• Voto:
"Time out of mind" arrivò inaspettato nella sua bellezza dopo sette anni di silenzio e una prova di Dylan, con "Under the red sky", sicuramente non esaltante.
Il nuovo disco vinse tre grammy (tra cui quello come il miglior disco rock del '97) e venne apprezzato dal pubblico e dalla critica che gridò al capolavoro assoluto; addirittura il musicista inglese Elvis Costello definì "Time out of mind" come il miglior album di Dylan di sempre.
Affascinante, notturno e profondo, "Time out of mind" non è il miglior album di Dylan di sempre ma è un grande disco che può stare assieme ai grandi dischi che il menestrello di Duluth ha composto nei quaranta anni successivi a "Blonde on Blonde" (gli altri, secondo me, sono: "Blood on the tracks", "Infidels" con le outtakes e "Oh Mercy"). La voce di Dylan nel brano di apertura, Love sick, suona come se arrivasse da un altro mondo e si contrappone all’organo davvero spettrale di Auge Myers. Standing in the doorway è una delle più belle ballate di Dylan, piena di una malinconia stanca del mondo al limite della sopportazione. Tryin’ to get to heaven è una ballata pianistica con un testo personale: un tempo Dylan bussava alla porta del paradiso, adesso cerca solo di raggiungerlo prima che sia troppo tardi. Quindi si arriva al cuore del disco, Not dark yet, che è una delle più belle canzoni dell’intero repertorio dylaniano e, secondo Emmylou Harris, la più grande canzone mai scritta sul declino dell’uomo. Cold irons bound è un ringhioso blues che procurò a Dylan un grammy per la migliore performance come voce rock maschile, mentre Can’t wait è un altro blues a effetto, rallentato quasi al battito cardiaco. Il disco si chiude con l’epica straordinaria di Highlands, lunga sedici minuti, che presenta un Dylan come un commentatore fantasma rassegnato ma impenitente mentre si prepara alla fine.
Grande disco, quindi, che vede Dylan riflettere e parlare sui temi della mortalità, della solitudine e che sembra prevedere e descrivere il suo incontro con la morte che avvenne nel ’97, appena finite le registrazioni, per un’istoplasmosi.
Elenco tracce testi e samples
04 Million Miles (05:52)
You took a part of me that I really miss
I keep asking myself how long it can go on like this
You told yourself a lie; that's all right mama, I told myself one too
I'm trying to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you
You took the silver, you took the gold
You left me standing out in the cold
People ask about you; I didn't tell them everything I knew
Well I'm trying to get closer, but I'm still a million miles from you
I'm drifting in and out of dreamless sleep
Throwing all my memories in a ditch so deep
Did so many things I never did intend to do
Well I'm trying to get closer, but I'm still a million miles from you
I need your love so bad, turn your lamp down low
I need every bit of it for the places that I go
Sometimes I wonder just what it's all coming to
Well I'm tryin' to get closer, but I'm still a million miles from you
Well I don't dare close my eyes and I don't dare wink
Maybe in the next life I'll be able to hear myself think
Feel like talking to somebody but I just don't know who
Well, I'm tryin' to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you
The last thing you said before you hit the street
"Gonna find me a janitor to sweep me off my feet"
I said, "That's all right mama.... you..... you do what you gotta do"
Well, I'm tryin' to get closer; I'm still a million miles from you
Rock me, pretty baby, rock me 'til everything gets real
Rock me for a little while, rock me 'til there's nothing left to feel
And I'll rock you too
I'm tryin' to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you
Well, there's voices in the night trying to be heard
I'm sitting here listening to every mind polluting word
I know plenty of people who would put me up for a day or two
Yes, I'm tryin' to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you
11 Highlands (16:31)
Well my heart's in the Highlands gentle and fair
Honeysuckle blooming in the wildwood air
Bluebelles blazing, where the Aberdeen waters flow
Well my heart's in the Highland,
I'm gonna go there when I feel good enough to go
Windows were shakin' all night in my dreams
Everything was exactly the way that it seems
Woke up this morning and I looked at the same old page
Same ol' rat race
Life in the same ol' cage.
I don't want nothing from anyone, ain't that much to take
Wouldn't know the difference between a real blonde and a fake
Feel like a prisoner in a world of mystery
I wish someone would come
And push back the clock for me
Well my heart's in the Highlands wherever I roam
That's where I'll be when I get called home
The wind, it whispers to the buckeyed trees in rhyme
Well my heart's in the Highland,
I can only get there one step at a time.
I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always yelling turn it down
Feel like I'm drifting
Drifting from scene the scene
I'm wondering what in the devil could it all possibly mean?
Insanity is smashing up against my soul
You can say I was on anything but a roll
If I had a conscience, well I just might blow my top
What would I do with it anyway
Maybe take it to the pawn shop
My heart's in the Highlands at the break of dawn
By the beautiful lake of the Black Swan
Big white clouds, like chariots that swing down low
Well my heart's in the Highlands
Only place left to go
I'm in Boston town, in some restaurant
I got no idea what I want
Well, maybe I do but I'm just really not sure
Waitress comes over
Nobody in the place but me and her
It must be a holiday, there's nobody around
She studies me closely as I sit down
She got a pretty face and long white shiny legs
She says, "What'll it be?"
I say, "I don't know, you got any soft boiled eggs?"
She looks at me, Says "I'd bring you some
but we're out of 'm, you picked the wrong time to come"
Then she says, "I know you're an artist, draw a picture of me!"
I say, "I would if I could, but,
I don't do sketches from memory."
"Well", she says, "I'm right here in front of you, or haven't you looked?"
I say," all right, I know, but I don't have my drawing book!"
She gives me a napkin, she says, "you can do it on that"
I say, "yes I could but,
I don't know where my pencil is at!"
She pulls one out from behind her ear
She says "all right now, go ahead, draw me, I'm standing right here"
I make a few lines, and I show it for her to see
Well she takes a napkin and throws it back
And says "that don't look a thing like me!"
I said, "Oh, kind miss, it most certainly does"
She says, "you must be jokin.'" I say, "I wish I was!"
Then she says, "you don't read women authors, do you?"
Least that's what I think I hear her say,
"Well", I say, "how would you know and what would it matter anyway?"
"Well", she says, "you just don't seem like you do!"
I said, "you're way wrong."
She says, "which ones have you read then?" I say, "I read Erica Jong!"
She goes away for a minute and I slide up out of my chair
I step outside back to the busy street, but nobody's going anywhere
Well my heart's in the Highlands, with the horses and hounds
Way up in the border country, far from the towns
With the twang of the arrow and a snap of the bow
My heart's in the Highlands
Can't see any other way to go
Every day is the same thing out the door
Feel further away then ever before
Some things in life, it gets too late to learn
Well, I'm lost somewhere
I must have made a few bad turns
I see people in the park forgetting their troubles and woes
They're drinking and dancing, wearing bright colored clothes
All the young men with their young women looking so good
Well, I'd trade places with any of them
In a minute, if I could
I'm crossing the street to get away from a mangy dog
Talking to myself in a monologue
I think what I need might be a full length leather coat
Somebody just asked me
If I registered to vote
The sun is beginning to shine on me
But it's not like the sun that used to be
The party's over, and there's less and less to say
I got new eyes
Everything looks far away
Well, my heart's in the Highlands at the break of day
Over the hills and far away
There's a way to get there, and I'll figure it out somehow
But I'm already there in my mind
And that's good enough for now
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