Sign on the Window isn't the Bob Dylan podcast you need, but it's definitely the one that you want! Each week we select a Dylan song at random, live with the song for a week (or two) and then get together to discuss. This week 1969's "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You."
This week Daniel and Kelly talk context (3:45), the complexities of the song itself (5:00), how both versions are two completely different songs!, (12:00) and dive into the lyrics. We recommend (22:30) Team Dresch, Mira, talk La Dispute/Gouge Away/Slow Mass and our final – brief!! – thoughts on the end of Game of the Thrones last month.
Next episode: How does it feeeeeeeeel? to start Music Video Month, Part II?
CONTEXT (3:45)
After our existential crisis at the opening of the episode, we talk context.
"Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" was written on Ramada Inn stationary and recorded on February 17, 1969 in 11 takes (take 5 is on Nashville Skyline.) Clinton Heylin calls it "a marginal rewrite of the previous album's closer," referring to John Wesley Harding's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight."
<aside> 🔊 Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan (vocal, guitar & harmonica), Bob Wilson (piano), Charlie Daniels (guitar), Charlie McCoy (bass), Norman Blake (guitar), Hargus "Pig" Robinson (piano), Peter Drake (steel guitar), and Kenneth Buttrey (drums).
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This was the third single from the record — after "I Threw It All Away" and "Lay Lady Lay," reaching #50 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart (and the top 20 in many other countries).
As of recording, Dylan has played this song 144 times. The first on November 22, 1975 (in Waltham, Massachusetts, as part of the Rolling Thunder Revue) and the last on August 29, 2006 (the same day Modern Times was released...).
SONG ITSELF (5:30)
This is the sound of Dylan settling in, not just for "tonight" but for good. It's a song of reassurance — though, like “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “Girl From the North Country,” that reassurance is in the eye of the beholder.
In terms of which version we enjoyed, Nashville Skyline is great, the mood is lovely, the guitar's plucky, but the Rolling Thunder (from December 4 in Quebec) is iconic (despite the crowd noise being overdubbed).
We discussed the lyrics, specifically the differences between the two versions.
White people love trains in both but the Nashville Skyline version is the opposite of a Dylan leaving song. He implores the listener to "let the poor boy on the street" take his place. He throws his mattresses out the window — he only needs one now!
The Rolling Thunder is an update on Dylan's life. The tour itself is an affront to the idea of "staying" as I could have left this town by noon / by tonight I'd been to someplace new. What felt physical in 1969 is now mental in 1974.
The bridge is exquisite in both songs, but highlights the changes in Dylan's life. It's quite a difference from having a spell cast on you to someone coming onto you "like rolling thunder." In 1969, the narrator "I" is so enchanted that, even if he wants to leave, he cannot. That line makes the song more about acceptance that, because I can't leave, "I'll be staying here with you. In 1974, our narrator actively leaves his dreams on the riverbed. They choose to stay with you.
Is it really any wonder
The love that a stranger might receive
You cast your spell and I went under
I find it so difficult to leaveIs it really any wonder
the changes we put on each other's heads
You came down on me like rolling thunder
I left my dreams on the riverbed
As Clinton Heylin notes in Revolution in the Air:
New words or not, its message of reassurance remained, addressed to the same concerned lass for whom the Rolling Thunder tour was further evidence that she had lost her man to the lure of the world, wedding songs (and vows) notwithstanding. One doubts it was a coincidence that the revamped song was introduced after Sara elected to tag along. But, whereas Dylan undoubtedly meant every word in February 1969, the man (in him) singing in 1975 of an enduring devotion comes across as someone trying to convince himself almost as much as his suspicious spouse.
DOES IT WORK IN 2019?
Oh yeah.
This is a universal feeling — an ambiguously universal feeling. Like "Boots" and "North Country," you can sing this to a current partner but it can evoke strong feelings of a particular moment with someone else.
It's a staying and leaving song, at the same time.
It's a song that oscillates between the idea of physically coming and going versus mentally checking in and out. "Staying here with you" is an ideal, "tonight" is but a construct.
THE EPISODE’S BOOKLET & PLAYLIST (22:30)
RECOMMENDATIONS (24:30)
Kelly recommends the reunited Team Dresch and Mira (and, broadly, Projekt Records)
Queercore Pioneers Team Dresch on Reuniting: 'We Just Love the Sh-t Out of Each Other'
Daniel has been busy. He (and Kelly) saw La Dispute, Slow Mass and Gouge Away at the Hawthorne Theatre. He recommends Field Medic fade into the dawn, Kevin Morby Oh My God, the returned Get Up Kids Problems, and the new Alex Lahey The Besto f Luck Club.
You hate to see it (and hear it... hell, you hate to sense it) but Game of Thrones finally ended and BOY DID IT DISAPPOINT*.* Long time listeners may remember our Sign on the Window Presents, Mixed Up Confusion Presents: Game of Thrones, Season 7. Oh to be young and full of hope. If you want the final say on the "Show that Will Not Be Named," see the timestamp. Crazy to enjoy so many hours of this show and, in the end, retroactively throw the entire thing in the trash. It's so bad that we at Sign on the Window say: Don't waste your time.
ENDINGS (35:00)
There's 421 songs left. Kelly guessed #59. Oops. That's “When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky.” She doesn't know, but that one is coming soon. Why? Because we begin our second Music Video Month with Dylan's most ambitious video ever, to match one of the most ambitious songs ever, “Like A Rolling Stone.”
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086 – "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You"