"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez when it's Easter time, too
And your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs when you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there and they really make a mess outta you
Now, if you see Saint Annie, please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move, my fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength to get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor, won't even say what it is I've got
Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English and she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind and careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon
Up on Housing Project Hill, it's either fortune or fame
You must pick one or the other, though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly, you better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you, and man, they expect the same
Now, all the authorities, they just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms into leaving his post
And picking up Angel, who just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first but left looking just like a ghost
I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me when the game got rough
But the joke was on me, there was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough
And your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs when you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there and they really make a mess outta you
Now, if you see Saint Annie, please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move, my fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength to get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor, won't even say what it is I've got
Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English and she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind and careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon
Up on Housing Project Hill, it's either fortune or fame
You must pick one or the other, though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly, you better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you, and man, they expect the same
Now, all the authorities, they just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms into leaving his post
And picking up Angel, who just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first but left looking just like a ghost
I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me when the game got rough
But the joke was on me, there was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough
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More Featured Meanings
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Blue
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Blue” is a song about a love that is persisting in the discomfort of the person experiencing the emotion. Ed Sheeran reflects on love lost, and although he wishes his former partner find happiness, he cannot but admit his feelings are still very much there. He expresses the realization that he might never find another on this stringed instrumental by Aaron Dessner.
Head > Heels
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Head > Heels” is a track that aims to capture what it feels like to experience romance that exceeds expectations. Ed Sheeran dedicates his album outro to a lover who has blessed him with a unique experience that he seeks to describe through the song’s nuanced lyrics.
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
I think this is a morality tale, which is about redemption and sin. The beginning has "lost in the rain" and "it's Easter time too" (the story of the resurrection - redemption from sin) and ends with "I'm going back to New York city, I do believe I've had enough". It is like the story of the prodigal son, he comes to his senses and returns to his father after wasting all his money on prostitutes. “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you." New York (Big Apple) is a metaphor for the garden of Eden (Greenwich Village?)- the place before the fall, a return to innocence.
All the verses are detailing the archetypal temptations/sins that a person can succumb to: despair =gravity fails/negativity, Pride = Don't put on any airs, greed/lust=hungry women, lethargy=I cannot move/My fingers are all in a knot/don't have the strength, superstition=[the gypsy soothsayer in her room] the peasants call her the goddess of gloom, lack of faith=steals your voice (Zechariah lost his voice when he refused to believe), paganism/lust=howling at the moon, It's either fortune or fame=Satan's temptations of Jesus, idleness=just stand around, pride/vanity=boast, corruption=blackmail, and addiction=I started out on burgundy But soon hit the harder stuff. Salvation is found by becoming true to oneself (the truth will set you free): no one there to call my bluff, which is a poker reference. When no one is around to ask you to reveal your hand, you can still see your own cards, you can't fool yourself. It ends with faith "I do believe I've had enough".
Why is being lost being played off against it being Easter time too? Easter time is about being found/saved. Also, Juarez is across from El Paso, the boundary between Mexico and the US - it an image of not knowing one's borders/boundaries and descending into the valley in between. The song is about forgetting about one's limits and suffering the consequences (lost in the rain/you're down/really make a mess out of you/I cannot move/leaves you howling at the moon (insane?)/the joke was on me There was nobody even there to call my bluff (losing one's real friends).
Of course, it may have been primarily influenced by other stories, that were in turn influenced by these concepts.
Good thinking there! You got much further along than I did in trying to unpack it.
What you're reading into it was not put there by Dylan. In 1965 the man was recording, touring and writing 18 hours a day apart from getting smashed and laid. To deliberately put all those references in would take months. It's more likely that the whole thing was improvised and tidied up when time was available. It's a testament to Dylan's wit and erudition that so many references can be pulled out of it - though if you're asking what it's 'about', it's about the feeling of being fed up, far from home, in a place full of wicked temptations. And the rainfall in Juarez at Eastertime is the lowest for the area, about 0.2 inches in the month of April.
I think it is possible by Bob to put all those references in eventhough he didnt have much time to write since he wrote so many songs in between everything else. Many people tend to over-analyze Bobs songs but I think they all have a meaning and purpose for Bob at the time. He is a poet and writes as a poet. Not every word in a song has a deeper meaning but all words fit in the song. I always see him as an observing poet in the sence that he writes what he sees with a poets eyes. I agree with Bolgwrad that its a song about feeling fed up and I think it is Bobs view of his life at that time, that moment. But he describes it in a way that people can dig out lots of references because Bob is an educated man and, i believe, have read or heard stories that he just puts in the song because it fits. <br /> For me the "clue" to the meaning could easily be in the title. It is called just like Tom Thumbs blues and so it could be a reminder for Bob about Tom Thumb that he applies to himself and his sorrundings
I believe the title is an allusion to Rimbaud's "My Bohemian Life": "My only pair of trousers had a big hole./Tom Thumb in a daze, I sowed rhymes". The poem also has a line sometimes translated as "strong Burgundy" (un vin de vigueur). This leads me to believe that this song is a response to the concept of "la vie boheme" that was very popular in the 1960s. Dylan goes through a laundry list of bohemian artist cliches; drugs, prostitution, drinking, rejection of money, antagonistic relationship with the police, before eventually deciding, in the final lines to leave it all and go back to New York.
You can't beat songs about hookers! I love the opening piano riff too.
It's a famous childeren story about a poor kid with a lot of brothers. And their parents try yo get rid of them by leaving them lost in the city. Tom Thumb, smart fellow, had suspected something funny was goin' on so he left breadcrumbs all over the trail from their house. This piece of breath was, of course, their only meal. So the brothers go back where their parents were crying in regret for leaving them. They get together and lived happily ever after. Ta - da!!!
The title speaks about getting lost in some weird adventures and findiig your way back. The Saint Annies, Melissas, Rue Morgues etc. are, once again, nicknames that Dylan uses to speak about the people he meets and the things he lives. But he likes to "re-arrange their faces and give them all another name" to protect his own privacy and to have a little fun. Great great great underestimated song. Great version by Neil Young on the 30th anniversary
.... and she takes your voice....
Juarez is the Mexican border town across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. In the mid-1960s at the time Dylan wrote this song, the town was famous for its bars and whorehouses. College students from schools throughout the Southwest went there to drink tequila and cheer each other one as they got drunk but yelling "bite that lime." There was a ritual to getting drunk on tequila at that time. The Army guys were from nearby Fort Bliss. Most had just finished basic training, were about 18 years old and there to get drunk and get laid before shipping out to Vietnam. If you stayed there for more than a few days, the drinking and whoring wore you out. The best lines that give it meaning are near the end when he mentions that Angel (presumably, a Hell's Angel biker from California) arrived from the coast and left three days later looking like a ghost. Given their reputation as drinkers and battlers, you get the idea that Juarez could drain every bit of life out of anyone. And it would.
I think it is about the pressures and temptations and betrayal of fame, and those surrounding you abusing and misleading your fame. Fame as femme fatale siren, as an enemy in friend's clothing, and 'authorities' of state, arts, society, race all pushing him one way or the other as a poster boy example and nexus of something he reluctantly performed as a bewildered monkey. And, Dyaln as out of place, imposter like, feeling inadequate where he wants redemption (or even more so, some salvation escape rather than form of forgiveness) from fame and change to just happen; but, alas, redemption doesn't just 'happen.' He is left sucking his thumb, consumed with worries and regrets and second guessing himself and everyone in his life--and to come.
This period was the time when dylan in fact was going through second guessing himself and others motivations---fortunes and fame and artistic motivations. And, he grew tired of being a poster boy for civil rights, folk, beats, and even those his enemies and higher authorities deemed as prime example of changing rebellious youth culture. Moreover, he did feel like an imposter, as folkie, beat, civil rights, and 'rebellious' archetypes and fountainhead leader.
Issues of trust, fame, redemption, regret etc are all loosely a part of the dylanology landscape, as Hicks and others have greatly decoded and discussed in their books on the subject....definitely not an explicit elliot or joyce or other poetic homage here though.....all in my opinion of course, which is what is great about bobby d--his lyrics and his mythic mystery of veiling his intentions and meanings, and guarding his personal life.
God I love this song. Play it on guitar all the time. First song I ever played on guitar for my wife when we were dating.
Talking about being away from home and everything goes wrong. Screw it at the end...go back home.
The Live '66 version is the BEST!
well as with everything everyone brings in their own views. i have said this before but some of dylan's 60's stuff is probably drug induced ramblings and he got a kick out of people trying to figure out what he is trying to convey. But i shall stab at it with what it means to me. to me it is talking about how women girls whatever you wish to call them, can be flirtatious and will just play with you like a toy while you are doped up and being in love. I am surprised that this hasn't been ripped to shreds.
Ripped to shreds? At least you didn't COMPLETELY dismiss it as some 'drug induced rambling' like so many other people do when trying to understand poetry and whatnot. Amen, HibbingismyHolyLand. Actually, I'm listening to that version as I'm typing this. LOVE it! LOVE Dylan!