel Gallagher would write.

But equally, there are incredible moments. No one has ever articulated furious contempt more vividly than Dylan at his peak, an emotion that's been noticeably lacking from his recent albums. But now someone or something has clearly riled him. Perhaps it's the bankers: it certainly sounds like them getting it in the neck on the viscerally thrilling Early Roman Kings.

Whatever the cause, his mood often sounds murderous. The first intimation of terrible violence arrives one minute in: a little incongruously, during the perky Western swing of Duquesne Whistle. Narrow Way welds a bracing Chicago blues riff to a series of withering put-downs: "Your father left, your mother too/ Even death has washed his hands of you." Anger always suited Dylan's voice: he spent most of the 60s and 70s sounding like he was sneering even when he wasn't. It still suits him. On Pay in Blood, fury and his ruined larynx combine to remarkable effect. The opening line comes out as a terrifying, incomprehensible growl that sounds like one of those death-metal vocalists in full flight. There's something potent about hearing a singer-songwriter famed for his articulacy rendered incoherent with rage. "Another politician pumping out the piss," he sings later, the microphone audibly struggling to cope with the ferocity of his delivery. "You bastard, I'm supposed to respect you? I'll give you justice."

To praise Tempest you don't need to suggest, as the august rock critic on the BBC's Newsnight Review did, that it is "up there with Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks", which would make it one of the important albums ever made. Anyone who hears that and raises their expectations accordingly may be disappointed. That wouldn't be the right response to Tempest at all.

Alexis Petridis - 6 September 2012
© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited



Bob Dylan’s fantastic new album opens with a train song. Given the wrath to come and the often elemental ire that accompanies it, not to mention all the bloodshed, madness, death, chaos and assorted disasters that will shortly be forthcoming, you may be surprised that what’s clattering along the tracks here isn’t the ominous engine of a slow train coming, a locomotive of doom and retribution, souls wailing in a caboose crowded with the forlorn damned and other people like them.

“Dusquesne Whistle”, instead, and at odds it will shortly transpire with much we go on to encounter, joyfully evokes the jubilee train of gospel legend, bound for glory; a salvation express full of hopeful hallelujahs, its destination somewhere better than here, this sickly place and its trampled sadness, unceasing strife and grief everywhere you look. In ways some distance removed from the things waiting on the rest of the album, “Dusquesne Whistle” is passably carefree, possibly even best described as rambunctious.

It begins fabulously, with a jazzy instrumental preface, reminiscent of “Nashville Skyline Rag”, guitarists Charlie Sexton and Stu Kimble briskly exchanging Charlie Christian licks. It’s like turning on the radio and tuning into the past, nostalgically evocative of a more sunlit innocent time. There is too the impression that we have joined the album, somehow, after it’s already started and eerily like this music has been playing forever on a disc that never stops spinning. Then the whole group blows in, the magnificent road band that’s backed Dylan, most of them anyway, on everything he’s recorded since ‘Love And Theft’, and so includes Modern Times, Together Through Life and Christmas In The Heart.

They are ablaze here and on fire throughout, and at their jitterbugging point of entry, “Dusquesne [phonetically, Doo-Kayne] Whistle” takes on an unstoppable momentum that may remind you of, say, “Highway 61 Revisited” or “Tombstone Blues” (I was also fleetingly reminded of Cat Power’s swinging version of “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” from the I’m Not There soundtrack). Even as the song is apparently celebrating what’s good in the world, something more awry is stirring, clouds gathering. “Can’t you here that Dusquesne Whistle blowin’, blowin’ like the sky’s gonna blow apart,” Dylan sings in intimation of shadows about to fall paradise. In other words, Tempest is not dark yet, but will be soon enough.

When Dylan convened with his band at Jackson Browne’s Groove Masters studios in Santa Monica, he’s said it was his intention to make a ‘religious’ album, though he wasn’t specific about quite what he meant by this and whether there was any connection between the record he had in mind and his so-called Born Again albums, that trio of discs including Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot Of Love that 30 years ago shocked and confounded his audience, when they were also alarmed by the vengeful sermonising that punctuated his concerts of the time. There are inklings, though, of the album Dylan originally envisioned on, for instance, “Dusquenes Whistle”, where a voice the singer hears “must be the mother of our Lord”, and even more apparently on the devotionally-inclined “Long And Wasted Years” and the gospel-influenced “Pay In Blood”, which follows. The testing of belief in extreme circumstances is a recurring theme.

“Long And Wasted Years” finds Dylan almost talking his way through the song, in the manner of “Three Angels” from New Morning, over a slightly churchy organ and a lovely bluesy guitar refrain. “I think that when my back was turned, the whole world behind me burned,” Dylan recites at one point, the charred landscape that so much of Tempest occupies coming fully into focus, a forlorn sort of place, populated by the displaced and the lost, to who Dylan gives poignant voice. “I ain’t seen my family in 20 years,” he reflects wearily in one of the verses. “They may be dead by now/I lost track of them after they lost their land.” The bereft hopelessness that is evident in many instances on the album is especially well articulated here, especially in the song’s chastening final image: “We cried on a cold and frosty morn,” Dylan mourns, and there’s no other word for it. “We cried because our souls were torn/So much for tears, so much for these long and wasted years”.

“Pay In Blood” opens with guitars, piano and a little Tex-Mex swagger over a vaguely menacing chord sequence reminiscent of one of those great declamatory Warren Zevon songs that Dylan so admires, like “Lawyers, Guns And Money”, “Boom Boom Mancini” (which Dylan covered in concert several times as a tribute when Zevon died in 2003). There’s a hint, too, in the arrangement, of the song’s gospel roots, and something of the Stones in Charlie Sexton’s admirable guitar riff. It’s a song in part about the futile notion of suffering being in any way ennobling. “How I made it back home, nobody knows/Or how I survived so many blows/I’ve been through hell, what good did it do?” Dylan asks, a bitter question, asked perhaps of God, since he then adds: “You bastard, I’m supposed to respect you? I’ll give you justice. . .” The singer’s anger is anger palpably rising, and he is prone to reject communal solace for a life apart, lonely and slightly terrified. “This is how I spend my days/I take my fear and sleep alone,” Dylan sings, following it with the chilling pay-off line, several times repeated: “I pay in blood, but not my own.”

“Soon After Midnight”, meanwhile, sounds at first like a touching, funny country love song, gently crooned, with the languid melodic lope of “Mississippi”. It gives way suddenly, however, to a similar distress - “My heart is fearful/It’s never cheerful/I’ve been down on the killing floor” – and an incrementally vengeful mood that surfaces several times elsewhere, with even greater malevolence. “Narrow Way”, for instance, is seven minutes of wrath, driven by the kind of scalding guitar circulations that propelled “Dirt Road Blues” on Time Out Of Mind and Modern Times’ “Rollin’ And Tumblin’”, both of which also were indebted to Muddy Waters. “This is a hard country to stay alive in,” Dylan sings, in condemnation of the people who have made it thus, adding in warning: “I’m armed to the hilt.”

“Early Roman Kings” is equally livid, an accusatory tirade, again directed at the same people Dylan has pretty much railed against since he first put plectrum to guitar string and started having his say about things. The “kings” of the song’s title are vividly seen “in their sharkskin suits, bow-ties and buttons and high-top boots” as shyster bankers, corrupt money-men who have bankrupted nations, impoverished millions. As Dylan puts it, “The meddlers and the peddlers, they buy and they sell/they destroyed your city, they’ll destroy you as well.” What Dylan feels about them is akin to the savage hate expressed on “Masters Of War”, say. “I could strip you of life, strip you of breath/Ship you down to the house of death,” he sings with hostile contempt, nothing particularly equivocal about this point of view, which is in a word merciless.

“Early Roman Kings” is the closest thing here to the kind of roadhouse blues that has been a signature of a lot of recent Dylan , especially Together Through Life. David Hidalgo from Los Lobos adds typically gutsy accordion to the band’s robust vamping and the track’s lurching gait is an absolute gas, its vicious sentiment notwithstanding. The blues continues to be a vital part of Dylan’s music, but Tempest on key songs also marks a return to a folk tradition that has latterly not been as much in evidence. “Scarlet Town” is notably set to a melody that sounds like it’s been passed down the ages and has a courtly mien reminiscent of the Gillian Welch song from last year’s The Harrow & The Harvest with which it shares a title. Fiddle and banjo take the lead here, creating a mysterious swirling atmosphere. There are flashes of bawdy humour, too; but the pervasive mood, here as elsewhere, is ultimately of turmoil and unrest. Towards the end of its seven minute running time, the track is further interrupted by a wraith-like guitar solo that rises out of the mix like something emerging from a fog and adds a particular creepiness to things.

“Tin Angel” sounds similarly as if it could have been lifted wholesale from an anthology of traditional folk songs, where hundreds of such tales must lurk. It’s a revenge ballad, nine minutes long, with no chorus, banjo and fiddle again to the fore. The setting is vague. References in one of the later verses to a helmet and cross-handed sword suggest a chivalric age. But soon after that, there’s a gunfight, the kind of point-blank shoot-out set-piece you used to find in Walter Hill movies, which suggests Dylan at one point may have had a Western setting in mind, perhaps inspired by a recent tour bus viewing of something like Duel In The Sun, a torrid oater starring Dylan favourite Gregory Peck.

What happens, anyway, is that someone called The Boss, which is not a name you probably come across too often n the Child Ballads, one day comes home from wherever to find his wife has gone missing. Whither the missus? Has she simply left him, or been abducted? Boss upon investigation is tipped off by a faithful retainer that the errant spouse has in fact made off with one Henry Lee, leader of an unidentified clan. Boss orders his men to horse and off they gallop in hot pursuit, his men deserting him along the way. Dogged Boss continues alone. After presumably much travail, Boss tracks down Henry Lee and his wife, bursts in on their amorous coupling and after declaring his love for his wife starts blasting away. Henry Lee’s the better shot and soon Boss is dying in his own blood. The missus takes this surprisingly badly and stabs Henry Lee before plunging a dagger into her own heart. The final image of the three of them tossed into a single grave “forever to sleep” is chillingly unforgettable.

And so to the title track: 45 verses over 14 minutes about the sinking of The Titanic, inspired by Dylan’s musings on The Carter Family’s “The Titanic”, but at times as much in debt to James Cameron’s blockbuster movie (whose leading man, Leonardo DiCaprio is name-checked twice). The piece starts with what sounds like a string quartet, after which brief overture the song settles into a long unwinding waltz, progressing with stately resolution, verse following verse, like a latter day “Desolation Row”. The song vividly describes the panic and confusion as the great ship flounders, a metaphor for the folly of over-reaching ambition; mankind again brought low by God’s intervention.

The scale of the disaster is enormous, contains “every kind of sorrow”, Dylan dramatically capturing the dark panic of the moment – the blown hatches, the water poring everywhere, the ship’s smokestack crashing down, humbler passengers trapped below decks – and as in the film, certain characters are given their own scenes, each verse then a gripping vignette. There’s for instance someone called Wellington, holed up in his cabin: “Glass and shattered crystal lay scattered round about/He strapped on both his pistols/How long could he hold out?” And here’s Jim Backer: “He saw the starlight shining/Streaming from the east/ Death was on the rampage, but his heart was now at peace.” “Davy the Brothel-Keeper,” meanwhile, “came out, dismissed his girls/saw the water getting deeper, saw the changing of his world.” The ship’s captain at the moment of its sinking catches his reflection in the glass of a compass and “in the dark illumination, he remembered bygone years/He read the Book of Revelation, filled his cup with tears”.

After such calamity, the sheer tenderness of the closing “Roll On, John” is as much of a shock as a mere surprise. A belated tribute to John Lennon, the song’s as direct and heartfelt as anything Dylan’s written probably since “Sara”, whose occasional gaucheness it recalls, as Dylan roams over Lennon’s career, “from the Liverpool docks to the red-light Hamburg streets”, quoting from Lennon and Beatles’ songs along the way, including “A Day In The Life”, “The Ballad Of John And Yoko” and “Come Together”. The affection expressed for Lennon in the song is tangible, makes it glow like a force-field, and by the end is totally disarming. “Your bones are weary, you’re about to breathe your last,” Dylan sings to his dead friend. “Lord you know how hard that bit can be,” before moving onto a spine-tingling elegiac chorus: “Shine a light/Move it on/You burned so bright/Roll on, John”.

We must address, I suppose, in closing, the similarity of this album’s title to Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest, and the idea that follows that this record is likewise some farewell, a summation of sorts, a final rallying of waning creative energies, perhaps the last act in Dylan’s storied career. The idea of Bob as a kind of riverboat Propsero is hugely appealing, and he remains, supremely, a story-telling sorcerer, but Dylan has already dismissed the comparison as simply wrong-headed and therefore pointless. And for all its evident preoccupation with death and the end of things, Tempest is in many respects the most far-reaching, provocative and transfixing album of Dylan’s later career. Nothing about it suggests a swansong, adios or fond adieu.

“I ain’t dead yet, my bell still rings,” he sings on “Early Roman Kings”, and how loud and bright and strong that clarion toll yet sounds.

Allan Jones - www.uncut.co.uk



50 Jahre nach dem Erscheinen seines Debüt-Albums 1962 wird Bob Dylan im September mit „Tempest“ sein 35. Studioalbum mit 10 neuen Songs veröffentlichen. „Die Deluxe Edition erscheint im Schuber mit einem zusätzlichen Booklet: es enthält mehr als 30 Reproduktionen von Bob-Dylan-Zeitschriftencovern aus den ersten zehn Jahren seiner künstlerischen Karriere.“ Dylans vorherige vier Alben gelten allgemein als vier der besten seiner Karriere. „Time Out Of Mind” (1997), “Love And Theft” (2001), “Modern Times” (2006) und “Together Through Life” (2009) waren Lieblinge der Kritik und gehören zu den Bestsellern in der an Höhepunkten reichen Karriere des Künstlers. Unter dem Pseudonym Jack Frost hat Dylan die Platte selbst produziert. Das Titelstück „Tempest“ soll laut „Rolling Stone“ ein 14-minütiger Song über den Untergang der Titanic sein, der Song „Roll On John“ ist John Lennon gewidmet.

jpc.de



"Unheilschwangere Visionen, teils ungestüme Musik: Bob Dylan bleibt auch im sechsten Jahrzehnt seines Schaffens schwer berechenbar." (Stereo, Oktober 2012)

"Seine musikalische Zeitreise tendiert auf 'Tempest' mehr zu Bluegrass, Folk, Jazz und wildert im Revier der Mexicana. (...) Ein wahrhaftig magischer Sog." (Audio, November 2012)

"Der Altmeister kann es einfach: gespenstisch gut!" (stereoplay, November 2012)

"Country, Folk, Blues und Gospel aus dem Herzen des alten, unheimlichen Amerika: Dylans 35. Studioalbum ist ein Meisterwerk." (musikexpress, November 2012)
 

 L y r i c s


DUQUESNE WHISTLE

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Blowin' like it's gonna sweep my world away
I'm gonna stop in Carbondale and keep on going
That Duquesne train gonna ride me night and day

You say I'm a gambler, you say I'm a pimp
But I ain't neither one
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Sound like it's on its final run

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Blowin' like she never blowed before
Blue light blinkin', red light glowin'
Blowin' like she's at my chamber door

You smiling through the fence at me
Just like you've always smiled before
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Blowin' like she ain't gonna blow no more

Can't you hear that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Blowin' like the sky's gonna blow apart
You're the only thing alive that keeps me going
You're like a time-bomb in my heart

I can hear a sweet voice gently calling
Must be the Mother of our Lord
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Blowin' like my woman's on board

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Blowin' like it's gonna blow my blues away
You ole rascal, I know exactly where you're going
I'll lead you there myself at the break of day

I wake up every mornin' with that woman in my bed
Everybody telling me she's gone to my head
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Blowin' like it's gon' kill me dead

Can't you hear that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Blowin' through another no-good town
The lights of my native land are glowing
I wonder if they'll know me next time around

I wonder if that old oak tree's still standin'
That old oak tree, the one we used to climb
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowin'
Blowin' like she's blowin' right on time


SOON AFTER MIDNIGHT

I'm searching for phrases
To sing your praises
I need to tell someone
It's soon after midnight
And my day has just begun

A gal named Honey
Took my money
She was passing by
It's soon after midnight
And the moon is in my eye

My heart is cheerful
It's never fearful
I been down on the killing floors
I'm in no great hurry
I'm not afraid of your fury
I've faced stronger walls than yours

Charlotte's a harlot
Dresses in scarlet
Mary dresses in green
It's soon after midnight
And I've got a date with a fairy queen

They chirp and they chatter
What does it matter?
They're lying and they're dying in their blood
Two-Timing Slim
Who's ever heard of him?
I'll drag his corpse through the mud

It's now or never
More than ever
When I met you I didn't think you would do
It's soon after midnight
And I don't want nobody but you


NARROW WAY

I'm gonna walk across the desert 'til I'm in my right mind
I won't even think about what I left behind
Nothing back there anyway I can call my own
Go back home, leave me alone
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

Ever since the British burned the White House down
There's a bleeding wound in the heart of town
I saw you drinking from an empty cup
I saw you buried and I saw you dug up
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

Look down, Angel, from the skies
Help my weary soul to rise
I kissed your cheek, I dragged your plow
You broke my heart, I was your friend 'til now
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

In the courtyard of the golden sun
You stand and fight, or you break and run
You went and lost your lovely head
For a drink of wine and a crust of bread
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

We looted and we plundered on distant shores
Why is my share not equal to yours?
Your father left you, your mother too
Even death has washed his hands of you
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

This is hard country to stay alive in
Blades are everywhere, and they're breaking my skin
I'm armed to the hilt, and I'm struggling hard
You won't get out of here unscarred
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

You got too many lovers wailing at the wall
If I had a thousand tongues, I couldn't count them all
Yesterday I could've thrown them all in the sea
Today even one may be too much for me
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

Cakewalking baby, you can do no wrong
Put your arms around me, where they belong
I want to take you on a roller coaster ride
Lay my hands all over you, tie you to my side
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

I got a heavy-stacked woman with a smile on her face
And she has crowned my soul with grace
I'm still hurting from an arrow that pierced my chest
I'm gonna have to take my head and bury it between your breasts
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

Been dark all night, but now it's dawn
The moving finger is moving on
You can guard me while I sleep
Kiss away the tears I weep
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

I love women, and she loves men
We've been to the West, and we're going back again
I heard a voice at the dusk of day
Saying, "Be gentle brother, be gentle and pray"
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday


LONG AND WASTED YEARS

It's been such a long, long time
Since we loved each other and our hearts were true
One time, for one brief day, I was the man for you

Last night I heard you talking in your sleep
Saying things you shouldn't say
Oh, baby, you just might have to go to jail someday

Is there a place we can go?
Is there anybody we can see?
Maybe it's the same for you as it is for me

I ain't seen my family in twenty years
That ain't easy to understand
They may be dead by now
I lost track of them after they lost their land

Shake it up baby, twist and shout
You know what it's all about
What you doing out there in the sun anyway?
Don't you know the sun can burn your brains right out?

My enemy crashed into the dust
Stopped dead in his tracks and he lost his lust
He was run down hard and he broke apart
He died in shame, he had an iron heart

I wear dark glasses to cover my eyes
There's secrets in them that I can't disguise
Come back, baby, if I hurt your feelings, I apologize

Two trains running side by side
Forty miles wide, down the Eastern line
You don't have to go, I just came to you because you're a friend of mine

I think that when my back was turned
The whole world behind me burned
It's been a while since we walked down that long, long aisle

We cried on a cold and frosty morn'
We cried because our souls were torn
So much for tears, so much for these long and wasted years


PAY IN BLOOD

Well, I’m grinding my life out, steady and sure
Nothing more wretched than what I must endure
I’m drenched in the light that shines from the sun
I could stone you to death for the wrongs that you done

Sooner or later, you'll make a mistake
I’ll put you in a chain that you never will break
Legs and arms and body and bone
I pay in blood, but not my own

Night after night, day after day
They strip your useless hopes away
The more I take, the more I give
The more I die, the more I live

I got something in my pocket make your eyeballs swim
I got dogs could tear you limb from limb
I’m circling around the Southern zone
I pay in blood, but not my own

Low cards are what I’ve got
But I’ll play this hand whether I like it or not
I am sworn to uphold the laws of God
You can put me out in front of a firing squad

I been out and around with the rowdy men
Just like you, my handsome friend
My head’s so hard must be made of stone
I pay in blood, but not my own

Another politician pumping out the piss
Another ragged beggar blowing you a kiss
You've got the same eyes that your mother does
If only you could prove who your father was

Someone must have slipped a drug in your wine
You gulped it down and you crossed the line
Man can’t live by bread alone
I pay in blood, but not my own

How I made it back home, nobody knows
Or how I survived so many blows
I been through hell, what good did it do?
You bastard, I’m supposed to respect you?

I’ll give you justice, I’ll fatten your purse
Show me your moral virtues first
Hear me holler, hear me moan
I pay in blood but not my own

You bit your lover in the bed
Come here, I’ll break your lousy head
Our nation must be saved and freed
You been accused of murder, how do you plead?

This is how I spend my days
I came to bury, not to praise
I’ll drink my fill and sleep alone
I pay in blood, but not my own


SCARLET TOWN

In Scarlet Town where I was born
There's ivy leaf and silver thorn
The streets have names that you can't pronounce
Gold is down to a quarter an ounce

The music starts and the people sway
Everybody says, "Are you going my way?"
Uncle Tom still working for Uncle Bill
Scarlet Town is under the hill

Scarlet Town in the month of May
Sweet William on his deathbed lay
Mistress Mary by the side of the bed
Kissing his face, heaping prayers on his head

So brave, so true, so gentle is he
I'll weep for him as he'd weep for me
Little Boy Blue come blow your horn
In Scarlet Town where I was born

Scarlet Town in the hot noon hours
There's palm-leaf shadows and scattered flowers
Beggars crouching at the gate
Help comes but it comes too late

On marble slabs and in fields of stone
You make your humble wishes known
I touched the garment but the hem was torn
In Scarlet Town where I was born

In Scarlet Town the end is near
The seven wonders of the world are here
The evil and the good living side by side
All human forms seem glorified

Put your heart on a platter and see who'll bite
See who'll hold you and kiss you good night
There's walnut groves and maplewood
In Scarlet Town cryin' won't do no good

In Scarlet Town you fight your father's foes
Up on the hill a chilly wind blows
You fight 'em on high and you fight 'em down in
You fight 'em with whiskey, morphine and gin

You got legs that can drive men mad
A lot of things we didn't do that I wish we had
In Scarlet Town the sky is clear
You'll wish to God that you stayed right here

Set 'em up Joe, play Walking the Floor
Play it for my flat-chested junky whore
I'm staying up late, and I'm making amends
While the smile from Heaven descends

If love is a sin, then beauty is a crime
All things are beautiful in their time
The black and the white, the yellow and the brown
It's all right there for ya in Scarlet Town


EARLY ROMAN KINGS

All the early Roman Kings in their shark-skin suits
Bowties and buttons, high-top boots
Driving the spikes in, blazing the rails
Nailed in their coffins in top-hats and tails
Fly away little bird, fly away, flap your wings
Fly by night like the early Roman Kings

All the early Roman Kings in the early, early morn'
Coming down the mountain, distributing the corn
Speeding through the forest, racing down the track
You try to get away, they drag you back
Tomorrow is Friday, we'll see what it brings
Ev'rybody's talking 'bout the early Roman Kings

They're peddlers and they're meddlers, they buy and they sell
They destroyed your city, they'll destroy you as well
They're lecherous and treacherous, hell-bent for leather
Each of them bigger than all manhood together
Sluggers and muggers wearing fancy gold rings
All the women going crazy for the early Roman Kings

I can dress up your wounds with a blood-clotted rag
I ain't afraid to make love to a bitch or a hag
If you see me coming and you're standing there
Wave your handkerchief in the air
I ain't dead yet, my bell still rings
I keep my fingers crossed like the early Roman Kings

I'll strip you of life, strip you of breath
Ship you down to the house of death
One day you will ask for me
There'll be no one else that you'll want to see
Bring down my fiddle, tune up my strings
I'm gonna break it wide open like the early Roman Kings

I was up on Black Mountain the day Detroit fell
They killed them all off and they sent them to hell
Ding Dong Daddy, you're coming up short
Gonna put you on trial in a Sicilian court
I've had my fun, I've had my flings
Gonna shake 'em all down like the early Roman Kings


TIN ANGEL

It was late last night when the boss came home
To a deserted mansion and a desolate throne
Servant said, "Boss, the lady's gone
She left this morning, just 'fore dawn"

"You got something to tell me, tell it to me, man
Come to the point as straight as you can"
"Old Henry Lee, chief of the clan
Came riding through the woods and took her by the hand"

The boss he laid back flat on his bed
He cursed the heat and he clutched his head
He pondered the future of his fate
To wait another day would be far too late

"Go fetch me my coat and my tie
And the cheapest labor that money can buy
Saddle me up my buckskin mare
If you see me go by, put up a prayer"

Well, they rode all night and they rode all day
Eastward long on the broad highway
His spirit was tired and his vision was bent
His men deserted him and onward he went

He came to a place where the light was dull
His forehead pounding in his skull
Heavy heart was racked with pain
Insomnia raging in his brain

Well, he threw down his helmet and his cross-handled sword
He renounced his faith, he denied his Lord
Crawled on his belly, put his ear to the wall
One way or another, he'd put an end to it all

He leaned down, cut the electric wire
Stared into the flames and he snorted the fire
Peered through the darkness, caught a glimpse of the two
It was hard to tell for certain who was who

He lowered himself down on a golden chain
His nerves were quaking in every vein
His knuckles were bloody, he sucked in the air
He ran his fingers through his greasy hair

They looked at each other and their glasses clinked
One single unit inseparably linked
"Got a strange premonition there's a man close by"
"Don't worry 'bout him, he wouldn't harm a fly"

From behind the curtain the boss crossed the floor
He moved his feet and he bolted the door
Shadows hiding the lines in his face
With all the nobility of an ancient race

She turned, she was startled with a look of surprise
With a hatred that could hit the skies
"You're a reckless fool, I can see it in your eyes
To come this way was by no means wise"

"Get up, stand up, you greedy-lipped wench
And cover your face or suffer the consequence
You are making my heart feel sick
Put your clothes back on double quick"

"Silly boy, you think me a saint
I'll listen no more to your words of complaint
You given me nothing but the sweetest lies
Now hold your tongue and feed your eyes"

"I'd have given you the stars and the planets too
But what good would these things do you?
Bow the heart, if not the knee
Or never again this world you'll see"

"Oh, please, let not your heart be cold
This man is dearer to me than gold"
"Oh, my dear, you must be blind
He's a gutless ape with a worthless mind"

"You had your way too long with me
Now it's me who'll determine how things shall be
Try to escape," he cussed and cursed
"You'll have to try to get past me first"

"I dare not let your passion rule
You think my heart, the heart of a fool
And you, sir, you cannot deny
You made a monkey of me, what and for why?"

"I'll have no more of this insulting chat
The devil can have you, I'll see to that
Look sharp or step aside
Or in the cradle you'll wish you'd died"

The gun went boom and the shot rang clear
First bullet grazed his ear
Second ball went right straight in
And he bent in the middle like a twisted pin

He crawled to the corner and he lowered his head
He gripped the chair and he grabbed the bed
It would take more than needle and thread
Bleeding from the mouth, he's as good as dead

"You shot my husband down, you fiend"
"Husband, what husband, what the hell do you mean?
He was a man of strife, a man of sin
I cut him down and I'll throw him to the wind"

"Hear this," she said, with angry breath
"You too, shall meet the lord of death
It was I who brought your soul to life"
And she raised her robe and she drew out a knife

His face was hard and caked with sweat
His arms ached and his hands were wet
"You're a murderous queen and a bloody wife
If you don't mind, I'll have the knife"

"We're two of a kind and our blood runs hot
But we're no way similar in body or thought
All husbands are good men, as all wives know"
Then she pierced him to the heart and his blood did flow

His knees went limp and he reached for the door
His doom was sealed, he slid to the floor
He whispered in her ear, "This is all your fault
My fighting days have come to a halt"

She touched his lips and kissed his cheek
He tried to speak, but his breath was weak
"You died for me, now I'll die for you"
She put the blade to her heart and she ran it through

All three lovers together in a heap
Thrown into the grave forever to sleep
Funeral torches blazed away through
Through the towns and the villages all night and all day


TEMPEST

The pale moon rose in its glory
Out on the western town
She told a sad, sad story
Of the great ship that went down

'Twas the fourteenth day of April
Over the waves she rode
Sailing into tomorrow
To a golden age foretold

The night was bright with starlight
The seas were sharp and clear
Moving through the shadows
The promised hour was near

Lights were holding steady
Gliding over the foam
All the lords and ladies
Heading for their eternal home

The chandeliers were swaying
From the balustrades above
The orchestra was playing
Songs of faded love

The watchman, he lay dreaming
As the ballroom dancers twirled
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
Into the underworld

Leo took his sketchbook
He was often so inclined
He closed his eyes and painted
The scenery in his mind

Cupid struck his bosom
And broke it with a snap
The closest woman to him
He fell into her lap

He heard a loud commotion
Something sounded wrong
His inner spirit was saying
That he couldn't stand here long

He staggered to the quarter deck
No time now to sleep
Water on the quarter deck
Already three foot deep

Smokestack was leaning sideways
Heavy feet began to pound
He walked into the whirlwind
Sky spinning all around

The ship was going under
The universe had opened wide
The roll was called up yonder
The angels turned aside

Lights down in the hallway
Flickering dim and dull
Dead bodies already floating
In the double bottomed hull

The engines then exploded
Propellers they failed to start
The boilers overloaded
The ship's bow split apart

Passengers were flying
Backward, forward, far and fast
They mumbled, fumbled, and tumbled
Each one more weary than the last

The veil was torn asunder
'Tween the hours of twelve and one
No change, no sudden wonder
Could undo what had been done

The watchman lay there dreaming
At forty five degrees
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
Dropping to her knees

Wellington, he was sleeping
His bed began to slide
His valiant heart was beating
He pushed the tables aside

Glass of shattered crystal
Lay scattered 'round about
He strapped on both his pistols
How long could he hold out?

His men and his companions
Were nowhere to be seen
In silence there he waited for
Time and space to intervene

The passageway was narrow
There was blackness in the air
He saw every kind of sorrow
Heard voices everywhere

Alarm bells were ringing
To hold back the swelling tide
Friends and lovers clinging
To each other side by side

Mothers and their daughters
Descending down the stairs
Jumped into the icy waters
Love and pity sent their prayers

The rich man, Mister Astor
Kissed his darling wife
He had no way of knowing
Be the last trip of his life

Calvin, Blake and Wilson
Gambled in the dark
Not one of them would ever
Live to tell the tale of disembark

Brother rose up against brother
In every circumstance.
They fought and slaughtered each other
In a deadly dance

They lowered down their lifeboats
From the sinking wreck
There were traitors, there were turncoats
Broken backs and broken necks

The bishop left his cabin
To help all those in need.
Turned his eyes up to the heavens
Said, "The poor are yours to feed"

Davey the brothel-keeper
Came out, dismissed his girls
Saw the water getting deeper
Saw the changing of his world

Jim Dandy smiled
He'd never learned to swim
Saw the little crippled child
And he gave his seat to him

He saw the starlight shining
Streaming from the East
Death was on the rampage
But his heart was now at peace

They battened down the hatches
But the hatches wouldn’t hold
They drowned upon the staircase
Of brass and polished gold

Leo said to Cleo
"I think I’m going mad"
But he’d lost his mind already
Whatever mind he had

He tried to block the doorway
To save all those from harm
Blood from an open wound
Pouring down his arm

Petals fell from flowers
’Til all of them were gone
In the long and dreadful hours
The wizard's curse played on

The host was pouring brandy
He was going down slow
He stayed right 'til the end
He was the last to go

There were many, many others
Nameless here for evermore
They'd never sailed the ocean
Or left their homes before

The watchman, he lay dreaming
The damage had been done
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
And he tried to tell someone

The Captain, barely breathing
Kneeling at the wheel
Above him and beneath him
Fifty thousand tons of steel

He looked over at his compass
And he gazed into its face
Needle pointing downward
He knew he'd lost the race

In the dark illumination
He remembered bygone years
He read the Book of Revelation
And he filled his cup with tears

When the Reaper's task had ended
Sixteen hundred had gone to rest
The good, the bad, the rich, the poor
The loveliest and the best

They waited at the landing
And they tried to understand
But there is no understanding
For the judgment of God's hand

News came over the wires
And struck with deadly force
Love had lost its fires
All things had run their course

The watchman he lay dreaming
Of all things that can be
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
Into the deep blue sea


ROLL ON JOHN

Doctor, doctor tell me the time of day
Another bottle's empty, another penny spent
He turned around and he slowly walked away
They shot him in the back and down he went

Shine your light
Move it on
You burned so bright
Roll on, John

From the Liverpool docks to the red-light Hamburg streets
Down in the quarry with The Quarrymen
Playing to the big crowds, playing to the cheap seats
Another day in the life on your way to your journey's end

Shine your light
Move it on
You burned so bright
Roll on, John

Sailing through the trade winds bound for the South
Rags on your back just like any other slave
They tied your hands and they clamped your mouth
Wasn't no way out of that deep dark cave

Shine your light
Move it on
You burned so bright
Roll on, John

I heard the news today, oh boy
They hauled your ship up on the shore
Now the city gone dark, there is no more joy
They tore the heart right out and cut it to the core

Shine your light
Move it on
You burned so bright
Roll on, John

Put down your bags and get 'em packed
Leave right now, you won't be far from wrong
The sooner you go the quicker you'll be back
You been cooped up on an island far too long

Shine your light
Move it on
You burned so bright
Roll on, John

Slow down, you're moving way too fast
Come together right now over me
Your bones are weary, you're about to breathe your last
Lord, you know how hard that it can be

Shine your light
Move it on
You burned so bright
Roll on, John

Roll on, John, roll through the rain and snow
Take the right-hand road and go where the buffalo roam
They'll trap you in an ambush 'fore you know
Too late now to sail back home

Shine your light
Move it on
You burned so bright
Roll on, John

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
In the forest of the night
Cover him over and let him sleep

Shine your light
Move it on
You burned so bright
Roll on, John

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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