"Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)" is a minor-key ballad written and performed by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and released as the sixth track (or the second song on Side 2 of the vinyl) of his 18th studio album Street-Legal (1978).
Apparently, the story told in the concerts started off fairly simply and gradually expanded adding the notion that when Dylan finally did want to talk to the man, he had gone".
[3] Rolling Stone quoted Dylan as describing the man on the train as "150 years old… Both his eyes were burning, and there was smoke coming out of his nostrils".
[4] Another time, Dylan introduced the song by saying it had been inspired by actor Harry Dean Stanton with whom he had starred in Sam Peckinpah's 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
[5] Finally, in an interview accompanying the Biograph booklet, Dylan said it was "about the aftermath of when two people who were leaning on each other because neither one of them had the guts to stand up alone, all of a sudden they break apart".
In an article accompanying the list, critic Justin Cober-Lake calls it "the highlight" of Street-Legal and praises it for the way it blends "mythic language" with "concrete detail".
The horns pick up again to lead us out of the wilderness without letting us forget the desolation, the band ending an apocalyptic vision with a strange (but fitting) decrescendo".
The Jerry Garcia Band's cover of the song is prominently featured in Larry Charles' 2003 film Masked and Anonymous, which Dylan co-wrote and starred in.