Kansas City: Dylan’s New Basement song that goes back to staggering heights

By Tony Attwood

May I say from the start I utterly love this song and since discovering it, have played it over and over, time and time again.

The lyrics are, by Dylan’s standards, simple, but it is what the composer/s of the music have done by refusing to allow the music to follow the simple lay out of the lyrics, that makes this recording so utterly wonderful.

Never once doing the obvious but finding endless twists and turns in the music while endlessly placing what I feel is an all-important emphasis on the fact that it is Kansas that the song is about, makes this a brilliant composition.  And not just because Dylan needed to make it about a city, but because it was important that it was Kansas.  Or at least it was important that it was about THIS place, not somewhere else.

On this recording Johnny Depp plays guitar (Elvis Costello being involved in a gig with The Roots on the day of the recording.)   Johnny Depp also appeared on stage for what I think was the one and only live performance of the song in LA.  (I may have got that wrong – correct me if so).

As for the compositional credits these are given to Bob Dylan for the lyrics (obviously), and Marcus Mumford and Taylor Goldsmith for the music.  If you missed this song upon its release stop everything and just play it.

Then play it again.

And again.

Also commenting on the piece, T-Bone Burnett in an interview confirmed his view that  Dylan was saying, “I played these songs, and you want me to keep playing them. But I’m not going to do that. I’m going back to the blues. I’m going to Kansas City.”

This notion leads to the view that many have offered that the Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, and Nashville Skyline are albums that deliberately set out to focus on the origins of American music rather than the new approaches that were dominating rock. It is also pointed out during the constant touring years Kansas has been a regular venue.

Such theories are of course just that: theories.  They are possible, but so is it possible that Kansas City was just a name that scanned in a way that many other places would not.  And as many songwriters have found, once you start using a reference point (be it a place or a person or an image or a colour or whatever) it can keep coming back as a continuity in song after song or book after book or painting after painting.  And there’s nothing amiss with that – it gives the creator and the recipient a sense of constancy in an ever changing landscape.

But whatever theory you follow, or whether you follow none at all, do listen to this song – even if you have heard it 1000 times before.

I listen to you time and time again
While you tell me just what’s right
And you tell me a thousand things a day
Then sleep somewhere’s else at night
I’m going back to Kansas City

And I love you dear, but just how long
Can I keep singing the same old song
And I love you dear, but just how long
Can I keep singing the same old song
I’m going back to Kansas City

And you call me to come, then I do
And you say you made some mistake
You invite me into your house
Then you say you gotta pay for what you break
I’m going back to Kansas City

And I love you dear, but just how long
Can I keep singing the same old song
And I love you dear, but just how long
And I keep singing the same old song
I’m going back to Kansas City

Gypsy woman, you know every place I go
Even a thousand miles away from home
You don’t care if I’m asleep or I’m awake
This fickle heart just turn to stone
I’m going back to Kansas City

And I love you dear, but just how long
Can I keep singing the same old song
And I love you dear, but just how long
Can I keep singing the same old song
I’m going back to Kansas City

And I love you dear, but just how long
Can I keep singing the same old song
And I love you dear, but just how long
Can I keep singing the same old song
I’m going back to Kansas City

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