"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. First released as the final track on Dylan's seventh studio album, Blonde on Blonde (1966), the song lasts 11 minutes and 23 seconds, and occupies the entire fourth side of the double album. The song was written by Dylan and produced by Bob Johnston. The recording session began at 6 pm on February 15, 1966, at Columbia Studio A, Nashville, Tennessee, but Dylan worked on the lyrics for several hours while the experienced Nashville session musicians hired to accompany him stood by. Four takes were recorded in the early hours of February 16; the final recording was released on Blonde on Blonde. The music is a waltz in time.
Some writers have concluded that the song refers to Joan Baez, although most agree that it was composed for Dylan's wife Sara Lownds. Dylan refers to writing the song for his wife in his track "Sara" (1975). Commentators have pointed to literary allusions in "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" which include William Blake's 1794 poem "The Tyger", Algernon Swinburne's 1866 poem "Dolores", and verses of the Bible.
Dylan's lyrics polarized critics. On its release, several reviewers found them impenetrable, but rated the song favorably. Later writers often agree with this, praising the sound, dismissing the lyrics, and rating the song as amongst Dylan's best work.
Dylan has never performed the song in concert. It has been covered by a variety of artists, including Baez, on Any Day Now (1968), and Richie Havens, on Mixed Bag II (1974). Dylan's version has been cited as an influence by the former Pink Floyd bassist and songwriter Roger Waters, and George Harrison wrote that the track influenced aspects of the Beatles song "Long, Long, Long".
Background and recording
Bob Dylan began to record his seventh studio album, Blonde on Blonde, in New York in October 1965. Frustrated by slow progress in the studio, Dylan agreed to the suggestion of his producer Bob Johnston and moved to Columbia Studio A on Music Row, Nashville, Tennessee, in February 1966. Bringing with him Robbie Robertson on guitar and Al Kooper on keyboard, Dylan commenced recording with experienced Nashville session players.
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. Dylan's biographer Clinton Heylin described Dylan writing the song across three recording sessions that had been booked; guitarist Charlie McCoy later recalled that it was unprecedented for him and the other musicians to be booked and paid for their time but not play. Finally, at 4 am, Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians attempted his composition, "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Drummer Kenny Buttrey recalled that after the second chorus, "everybody's just peaking it up 'cause we thought, Man, this is it... This is gonna be the last chorus and we've gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse", meaning that the group had to revert to a less intense style. Several minutes later into the song, Buttrey said he was thinking, "... we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?"
Four takes of the song were recorded, three of which were complete. The first-take version lasted 10 minutes and seven seconds. After an incomplete take two, used to familiarise the musicians with the intended tempo, the third take was just over 12 minutes long. The fourth take clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the double album. 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". He regards the other lyrical changes between different takes as minor. Daryl Sanders, author of a 2020 book about the making of Blonde on Blonde, remarks that several people present at the studio "have remembered recording 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' in one take, and that has become part of the mythology surrounding the song".
The song was released on Blonde on Blonde on June 20, 1966. The recording session was released in its entirety on the 18-disc Collector's Edition of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 in 2015, with the first take of the song also appearing on the six-disc version of that album.
When Dylan played the song to his biographer Robert Shelton, shortly after recording it, he claimed it was the best song that he had ever composed. 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". Siegel described Dylan as excited by his own track. 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... I just started writing and I couldn't stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning."
The music is a waltz in time. The music critic Alex Ross wrote that the refrain [is] a rising and descending arc, made up of successive notes in D-major. Both the song and the album contain musical and thematic influences from country music. The music scholar Keith Negus wrote that the "timbre of the vocals, the texture of the instruments, [and] the ballad style" on the album are reminiscent of country music, particularly on "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", "Visions of Johanna" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". Negus describes the song's structure as five cycles each of two verses followed by a chorus, with "musical components that... can be represented as [a a b a a b c c d e e]".
Each verse consists of a list of the sad-eyed lady's attributes, complemented by a sequence of rhetorical questions about the Lady which are never answered within the song. Thus, the first verse begins:
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."
Critical comments Subject Critics generally agreed that Dylan wrote "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" about his wife, Sara, and some have remarked on the similarity of "Lowlands" to "Lownds", Sara's previous surname. Shelton wrote that "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" was a "wedding song" for Sara Lownds, whom Dylan had married on November 22, 1965, only three months prior to recording the song. Heard by some listeners as a hymn to an other-worldly woman, for Shelton "her travails seem beyond endurance, yet she radiates an inner strength, an ability to be re-born. This is Dylan at his most romantic." Sara's maiden name was Shirley Noznisky; her father, Isaac Noznisky, was a scrap metal dealer in Wilmington, Delaware. Critics have suggested a link between "sheet metal memories of Cannery Row" and the business of Sara's father, as well as the quote "with your sheets like metal and your belts like lace". Similarly the line "your magazine husband who one day just had to go" could be a reference to Sara's first husband, the magazine photographer Hans Lownds.
In "Sara", a song Dylan wrote and recorded in 1975, he gave another account of the origin of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", singing:
The couple had lived in the Chelsea Hotel in 1965. In his 2009 book Bob Dylan in America, historian Sean Wilentz comments that "Sara" appears to be an insincere attempt at reconciliation after the couple had split, with the lines from the later song giving the impression that Dylan "thought he was handing her some kind of trophy, by telling the whole world that she alone was the muse behind his masterpiece". Lester Bangs provided a hostile critique of the recording in his review of Dylan's 1976 album Desire. 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."
According to The Band's guitarist Robbie Robertson, the lyric "Arabian drums" originated as an inside joke after Dylan had gifted Sara a pair of "Arabian goggles" the night before. The line was adapted into the song using the band's slang term "drums" to bypass potential record label censorship.
Joan Baez has sometimes been suggested as the song's subject; Baez herself thought that the song was about her; since 1959 she had included a song called "Lowlands" in her repertoire, and her version was included on the album Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square (1959). The Canadian poet Stephen Scobie argues that this potential link contributes to a case for the song being about Baez, but concludes that it is not possible to be sure about who Dylan refers to in the song.
Literary allusions 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.
The literary critic Christopher Ricks compares both the imagery and the meter of "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" to a poem by Algernon Swinburne, "Dolores", published in 1866. Ricks describes Swinburne's poem as an "anti-prayer to his anti-madonna, an interrogation that hears no need why it should ever end". Ricks writes that "Dolores moves... 'To a tune that enthralls and entices', as does 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands'." Ricks makes the point that "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" lists attributes in the same way that "Dolores" does. Ricks describes the way in which Dylan's song attributes so many objects and qualities to the sad-eyed lady as "part inventory, part arsenal, these returns of phrases are bound by awe of her and by suspicion of her".
Throughout his career, Dylan has referenced biblical language, imagery and characters in his songs. The mention of "kings of Tyrus" suggests to Scobie and Ricks that the Book of Ezekiel is alluded to. Scobie argues that Ezekiel is associated with denouncing Tyrus more than other prophets are, and Ricks considers that based on a selection of verses, Ezekiel must be the "sad-eyed prophet", particularly as he is unable to cry. : "Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy."