Yet more on the train of pain and “Justine”

By Tony Attwood and Tim Johnson

We recently posted a piece trying to unravel the song “Ride this train” and separate it from a song called “Riding on Train 45”.  In this short piece we are going to update that information, and clear up any misunderstandings over these two songs, plus a third called “Train of Pain”.

And because “Train of Pain” is the latest edition to this collection we will start with that.

Train of Pain

In 1986 on the tour of New Zealand, Bob Dylan played “Train of Pain” several times.  Each time it is an instrumental.

Heylin has a note about this song and says that at first Dylan “opened shows in New Zealand with an instrumental jam (later known as “Train of Pain”, after the girls sang this repeated refrain on the one occasion it gained a lyric.”  But he reports that by the time the band to to Australia this was replaced by “Justine” (“a Don and Dewey song”).

Here is the original…

Later this was replaced by the re-working of “Uranium Rock” which emerged as “Rock em Dead” which we reviewed here.

The video we used on that review has now vanished, but we have another one.  It’s not as good as the previous one, but it will have to do.

https://youtu.be/k8w2JFJbESE

Now the 1986 NZ “Train of Pain” tracks are all instrumental, but basically the same arrangement as “Riding on the Train”.

There are 3 versions of Riding on the Train, but only two of  them are available (February 12 and 13 1986)

https://youtu.be/UYtdD2Tdl1Y

They different night’s songs both have the same chorus but different lyrics which suggests they are improvised which actually makes them pretty unique but at the same time the words are a bit meaningless.

On our listing of Dylan songs we have a piece called “Ride this train”.   That is a 1986 song, and I’ve dropped the recording in at the end of this piece, which came at the same time as the wonderful “To fall in love with you”.

Riding on the train

......   I'll tell ya
I swear I can be there
and yeah I can be there
I'll tell ya   on the beat
all night mama till you reach the top
one more mama (I'll take care of you}
on the train   of pain
on the train   of pain
(oh so)   I saw her
I see high (her)   I see riding
ahaa...I see ...    
on the feeling
one more time baby keep on riding
one more time baby cause
you're riding on the train
the train of pain
riding on the train  the train of pain
riding on the train   the train of pain
aaah riding on the train
on the train of pain
riding on the train
riding the track (train)
one last… mama can you come on back
......tell you all the time
on the train riding on the train of pain
aaah

So we have one more song giving us 622 songs on the complete alphabetical listing.

Very many thanks to Tim for not only noticing this song but also persevering with me after I lost the first email!

Untold Dylan

This is article 1,968 on this site.   You can find indexes to series linked under the image of Dylan at the top of the page and some relating to recent series on the home page.

Although no one gets paid for writing, publishing or editing Untold Dylan, it does cost us money to keep the site afloat, safe from hackers, n’er-do-wells etc.  We never ask for donations, and we try to survive on the income from our advertisers, so if you enjoy Untold Dylan, and you’ve got an ad blocker, could I beg you to turn it off while here. I’m not asking you to click on ads for the sake of it, but at least allow us to add one more to the number of people who see the full page including the adverts.   Thanks.

As for the writing, Untold Dylan is written by people who want to write for Untold Dylan.  We welcome articles, contributions and ideas from all our readers.  Although no one gets paid, if you are published here, your work will be read by a fairly large number of people across the world, ranging from fans to academics.  If you have an idea, or a finished piece send it as a Word file to Tony@schools.co.uk with a note saying that it is for publication on Untold Dylan.

We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with around 8500 active members. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link    And because we don’t do political debates on our Facebook group there is a separate group for debating Bob Dylan’s politics – Icicles Hanging Down