This article was updateded on 15 March 2026 in order to try and clarify some of my more obscure statements. Tony.
Previously in this series….
- 1961. “I was young when I left home”
- 1962: Tomorrow is a long time
- 1963: Seven Curses
- 1964: Gates of Eden
- 1965: Visions of Johnanna
- 1966: One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)
By Tony Attwood
This series of pieces is somewhat inward-looking, but having been immersed in Dylan’s music from the start of his recording career, I felt it might be interesting to explore the notion of Dylan’s best song of each year.
Of course, it is a totally personal choice, and my hope is simply that each selection might trigger an interesting memory or two for you, or indeed, if you discovered Dylan later on in his career, take you back to a song that you did not have a chance to appreciate fully in earlier days.
I should also add that a full list of the songs Dylan wrote in the 1950s and 1960s is provided on this site, organised in the order in which they were written. It appears in the article “Dylan songs of the 1950s and 60s” with a link to the main or original review on this site in each case.
So we move onto 1967 – which is where we have a particular problem, because Dylan appears to have started by writing a series of songs in his regular way (22 in all that we know about), before then making the Basement Tapes series (63 songs in all) and then ending the year with John Wesley Harding (12 tracks on the LP). 97 songs in all, many of which of course were not Bob Dylan compositions. (My knowledge of the songs performed in the Basement Tapes is not comprehensive enough to say definitively how many were Dylan originals, how many were re-arrangements, and how many are fair copies of someone else’s earlier arrangements or performances.)
From this maze of writing, I find I have always held in my mind the song “I’m not there” which turned up on the Bootleg Tapes volume 11, as being an absolute highlight, and I will come back to that later.
As for the album that emerged from all this activity (JWH) I find “Drifter’s Escape” stays with me always, although of course I have to give full recognition to “All along the watchtower” and I guess it was because of Jimi Hendrix’ re-interpretation of the song, Dylan then made it his own closing number, thus knocking up 2338 performances on stage (according to the official website).
I have indeed always found it fascinating that Dylan took the Hendrix re-working of the song as his way of bowing out of so many concerts, but then who am I to argue with what the composer wants to do with his work?
As for where this leaves me, with 63 basement tape songs and a dozen songs on the album, I am not sure. How am I going to select a composition of the year, which is what now appears to be the rather silly task I have set myself? Clearly, I didn’t think of 1967 when coming up with the idea.
But I have tried, and in fact I ended up with two songs. So one is “Drifter’s Escape” and the other is “I’m not there.” I can’t separate them into one being better than the other, so I offer both as my songs of this most overwhelming Dylan year, of 1967.
“Drifter’s Escape” I have noted before as being, in my view, the ultimate Kafkaesque nightmare, the song in which cause and effect breaks down so that, as in a nightmare, nothing makes sense and there is no way out although he still doesn’t know what he did wrong.
This is the absolute opposite of almost all contemporary thinking – and quite possibly most thinking throughout all human history. When the world was not understood in scientific and historic terms, it was understood as the world created by God, or before that, by gods. Explanations, it seems, are always needed. Even by the drifter.
And I think it is worth looking back to the start of the song, because of the level of fame it has reached, if nothing else. Below is the original…. based on just two chords. But there are also cross references. The drifter for all his drifiting is stuck… He says “Help me in my weakness” as he seeks to escape just as Dylan elsewhere announces, “There must be some way out of here…” Except that the joker, the thief and in this case the Drifter are all stuck.
(We have done an index of some of the best opening lines, in case you are interested)
Do these lines still have an impact? Indeed, if I may ask, did they ever have an impact on you? They certainly did on me, and has stayed with me forevermore. That feeling that this can’t be all there is… There must be more…
When I first heard the lines of songs such as these, in these songs that said none of this makes sense, and then again, there is no way out of here, they made an impact because that is what I felt… that I did not have to be living the life I had slipped into, and there should be more and it should be better. (My career as a musician had stalled, my songwriting was not particularly appreciated and although I was getting articles published in magazines, that certainly didn’t look like a way to earn enough money to survive on. I was still two years away from my first book being published and five years from receiving a royalty cheque that managed to pay off my debts in one go… life wasn’t good).
So yes, I knew exactly what Bob meant about there being too much confusion, or in terms of the Drifter, “I still do not know what it was that I’ve done wrong” (which is exactly how I felt when a book I had written just didn’t sell).
But I always felt there might be an escape, and so thanks to Drifters Escape I kept believing and waiting until….
Just then a bolt of lightningStruck the courthouse out of shapeAnd while everybody knelt to prayThe drifter did escape
And I have often wondered ever since, just what others made of Drifter’s Escape. So I just typed “meaning of Drifter’s Escape” into Google, and as usual, my computer came up with an AI overview before giving me links to various websites. And here it is, word for word.
“Drifter’s Escape” by Bob Dylan (1967) is a folk-rock song depicting an innocent or ignorant outsider trapped in a Kafkaesque legal system, who is miraculously freed when a lightning strike causes panic in the courtroom [Wikipedia]. It explores themes of helplessness, societal malice, and divine intervention, suggesting a desperate escape from an incomprehensible predicament [Untold Dylan].
I’m not quite sure where on this site that quote is to be found, but Google thinks it’s on this site, so that’s good enough. (And of course that might not be the message you see if you do the same search – Google is different for different people, but it gave me a little buzz today, and I enjoyed that).
What is often forgotten, however, is that the first reworking of the song actually was not Hendrix but Joan Baez
Now, as I write these pieces (which is something I quite enjoy doing, otherwise I wouldn’t bother – although it is nice to see that you are here reading this as well), I don’t particularly get bothered by what others say about my ramblings. But when this sort of thing happens, it is rather enjoyable.
But anyway, the essence of the song seems to be that there is no logic, no sense, no future…. and it can be taken that maybe many of us are just drifters in our own lives…
You will of course, know the Hendrix version of Watchtower, but I am not sure we have included his “Drifter” very often, but it seems appropriate to include it now….
So there we are – a song for the year. But there is more, and I shall continue later… Meanwhile, there is a guide to our current series on the home page.