Beware of Dylan’s greatest song of the year: 1985 – Dark Eyes

By Tony Attwood

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)
• 1967 part 1: “Drifter’s Escape”
• 1967 part 2:  I’m not there
• 1968: Bob stops but even so (Lay Lady Lay)
• 1969: I’ll have you any time
• 1970: Time passes slowly
• 1971: When I paint my Masterpiece, and Watching the River Flow
• 1972, Forever Young  – preparing to open a minor door
• 1973: Amarillo and a back-up just in case.
• 1974: Idiot Wind
• 1975: Isis
• 1977: Journey through the dark heat
• 1978/9: When He Returns
• 1980: Yonder Comes Sin
• 1981: Angelin
• 1982/3: Foot of Pride
• 1984:
• 1985: Dark Eyes

I have included a live version of Dark Eyes in a previous review of the song – you can catch it here if you have missed it.  It was one of the first articles ever posted on this site.

But these days if I ever do go back to this song (which is rare) I prefer to go back to the utter simplicity of the original album recording

I suppose it is the utter simplicity of this arrangement that works so perfectly with the lyrics.  And that combined with the notion of having each note that is sung accompanied by a separate guitar chord.  There is, in fact, virtually no attempt to give any sense of rhythm other than the lyrics during each verse.

Then perhaps we must also note the point that there are only four verses, and the song ends on an utterly painful note of loss and sorrow which is so easy to relate to Dylan’s personal experience – or at least his experiences as we feel they might have been.   For if we are feeling this is relating to ourselves, the listeners, then the real trouble begins…

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

Was Bob, is Bob, really talking to us – his fans, those who buy his albums, go to his concerts and get so much from his music and his performances?   Is he really saying that when he looks out from the stage at us, all he sees are dark eyes?  Does that imply that he has a message that he is offering us in his songs but we are so lacking in insight, that we simply don’t or worse can’t, get it?

And if that is not the case, what do the dark eyes symbolise?  What does he see when he looks at us?  Is it something as simple as the fact that all he sees are the lights shining on the stage?   For anyone who has performed on stage knows that feeling – but is Bob now taking some deeper meaning from that?

But no, surely, from the very start Dylan is telling us that the world jogs along in its own way, and he can appear to be part of it for a while, but really he is not part of it all, because what he sees is not the world of the present moment of a good night out with friends, but a world of memories as he moves from venue to venue, from gig to gig.   And these are not good memories, but rather memories of life and death through which all he sees are dark eyes.

So life goes on beyond him – he is there but not part of it.  For everywhere there is desperation.  The soldier prays that he will get through the day, a son or daughter has gone missing, and the dead rise up…. surely one of the most frightening images it is possible to create….

He sees all this, but yet is told not to dwell on such topics.  Everyone thinks it will all work out in the end, but he cannot see this, not when he is surrounded by people who simply get through each day and through their dark eyes fail to understand.

So we go on with our lives, we meet our lovers, but the inequalities and mindless disasters continue to make up our world, and that is all that can be seen… the hopelessness of all this.

And is this the point?  That we go to his concerts, we cheer and applaud, and appreciate all he does but all he sees at each gig are dark eyes, consumed by a lack of understanding of what he is really saying, and what is really going on…

—–

Of course this is but one interpretation, and there are multiple others – but it is how I heard the song when I first listened, and that vision of the desperation and pointlessness of life still lingers within me every time I hear the song, or on the few occasions I choose to perform it myself.   And it is a vision that is so frightening. For my sins, I tend to play it these days on the piano, not with a guitar accompaniment, with that different chord for each beat of each bar.  But I know I need to be mentally strong enough to stop at the end, leave the piano and do something else – and not just escape into a glass of wine.

As for the recording, when I play it, I think, in the end, it is that straight single chord per beat of the song that makes the song impossible to perform.  Which is why, I guess, Bob put it back on the shelf.

So maybe that is why, staggeringly amazing though this song is, it was only performed by Bob eight times across a ten-year period, and then left forever in 1995 just a couple of months short of the tenth anniversary of its first performance.

It is in many ways one of the most terrifying of Bob’s creations, for it is a song of utter desperation, bewilderment and hopelessness.  No matter where he looks, there is no understanding, no hope, no laughter, no love, no progression, and above all else, no way out.  This is more than a world gone wrong; this is a world that is at the very edge of dying – and taking us all with it, into an eternity of desperation.

Of course it doesn’t matter when, how and where I play the song; I play it either because I am in desperation, not just for me, but for the world around me, or because I think, “no, I must have got this wrong, there must be something else.”   And that, of course, is not a way that one can live.  Or at least not live very happily.

So mostly I allow this song to sit in my memory, over there but not played.  If I allow it too close, there is the danger that it could change me into something I do not want to be.  And I would always say, “Beware of songs that can change you; you might not be able to change yourself back.”