Dylan and Gates (Not Ol' Bill)

Mood Swings (installation detail)

Ever since last summer I've been intending to share some thoughts about Bob Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie" from Blonde On Blonde. While reading That Thin Wild Mercury Sound this past fall the urge was re-ignited. Having now completed the book a second time I'm still not ready. Instead, this blog post will focus on one feature of the song, repeated three times on this classic album--gates.

The reason I find the prevalence of this word so intriguing may well, in part, be due to Bob's late-in-life interest in metal sculpture. His 2013-14 art exhibition titled Mood Swings filled the Halcyon Gallery with welded gates. His artist statement included these words:

“Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.”—Bob Dylan

And that is exactly how the word can be understood right here in the opening line of "Absolutely Sweet Marie."

Well, your railroad gate, you know I just can't jump it
Sometimes it gets so hard, you see
I'm just sitting here beating on my trumpet
With all these promises you left for me
But where are you tonight, sweet Marie?

Photo by Russ Ward on Unsplash

There's no question this song is about unrequited longing. You hear that plea even more forcefully in "Where Are You Tonight" on Street Legal, but that's a sidestreet and our focus here is gates. In "Absolutely Sweet Marie" the gate is a barricade. We're at a railroad crossing and the red lights are flashing.

Despite a lifetime of listens, I really never gave much thought to how many ways Dylan references gates in his work. In "I Want You" which is also featured on Blonde On Blonde, he this time mentions opening a gate.

And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin' from my broken cup
And ask me to
Open up the gate for you.

And then again we find a gate reference in "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."

My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

In this instance, he has brought something to the gate and is making a gentler appeal to the lady in waiting.

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Sometimes he may choose to use the word gate because the ease with which it rhymes with other words. For example, in "Everything's Broken" he sings,

Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates...

And in "Simple Twist of Fate"

She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate 
And forgot about a simple twist of fate.

Is the gate significant? Maybe not, but might be, because of the numerous other gates here, it may be.

In "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" he sings...

Clouds so swift
Rain won't lift
Gate won't close
Railings froze
Get your mind off wintertime
You ain't goin' nowhere

In other words, good times, open gates. Down in the easy chair.

Photo by Hédi Benyounes on Unsplash

To be sure the word is not always loaded with sexual connotations. In "The Walls of Red Wing" he sings about the gates that hold men in.

Oh, the gates are cast iron
And the walls are barbed wire.
Stay far from the fence
With the 'lectricity sting.

There's the spiritual references, as well.

Well, your clock is gonna stop
At Saint Peter's gate.
Ya gonna ask him what time it is,
He's gonna say, "It's too late."
Hey, hey!
I'd sure hate to be you
On that dreadful day

St. Peter's gate is pretty much the same as Heaven's Door, yes? Where have we heard that name before?

And Heaven, life's endpoint, has been foreshadowed in the Edenic Paradise that Adam and Eve were banished from in the beginning. In "Gates of Eden" from Bringing It All Back Home we find the word "gates" repeated with each refrain:

No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden

Heading for the Gates of Eden

All except inside the Gates of Eden

There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden

And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden

It doesn't matter inside the Gates of Eden

And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden

And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden

Note how switching from describing what's inside Eden to what is absent outside multiplies the force of that last refrain.

The next track on this same album is the one that sank the hook into my own heart's sinews, making a profound impact on me as a youth, and countless others from my generation, "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." The word gate re-appears here as well in this most memorable stanza:

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

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In Dylan's poignant "North Country Blues" (from Times They Are A-Changin') the closed gates again convey a negative symbolic implication, the end of something. He sings:

So the mining gates locked 
And the red iron rotted 
And the room smelled heavy from drinking.

Songs with other applications of the word gate include All Over You, Quit Your Lowdown Ways, Long Distance Operator, Two By Two, Golden Loom, Foot of Pride, Day of the Locusts, Scarlet Town, When He Returns (Slow Train Coming) and two references to the Golden Gate Bridge in Down the Highway (Freewheelin') and Clean Cut Kid (Empire Burlesque).

2013 publicity still for "Mood Swings" opening at Halcyon Gallery

Freud famously once said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." His meaning: It is what it is. On the other hand, the meaning of words and images in Dylan's lyrics are frequently not what they appear to be. Sorting out the multi-layered allusions from the straight-up "it is what it is" meanings has been an endlessly fascinating conundrum for many long-time Dylan enthusiasts.

What comes to mind for me is a dialogue between Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) in Roman Polanski's 1974 classic Chinatown.

Jake Gittes: Maid's night off?
Evelyn Mulwray: Why?
Jake Gittes: What do you mean, why? Nobody's here, that's why.
Evelyn Mulwray: I gave everyone the night off.
Jake Gittes: Easy. It's an innocent question.
Evelyn Mulwray: No question from you is innocent, Mr. Gittes.
Jake Gittes: I guess you're right.

When is a word pregnant with meaning and when is it just a descriptor? When we dig into Blonde On Blonde, I don't believe it's a stretch to say that no word from Dylan is innocent of deeper layers of meaning. This is what makes his lyrics nothing short of scintillating.

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Related Link

That Thin Wild Mercury Sound by Daryl Sanders Turns Readers into Blonde On Blonde Insiders

Nine Opening Lines To Dylan Songs That Impress Me

After Paul Simon's Graceland album came out, incorporating the emerging "world music" vibe into American rock in such a marvelously new way, I watched a video documentary about Simon returning to South Africa, performing and touring. In one segment he was teaching a group of young people on how to write songs. What I recall specifically was a statement that went like this: "Begin with one true sentence and follow it with another."

This memory came to mind this past week because of the opening line of a Bob Dylan's "Sugar Baby", which has been re-playing itself in my head for the past two weeks or more. "I got my back to the sun 'cause the light is too intense." It is such a great line to open a song with. First off, it captures a truth on a physical level, but because it's Dylan or because it's poetry it whets the appetite for whatever will follow, and definitely because it's Dylan you don't know what to expect but know it will be satisfying on some level.

The combination of these two ideas (Paul Simon's advice and the first line of Sugar Baby) led me to go back in time to find opening lines to various songs from the Dylan catalog that I thought especially fascinating, powerful or enigmatic... opening lines that made you say to yourself, "Wow, where is this going? I'm on the train. Let's find out."

It's generally agreed that Dylan is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, lyricists of all time. I thought it might be fun to lay out a handful of opening lines to various songs from his catalog. Here are ten, an arbitrary number, because it could have been a dozen or twenty or more. Enjoy.

Sugar Baby
I got my back to the sun 'cause the light is too intense
I can see what everybody in the world is up against

I started with this because it's an opening line I have been mulling over for somewhere in the neighborhood of two weeks or more. "I got my back to the sun 'cause the light is too intense." For some reason it just floors me. The song is from Love and Theft, which was released on 9-11... the day of the disaster that altered contemporary American history. Dylan is spot on with the follow up line, giving ambiguous definition to the first line. This is a great album and a rich opening line.

Visions of Johanna
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it

It's generally agreed that Blonde on Blonde is one of Dylan's great albums, some say his best. The artist reached for great heights and, according to the historians, became uncompromising in his effort to produce that sound that he aspired to. But for those who find lyrics stimulating and significant, this album is filled with dazzling original work. "Visions of Johanna" is such an achievement.

Like many of the rest of these opening lines I'm in awe at how he lays down a story, line after line, with such originality. He is the consummate storyteller producing layered enticement. Ask yourself, "If I were hearing this for the first time, where is this going?" And where it goes flows so naturally, and unnaturally, out of these splendid opening lines.

Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)
Señor, señor, do you know where we’re headin’?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?
Seems like I been down this way before
Is there any truth in that, señor?

As nearly all Dylan fans and followers know his career has unfolded in a series of phases with transitions. Street Legal is the Seventies album that preceded his Gospel period which kicked off with Slow Train Coming. Several songs hint toward the change which was to come, most overtly this one.

Although "Señor" is literally the Spanish word for "Mister" it is also the word used for "Lord" in Latin American churches. It implies "Master" as well. The opening line references the classic emblem for the end times, Armageddon. It also makes the listener wonder the very thing that singer is taling about... where is this song going? Seems like we've been down this road before, but is it only an echo? Once you're hooked in you go with it, confident of a payoff.

Like a Rolling Stone
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you

It's not possible to talk about great opening lines without going here to one of the great songs in rock history, so ahead of its time, so pointed and refined. Once you know the song you can see how the whole is contained in the kernel of this introduction. And when you think about it, this song ties to the first in this list: the light is so intense. It's not pretty. Look at where you were, and where are you now?

Desolation Row
They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town

Any number of songs from this period do it to me, but this one, when I am on the road, is the song of choice to make me feel at home. If you don't know the song, how can you possibly comprehend where it's going by this opening. The only thing you know is that it's totally original and you really must go with it to find a key to this parade of images. Some believe there is no key, but I take another stance, that the last stanza opens a door so we catch a glimpse.

Ballad of a Thin Man
You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home

Right off, those ominous introductory piano chords let you know this no ordinary song. Holy buckets, where's this one going? Some day I will write all my thoughts on this song, but here I will only suggest that it is one of the boldest songs of its era, almost disorienting by the imagery it hits you with. John Lennon references it in Yer Blues, side three of the White Album.

All Along The Watchtower
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief

This pair of lines so resonates with the human spirit, expresses so much. There's a discussion taking place, a joker and a thief. You want to know what it's about, where it will go next. How can you not? But anyone who has taken a nominal interest in poetry or in Dylan will grasp that the lines evoke so much more. It is not only about their situation, temporal and local, but easily conveys human universals.

Not Dark Yet
Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal

Like so many of Dylan's songs it's not just what he sings but how he sings it that moves you. Time Out Of Mind has a number of songs that appear written and sung by a heavy-hearted, world-weary sojourner. Not Dark Yet shows that he understands what it's like to stand at the edge of the abyss, what it's like to have been shattered. Will the songwriter find a basis for hope?

Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
With your mercury mouth in the missionary times
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes
Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?

Three songs here from Blonde on Blonde, the third in Dylan's trilogy that cemented his stature as an artist. Sad-Eyed Lady was the last cut on the double album and one of the longest of his many long songs.

It's a song that has been both praised and vilified as noted in this entry from the Understanding Bob Dylan blog. Once again, just the manner in which he sings it conveys something.

There's something dreamlike about the imagery, and like dreams you don't always know where those images come from, or even what they mean, yet they are interesting. There's something happening here, but do we really have to know what it is? Like a Dali painting it's engaging even when we're not sure how to define it.

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As any Dylan fan can attest, this could easily be a much longer blog post. There are so many great opening lines one could talk about. What are some of your favorites?

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it.