Dark Eyes

14/11/2008 by Tony Attwood.

There is a picture on the inner sleeve of Empire Burlesque of a dark haired woman, drawn in the same style (although without the broken face) of the woman who appears on the cover of “Oh Mercy”. It is impossible to say if it is the same woman, but there is a haunting similarity.

Who is she? I am sure in some reference book there is a complete insight into this picture – but for me she is associated with the end of Empire Burlesque – the pulsating “Something’s Burning Baby”, followed by the utterly haunting “Dark Eyes”. Quite possibly the two songs are linked – I’ll follow that thought another day.

Returning to “Dark Eyes” after years of singing it myself in different arrangements in folk clubs (and I must admit, for my own enjoyment) it is a jolt to realise how straight is Dylan’s recording.

It’s his song, so he can decide what is done with it – but the options and possibilities with this song are enormous – the speed can vary, the power can grow, it can be strummed instead of plucked… Over the years I seem to have done everything possible to it.

But Dylan in his recording gives us the bare bones. A dead straight simple representation of beauty which goes unrecognised in a world that is far from beautiful. This song gives us image upon image upon image – and the image overall is of man dislocated from his surroundings. There are reminders of much earlier songs – of the songs of racial intolerance now retuned as man’s brutalisation of women, but it is a song for all time.

The earth is strung with lover’s pearls and all I see are dark eyes.

It is a song with so many lines like that – perfectly placed in an exquisite simple musical setting.

The darkness of the occasion builds and builds with so many lines such as “I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise…”

Yes the music, like the singer as portrayed in the song, is so gentle, so simple, so calm, so utterly in contrast with the horrors that the song portrays. This is a song with lines about “the dead that rise”, about lost sons, about “nature’s beast”, and yet throughout the guitar and harmonica just walk along, calm, dignified, observing…

Oh the French girl, she’s in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel

Hunger pays a heavy price to the falling gods of speed and steel

Oh time is short and the days are sweet

and passion rules the arrow that flies

A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.

It is that final line of the song that sticks in the memory – for all the images of the lost, the hints that the song is about the brutalisation of women by young men with money, that final line stays long after the song is over.

It is sung so gently – and of course my own reinterpretations have got it wrong. Dylan knew exactly what he was doing.

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