Dylan song of the year 1981: Angelina

Posted on June 18, 2026 by Tony Attwood

 

 

A list of earlier “Songs of the year” is given at the end of this piece.  Details of our other current series can be found on the home page.    Other recent articels include

By Tony Attwood

This idea for a series based on finding one amazing standout song written by Bob Dylan each year, since he started recording, was indeed just an idea.   I didn’t start out by making sure I could find a song for each year that really knocked me out at the time, and continued to do so.   In my usual way, I just started writing, while thinking I would be willing to admit my mistake in starting the series if, in fact, I couldn’t find a song each year.   But in fact, I have, for each year except two, found a song written by Bob which to me (even if no one else), is a work of sublime genius.   So the series continues.

But here I run into trouble, as you will know at once if you are very kindly one of those people who actually read quite a bit of Untold Dylan, because I love one song from 1981 so much that I have already devoted at least one, if not several, articles to it.

However, it then struck me that maybe you might have missed those articles and maybe liked the “song of the year” idea, or maybe come to Untold after it started…  And anyway the two recordings of this song are so extraordinary, the song is so amazing, and to my mind is so regularly ignored both by other commentators and by other artists, that I am not going to refer you back to the past.  Although I will mention one other writer’s attempt to come to grips with this song, at the end.

But for now I have to start with the simple question: what is it that makes this song so good in my mind, and yet made Bob disregard it, and indeed made so many other Dylan writers ignore it?

Let’s start with the lyrics.  Really brilliant songs, to my mind, do have amazing opening lines, and this song is on another planet in this regard.   Just look at the opening stanza…

Well, it's always been my nature to take chances
My right hand drawing back while my left hand advances
Where the current is strong and the monkey dances
To the tune of a concertina

Now those opening two lines are extraordinary, because Dylan has, within two lines, symbolised the whole life of the chance taker.   Not the person who walks across the road without even considering the traffic, but the person who considers the options, knows what most people will do, and then judges the situation in order deliberately to try something different.

Apart from the fact that is an interesting way to see about five per cent of the population (the chance takers), it also draws on the notion that exists in many societies that left and right-handed people are in some way different.  Certainly, in English society, it was considered for a long time (at least to the mid 20th century and maybe still in some parts of our society), that left-handed people were more artistic and inventive than right-handed people.

But then Bob changes direction immediately by reminding us of how creative and imaginative people can be trapped in the norms of society, like the poor monkey removed from its natural life to be a performer in an unnatural situation it cannot possibly comprehend.  Torture indeed.

And yet as soon as we have that image of the poor, sad money we are thrown somewhere else…

Blood dryin' in my yellow hair as I go from shore to shore
I know what it is that has drawn me to your door
But whatever it could be, makes me think you've seen me before
Angelina

This seems to have no connection with the verse before – yes we can get the idea that he is desperate to find her, but what is the “blood dryin'” line about?   There is no clue and no obvious link.

And then, with the listener perhaps thinking that all will become clear, the next verse makes things even more confused.

His eyes were two slits that would make a snake proud
With a face that any painter would paint 
           as he walked through the crowd
Worshipping a god with the body of a woman well endowed
And the head of a hyena

And I am simply asking, “who or what is he singing about?”   Surely not the lady mentioned before?   Does he have affection for, or does the painter decide to paint the woman with the head of a hyena?   Surely not.

Thus, we hit the point almost from the start, that there is no sense in this.  These lines cannot be about a single woman.  Although the thought remains, “Or have I missed something?”   Are we to take it that the woman is transforming herself?

And if we are then asking, “Will the next verse help?” the answer is surely no, because we now get more characters introduced without any information about who they are and why the singer is talking about them.  The line “Do I need your permission to turn the other cheek?” seems to relate to nothing, and indeed the following lines cement that thought: “If you can read my mind, why must I speak? No, I have heard nothing about the man that you seek, Angelina.”

Now I could continue working through the lyrics with a similar set of suggestions, which come down to this basic point: who are these people and what is going on?  Or are we not even supposed to make a guess?

But… if you indulge me more than I deserve to be indulged, and tend to read quite a bit of my writing on this site, you will have come across my view before that songs don’t have to mean anything.   In fact, there is an article from last year which takes up this point.   It is indeed a tradition that songs are about something or someone or somewhere (often a lover or a lost lover, but there is no rule that says exactly who the song should be about.  Indeed, I was brought up in a house where one of the songs I most regularly heard was “Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner” which was written a couple of years before I was born.

Yet it has been asked, and I am not sure we have got round to answering the question yet, “Do songs have to be about anything or anyone or indeed any place?”

But we do get some sense of what the song is about at times, as when the lyrics say,

I was only following instructions when the judge sent me 
down the road with your subpoena

But what she has done to cause this situation is still unclear, and it doesn’t become clear.

So what Dylan has done is create a song in which the storyline, normally so utterly simplistic and totally obvious in most popular music, is completely hidden.   There is something going on, but we don’t know what.   And indeed, things get even more confusing when the singer asks, “Do I have your permission to turn the other cheek?”  for here we can see that he doesn’t know either.

In fact, the confusion builds and builds, and it is tempting to believe that Bob was just writing whatever lines he could think of to keep the song going.   And yet, and yet, there are all the elements of a dream, bordering on a nightmare, within these lyrics….

Now it is not unknown at all for people to write songs about dreams, but normally they are dreams that make sense in some way or another, or dreams which point the way to the future, giving advice to the dreamer of what to do next, or exploring some ideal future, but there is none of that here.

And if we hoped for release from the confusion, or at least some sort of explanation, as the song progresses, we don’t get one….

Beat a path of retreat up them spiral staircases
Pass the tree of smoke, pass the angel with four faces
Begging God for mercy and weepin' in unholy places
Angelina.

So we are left with a question: Does it matter if a song does not make sense?  Certainly, I recall from my early years waking from dreams that made no sense, and finding them very frightening. I understand that we crave sense and meaning.  Children, it seems, even have to learn that if they smash a toy, it is broken and can’t be played with any more.  And in listening to this song and holding that thought, I began to wonder if dictators aren’t just like children in this regard.   And then I thought, maybe that is the point of this song, it takes us into uncharted dreamland.

Or maybe Bob just wanted to write a song that made no sense.  And there’s no reason why he shouldn’t.

Which is where I ended up: it’s a dream, it makes no sense.   And maybe because through so much of my life I have been a vivid dreamer, often frightened by my own dreams, even in my adult life, that is why I love this song.  And maybe also that is why Bob only played the piece a couple of times, and only two people other than Bob subsequently recorded it.

By being about our unguarded fantasies and wild thoughts in dreams, this song takes us far, far too close to what lies beneath the veneer of civilised behaviour.   Thus, I suspect, the producers of Bob’s albums probably strongly argued against putting this track on an album.  The critics, they might have argued, would have failed to understand, and so given the song and hence the album a very negative review.   (After all, critics, in my experience, can be quite bitter and narrow-minded people at times).

With that thought, I can understand why the song is not better known, but I think along the way, we have lost access to an utter masterpiece.

Footnote: having written the above, I had a look at some of the comments made by fans about this song, and it turns out a fair number of people like me find it to be an extraordinarily brilliant work which Bob irrationally then ignored.

I also went back to the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia by Michael Gray which has an absolutely enormous article on the subject of this song, which I suggest is not to be tackled unless you have cleared a number of hours, have a very quiet environment, and an open mind.  But it most certainly is interesting.

And if you want a difference between that book’s approach and what I have written above, I would suggest that my view is not that every line and every word is important, but rather that sometimes words and lines are used because they fit with the rhyme.  But of course you can choose.

Either way, I would still wish to end, as I did my original review of this song, with the quote, “Trying to heaven by force.”

Absolutely, and I hope you now play the song.  At least twice.

Previously in this series of Dylan’s “songs of the year”

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