Many have pointed to Isaiah 21:5–9 as a likely source of the imagery in verse three: “Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink arise, ye princes, and anoint the shield” (verse 5). In this case, from a hilltop outside Jerusalem, where the crosses stand, to the city walls, where watch is kept.
#Joker and thief movie#
An interesting idea, but if one sticks with the original order, it reminds me of a transition in a movie when the camera sweeps from a close-up of two in dialogue to a wider nearby scene. By beginning with the final verse, they take the approaching two riders as the joker and the thief. Some suggest that the song makes more sense if one changes the order of the verses (shuffles the cards, one might say). Since he reminds me of Jesus, the joker’s lament over businessmen who “drink my wine” and plowmen who “dig my earth” (to plant grain?) suggests to me the Eucharist, instituted to commemorate Christ’s death.
Wherever he showed up, he often turned old certainties on their head. In a similar way, the Gospels show us that Jesus-although fully human-wasn’t really from here.
When it’s added to a game anyway, that changes the rules. What could Jesus and the joker have in common, beyond both beginning with J? A joker is delivered with every pack of playing cards, but doesn’t really belong to the deck. Unlike the accounts in the Gospels, however, here it is the joker who seems at a loss, while the thief is composed. The crucifixion was the ultimate seemingly inextricable situation. Literally, the “crux” of the matter.įor I am reminded of the conversation between Jesus and one of the thieves crucified by his side. Taken on its own, this seems more like the first minute of a film, before the opening credits roll, than the final verse of a song.ĭylan’s songs, like most good poetry, invite many different readings, and what follows lays no claim to be the definitive reading that unlocks what the song “means.” But whenever I hear the song, it evokes for me a scene that is, for believers, the most important event in history-the one on which all of human destiny turns. The scene ends with two riders approaching and a wind beginning to howl. There may indeed be no escape but there is freedom nonetheless in taking life seriously (“there are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke”) and redeeming the late hour by speaking truthfully.Īfter a harmonica break, the song seemingly shifts to a different scene, with a different set of characters: princes, women, and foot servants. The joker complains of their situation, one with no exit. The first two verses record a conversation between two figures: a joker and a thief. The song has three four-line verses and no refrain or chorus. The most famous track is “All Along the Watchtower.” Jimi Hendrix began working on his own version the moment he first heard Dylan’s recording, and it became his best-selling single. Only with time and repeated listening could many listeners detect the interconnections between individual songs, the overarching themes that emerged, and the moral seriousness, even spirituality, they conveyed. Major record labels timed new releases by their major artists for that season, and this LP would have been a marketer’s dream: the return to the studio after eighteen months of silence of Bob Dylan.Īlthough the foggy imagery was gone, what seemed on first hearing implicitly clear mystified on the second. Exhibit A: Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It seemed not only a turnabout from Dylan’s own previous work, but from all the intricate psychedelia that had come out since. And in place of a thicket of sound, we hear a voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica, subtly supplemented by drums, bass guitar, and (on the final two tracks) steel guitar. After the dense verbal swirl of Blonde’s lengthy songs, these were brief and understated. Both lyrically and musically, the album stood in stark contrast to his previous release, Blonde on Blonde. The LP, John Wesley Harding, confounded those who’d followed Dylan before this. The timing and lack of fanfare seemed a conscious counterpoint to the shopping frenzy that precede Christmas. An unusual LP appeared in stores just after Christmas 1967.
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