Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
| "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" | ||||
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| Song by Bob Dylan from the album Blonde on Blonde | ||||
| Released | May 16, 1966 | |||
| Recorded | February 16, 1966 | |||
| Genre | Folk rock | |||
| Length | 11:22 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Writer(s) | Bob Dylan | |||
| Producer(s) | Bob Johnston | |||
| Blonde on Blonde track listing | ||||
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| 14 tracks |
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"Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" is a song by Bob Dylan. First released on the album Blonde on Blonde in 1966, the song lasts 11 minutes and 22 seconds, and occupied the whole of side four of the double album.
Bob Dylan began to record the Blonde on Blonde album in New York in October 1965. Frustrated by the slow progress in the studio, Dylan agreed to the suggestion of his producer Bob Johnston and moved to Columbia's A Studio on Music Row, Nashville, Tennessee, in February 1966. Bringing with him Robbie Robertson on guitar and Al Kooper on keyboards, Dylan commenced recording with the cream of Nashville session players.
On February 15, the session began at 6 p.m., but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics, while the musicians played cards, napped, and chatted. Finally, at 4 a.m., Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition, "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Drummer Kenny Buttrey recalled, "If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody's just peaking it up 'cause we thought, Man, this is it...This is gonna be the last chorus and we've gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel...After about ten minutes of this thing we're cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?" The finished song clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the album.
Four takes of the song were recorded, three of which were complete. The recording session was released in its entirety on the 18-disc Collector's Edition of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 in 2015, with the first take of the song also appearing on the 6-disc version of that album.
The technique employed by Dylan to write the song was to construct the verses as a series of "lists" of the attributes of the eponymous Sad Eyed Lady. These "lists" are complemented by a sequence of rhetorical questions about the Lady which are never answered within the song. Thus, the first verse runs:
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