Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
Some writers have concluded that the song refers to Joan Baez, although most agree that it was composed for Dylan's wife Sara Lownds.
Bringing with him Robbie Robertson on guitar and Al Kooper on keyboard, Dylan commenced recording with experienced Nashville session players.
[1][2] On February 15, following the move to Nashville, a session began at 6 pm, but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics, while the musicians played ping-pong and chatted.
[3] The Dylan scholar Michael Gray writes that for the first verse, only the opening line of the album version was significantly different from the first-take lyrics, which started with "With your mercury eyes in the months that climb".
[16] Around the same time, Dylan played the as-yet-unreleased album track with journalist Jules Siegel present, describing it as "old-time religious carnival music".
[18] In 1969, Dylan related to Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, "I just sat down at a table and started writing ... And I just got carried away with the whole thing ...
[20] The music critic Alex Ross wrote that the refrain [is] a rising and descending arc, made up of successive notes in D-major.
[24][25] Thus, the first verse begins: With your mercury mouth in the missionary times And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes Oh, who do they think could bury you?
[26] The critic Ian Bell contends that people who "say that 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' is a mere jumble of images miss a poet attempting, in the ancient manner, to count the ways of love ... and to put the mystery of inviolability and passion into words.
Noting Dylan's claims in "Sara" to have written "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" in the Chelsea Hotel, Bangs remarked that he had been reliably informed that Dylan had composed the song "wired out of his skull in the studio, just before the songs were recorded ... Those lyrics were a speed trip, and if he really did spend days on end sitting in the Chelsea Hotel sweating over lines like 'your streetcar visions which you place on the grass', then he is stupider than we ever gave him credit for.
[42] Wilentz, discussing the song, comments that Dylan's writing had shifted from the days when he asked questions and supplied answers in the traditional folk-ballad idiom.
Like the verses of William Blake's "The Tyger", Dylan asks a series of questions about the sad-eyed lady but never supplies any answers.
"[24][48] Gray argues that the Book of Ezekiel influenced the language of several of Dylan's songs, including "Gates of Eden" (1965), "Angelina" (1981), and "Dignity" (1989).
Ralph Gleason wrote in the San Francisco Examiner that "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" was "a ghostly enigma".
[50] He reported that the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg had said the song stood independently as a good poem, which Gleason called a top-tier commendation.
[50] The Village Voice critic Richard Goldstein found that "all that is necessary to appreciate the willowy beauty of its lyrics is to think closely of a personal sad-eyed lady and let the images do the rest",[51] and The Boston Globe reviewer Ernie Santosuosso commented that "It's Dylan at his most esoteric best in this wailing tribute filled with sense-boggling word figures.
[53] In a later review, the critic Andy Gill feels the work, recorded in the early hours of the morning, has a nocturnal quality similar to "Visions of Johanna".
[35] Al Kooper, who played organ on the track, agreed, describing the song in a 2005 interview with Mojo magazine as "the definitive version of what 4 am sounds like".
[35] The musicologist Wilfrid Mellers argues that Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands stands with "Mr. Tambourine Man" as one of the "most insidiously haunting pop songs of our time".
[55] For Paul Williams, the song is not typical of Dylan's canon as the melody initially draws the listener's attention, rather than the lyrics.
[62] In a 2020 article for The Guardian, Alexis Petridis ranked it the ninth-greatest of Dylan's songs, and felt that "its understated sound, cyclical melody and devotional lyrics" provided persuasive evidence that the track was a "masterpiece".
[66] Ross argued that the lyrics of "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" become increasingly hard to fathom, writing that in the second-to-last verse, Dylan's meaning clouds over: "'They wished you'd accepted the blame for the farm.'
The melody of the refrain—a rising and descending scale, as in "Danny Boy"—is grand to begin with, but in the fifth verse Dylan makes it grander.
"[67]Heylin, like the Variety review, has described "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" as "pretentious", but also as "a captivating carousel of a performance".
Heylin quotes from Dylan's San Francisco press conference on December 3, 1965, when he stated he was interested in: ... writing [a] symphony ... with different melodies and different words, different ideas ... which just roll on top of each other ... the end result being a total[ity] ...
"[69] In a footnote to this passage, written for the 2000 edition of his book, Gray remarked that he felt "embarrassed" at his earlier assessment, adding that although the song's lyrics were flawed, "the recording itself, capturing at its absolute peak Dylan's incomparable capacity for intensity of communication, is a masterpiece if ever there was one.
Dylan, accompanied by Scarlet Rivera on violin, Rob Stoner on bass, and Howie Wyeth on drums, recorded this version at a rehearsal during the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975.
Harper Barnes of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch felt that "without apparent narcissism, [Baez] beautifully sustains 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for more than 11 minutes.
[72] The French alternative rock band Phoenix recorded a live, five-minute acoustic cover for the German magazine Musikexpress that Rolling Stone reviewer Daniel Kreps felt was true to the original despite the reduced duration.
"[84] In a radio interview with broadcaster Howard Stern in January 2012, former Pink Floyd songwriter Roger Waters said, "'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' changed my life ...
