Brilliant song, and there's not many of Dylan's 80s tunes you can say that about. Written partly as a response to Lou Reed's "Doing The Things That We Want To" - which is a tribute to among others Sam Shepard. Dylan keeps getting stuck on the image from "The Gunfighter" and "can't remember why I was in it or what part I was supposed to play" - is he the young upstart, the wise lawman or the oldie has-been? Mix that up with the memories of a woman he once loved and the one he's with now, various ruminations on storytelling, identities and "keeping on keeping on". Something tells me there's some very personal stuff in this, buried under the western clichés and whatnot; the man from "Dont Look Back" looks back, 20 years later.
Also, I love the chorus girls' "Oh yeah?" after Dylan claims not to have any regrets. Oh, and how the hell does he fit all those words into one line?
Brilliant song, and there's not many of Dylan's 80s tunes you can say that about. Written partly as a response to Lou Reed's "Doing The Things That We Want To" - which is a tribute to among others Sam Shepard. Dylan keeps getting stuck on the image from "The Gunfighter" and "can't remember why I was in it or what part I was supposed to play" - is he the young upstart, the wise lawman or the oldie has-been? Mix that up with the memories of a woman he once loved and the one he's with now, various ruminations on storytelling, identities and "keeping on keeping on". Something tells me there's some very personal stuff in this, buried under the western clichés and whatnot; the man from "Dont Look Back" looks back, 20 years later.
Also, I love the chorus girls' "Oh yeah?" after Dylan claims not to have any regrets. Oh, and how the hell does he fit all those words into one line?