“Band of the Hand (It’s Hell Time Man)”. Dylan’s forgotten movie song.

A Journey Through “Hell Time” With a Forgotten Dylan Gem

By Steve Watson

Bob Dylan wrote “Band of the Hand (It’s Hell Time Man)” as the theme to a 1986 film of the same name.

In the film, a group of prototypical troubled teens are shipped off to an isolated island as part of their rehabilitation. There, a laconic Vietnam veteran named Joe teaches them urban combat skills. The boys learn to shoot, fight, lay in ambush, and blow things up. Once they are fully indoctrinated in the ways of street vigilantism, the team leaves the island for the city and proceeds to take down a ruthless drug dealer. Somehow, the entire experience is supposed to successfully reintegrate the kids into everyday society.

This review is about the song, its place in Bob Dylan’s canon, and the possibilities of what was going on in Dylan’s head at the time of writing and recording. However, it is not possible to interpret the song without a bit of background on the film and its place in that particular period of American history and culture.

Band of the Hand (the film) is a drama, with only a few 1980’s style laughs thrown in, but its entire premise is absurd to the point of being a cartoonish. What treatment center teaches teens to be killers, or leaves a group of them in a single man’s care? In Reagan’s America, it is much more likely these teens would have been rounded up, shipped far from their home states, and placed in privately owned, for profit group homes. There they would have been subjected to sleep deprivation, verbal and psychological abuse, and endless rounds of group therapy designed to demoralize and humiliate them.

They certainly would not have been allowed time to socialize or become a coherent killing machine. And even in the arch conservative, mad dog America of that period, no one was insane enough to weaponize kids who already had a propensity for antisocial violence.

Dylan and his backing band step into this fantastical wonderland with an aggressive, bluesy jam that loosely follows the movie’s plot. The story goes that Dylan recorded the song in between shows on a tour. The whole thing was thrown together in a couple of days, but there was still time to enlist Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers along with a female backing chorus. A relentless guitar hook opens the tune and drives the mantra-like refrain, with backing vocals from Stevie Nicks and others:

In the music video, clips from the movie confirm that Hell time is indeed upon us. Explosions, fistfights, showdowns and gunplay illustrate Dylan’s angry lyrics denouncing street crime and pledging to cleanse the evildoers with righteous violence:

It’s Hell time man
It’s Hell time man
It’s Hell time man
It’s Hell time man

The witchcraft scum exploiting the dumb
Turns children into crooks and slaves
Whose heroes and healers are real stoned dealers
Who should be put in their graves

Dylan also finds time to excoriate the political machinations that make drug dealing and thuggery possible:

It’s all the same
The name of the game
Is who do you know higher up

It is vindictive stuff, a fire and brimstone sermon, with, curiously, no religious overtones to be found. “Band of the Hand” passes judgement using secular language. It also finds secular solutions to those problems, in some of Dylan’s harshest language this side of “Hurricane:”

We’re gonna blow up your home of Voodoo
And watch it burn without any regret
We got the power, we’re the new government
You just don’t know it yet

The song is devoid of symbolism or nuance, like most of Dylan’s output from that time. “Band of the Hand” is a right wing political screed with none of the restraint seen in, for example, “Union Sundown” (from Infidels).  The story it tells is a literal one. The line about being the “new government” reflects the military buildup and aggressive excursions of America under Reagan’s leadership. This is in keeping with the “America first” stance Dylan took (or pretended to take) for a few years during the 1980’s.

The tune is perhaps best viewed as the halfway point of Dylan’s decade long transition from the Christian trilogy that ended with Shot of Love in 1981. By 1989, the songwriter was creating bleak sonic landscapes that showed a dark worldview with no hope of redemption.

“Political World” was perhaps the most overtly political song from Oh Mercy; in it, Dylan is far more interested in summarizing the cold facts of American life than he is in offering up any sort of solution. Except for the happy aberration of Under the Red Sky, this pessimistic outlook would continue until Dylan’s second wind that began with “Love and Theft” in 2001.

A brutal urban war zone serves as the setting for both film and song. Like Joe and his students, who form a guerrilla army to fight for justice, the Dylan of 1986 still had enough fire to threaten the people who created that war zone. “Band of the Hand” just may be the last gasp of Dylan’s social commentary. He certainly still takes jabs at a complacent and corrupt society—witness “Pay in Blood,” from 2012’s Tempest album—but lately he seems happier exploring the Great American songbook and confounding the public’s expectations. At 76 years old, he has certainly earned the right to enjoy himself and play what he likes.

It is a shame “Band of the Hand” never showed up on any Dylan anthology or collection of one-offs. It is available on iTunes as part of the film soundtrack. Intrepid Dylan devotees may also find the 45 record containing the song through an online retailer or a thorough search of local used record bins.

And it is (at least for the moment) here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG_Qlb5C4Xk

What is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order at the foot of the home page and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

4:   The Discussion Group    We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

12 Comments

  1. Nice article about one of Dylan’s million under-valued songs. It’s one of his few that features a devastating electric guitar riff worthy of the Rolling Stones in their sixties prime. How can anyone with ears resist its force? Dylan’s committed vocals, the band, and even the female back-up singers are all crucial in making this song achieve lift-off.
    I read that Dylan performed it with the Heartbreakers and then read a review of the concert. The music critic wrote negatively about the song, so Dylan never performed it again. It’s hard to believe he’d ever take a music journalist’s opinion seriously. I once heard a poorly recorded bootleg from the 1986 tour – not the July 4th show. After asking the crowd if they know what time it is (“It’s hell time,” Dylan informs them) he performs “Band of the Hand.” This version is so explosive, so dynamic, that when it ends, it feels like a mushroom cloud has risen above the stage. You could tell the awestruck crowd loves it, even though they’d never heard it before. As we all know, new songs don’t get that kind of reception.

  2. Dylan has always been for America First. Take note of his recent comments on self-indulgent performances of the US national anthem.

  3. Backed by The Heartbreakers with Tom Petty producing. And while its mixed very low, Bob is playing incredible harmonica throughout the track.

  4. This was fun to hear on the 1986 tour with Petty and the Heartbreakers. Before playing it Bob would ask the audience “what time is it? what time is it?, does anyone know what time it is?”

  5. Great song, recorded here in Sydney, Australia in Feb 1986 while on tour with Petty and co

  6. A well written article on a song that can stand on its own in line with Masters of War.

  7. This is probably my favorite Dylan rock song. I bought the 45rpm in 1986 and blasted it everyday. I disagree with the article when he says the “we’re the new government”. I think it had less to do with Reagan, and more to do with Jesus. He was referring to the coming theocracy, when Jesus returns and mankind is ruled by Him. “you just don’t know it yet!” Most people don’t believe in the 2nd Coming, but after it happens, the “new government” will begin on earth for 1000 years.

  8. From the movie, ‘I Wake Up Screaming’:
    One day, you’ll be talking in your sleep, and when you do I wanna be around.

    One day, though, you’ll be talkin’ in your sleep /And when you do, I wanna be there (Band of the Hand)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *