Highlands by Bob Dylan

Album: Time Out Of Mind (1997)

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In this song, which is about 15 minutes long, Dylan makes a frank admission about his age: "All the young men with the young women lookin' so good - I'd trade places with anyone of them, in a minute if I could... Party's over and there's less'n less to say - I got new eyes, everything looks far away." >>>
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Ashok - Ottawa, Canada
Dylan name-checks Neil Young with the line, "I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound." Bob Dylan was a huge influence on Neil Young, so much so that Young has remarked on occasion that he deliberately avoids listening to too much Dylan for fear that he'll become Dylan. Dylan himself remarked when he heard Young's "Heart Of Gold" that "...that's me. If it sounds like me, it should as well be me."
At 16 minutes 31 seconds, this was the longest Dylan song until he released the 16 minutes 56 seconds, "Murder Most Foul" single in 2020.

Comments: 2

Ct from Gnome, AlaskaThe section of the song with the waitress is as sexual as it gets. She's got long, white, shiny legs, hard-boiled eggs seem to be breasts, his pencil seems to be his libido, and she tells him to "do it" in a napkin. He can't draw (attract? satisfy?) her because he's losing his touch (mojo). Bob also drops the reference to Erica Jong, most famous for writing the sexually-charged "Fear of Flying." The narrator wanting to trade places with any of the young men in the park is just another sad part of mortality. Rock's greatest writer contemplates his own mortality while his pencil dulls. The subject of the song is youth's brevity, and somehow the song replicates life's sleight-of-hand with a 16-minute song that seems to pass in five. I already mourn the day of Bob's passing.
Kenny from Clydebank, ScotlandI'll open the commentary on this dylan dirge by saying that he musta read his rabbie burns - my heart's in the highland's, my heart's no' here...'
That's ok, good idea to borrow a line or two from the great scottish poet. Bob is darkly humorous in so many of his songs, a weary traveller through the urban jungle, and yet, he can always evoke the countryside so well; he can be so homespun like Hoagy Carmichael, "Memphis in June, sweet oleander on the vine....' I've admired Bob's music for a long time despite the fact that he doesn't write anything I can dance to - hehe! -
and he'll not make me 'overjoyed' like Stevie Wonder - cheerfulness is not what he's about, I guess. But nevertheless, Mr Zimmerman is the real deal and has a prominent place in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, rightly so...'dragon cloud so high above, I've only known careless love, it's always hit me from below, but this time round it's more correct, right on target, so direct, you're gonna make me lonesome when you go....'

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