Absolutely Sweet Marie
Dylan first performed "Absolutely Sweet Marie" live in concert on the first night of his Never Ending Tour, in Concord, California, on June 7, 1988.
It was later included on The Original Mono Recordings (2010) and alternate versions appeared on The Bootleg Series Vol.
[6][9] The LP record was the first rock double album,[10] and "Absolutely Sweet Marie" appeared as the third of five tracks on the third side.
[14] The original lyrics omit the "railroad gate" that is in the first line of the released version, and although the studio log shows the song listed as "Where Are You Tonight, Sweet Marie?
[11] Critic Andy Gill and Trager both interpret the song as about sexual frustration, citing the lines where the narrator refers to "beating on my trumpet" after mentioning "it gets so hard, you see".
[15][13][18] Gill notes that images used in the song, such as railroads, had gained a sexual connotation in songs; "white horses" in the traditional "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain", and Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean", are a "blues image of sexual potency".
[19] Scholar of English Louis Renza remarked that Dylan's song "unquestionably traffics in sexual innuendo from first to last".
[25] Dylan biographer Robert Shelton found the track "catchy and bright, sparked off by a great organ proclamation ...
"[26] Michael Gray wrote that "the words are borne along on a sea of rich red music, bobbing with a stylish and highly distinctive rhythm".
[27] Trager wrote that the track is "an elixir to those who found Dylan's mid-'60s songs a bit dour ... an exuberant, pure Beale Street, up-tempo skip complete with a slew of memorable lines that could be anyone's koan".
The tensions between his surrealistic, unpredictable images and his traditional, predictable stanzaic forms produces [sic] the extraordinary effects to which we responded so intensely.
"[22] Rolling Stone placed the track 78th in their 2015 ranking of the 100 greatest Dylan songs, calling it "a cryptic love letter that rides a bubblegum electric keyboard and sparkling blues-rock guitar".
"[29] Dylan first performed "Absolutely Sweet Marie" live in concert on the first night of his Never Ending Tour, in Concord, California, on June 7, 1988.
The same spelling error occurred on other releases in varying formats of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits 2 in France, India, and Yugoslavia.
[32] The song was included on The Original Mono Recordings (2010) and alternate versions appeared on The Bootleg Series Vol.
