Dylanology 11 (March 2022): “Dark Eyes”

The Holy Grail of Dylan’s Musical Style

In this issue, I take a close look at “Dark Eyes”, the mysterious song from 1985’s Empire Burlesque.

I have written quite a lot in Dylanology about Dylan in the eighties: a general text about this period in vol. 5, and separate studies of “Too Late”, the Letterman performance of “Jokerman”, the soft-pop experiments on “Let’s Keep It Between Us” and “This Night Won’t Last Forever”, and of “Brownsville Girl” in vol. 10. This focus is in part caused by Springtime in New York, volume 16 of the Bootleg Series, but it also stems from a growing conviction on my part that something happened to Dylan’s music making during that decade that is more important than its role as the lost decade would indicate.

Right in the middle of this quiet revolution stands “Dark Eyes”. It is the last song on Empire Burlesque, the 1985 album that more than anything has come to represent Dylan’s failed battles against modern recording techniques and the ghastly sound preferences of the 80s.

It is an interesting song on many levels. The official story goes that Dylan and/or his producer wanted a calm, acoustic track to end the album. Dylan then went back to his hotel room and wrote this song, and recorded it the next day. Its legendary status grew as it was never played live, except for one aborted attempt in 1986, until Patti Smith chose it as the song to sing in duet with Dylan for their string of joint concerts in 1995.

The lyrics are also highly interesting; I have used them as an example of Dylan’s writing before, and I will return to them towards the end.

But for me, the musical side is the main focus of interest. Despite the short and simple character of the song, it holds keys to several essential elements of Dylan’s musical development. Incidentally, it is also an interesting case study regarding how to tab a song.

Musically

Musically speaking, Dark Eyes is probably Dylan’s most intriguing track – perhaps also one of his weirdest. This is not because it is particularly strange in itself – there are no unusual devices, no strange harmonies, on the contrary: in most respects, it is a very plain song, using only the three main chords of the key.

But some things are strange. Most immediately striking is probably the repetitive phrases, where the guitar accompaniment is played with an awkward bass, constantly off the beat, and with chord shapes that are restlessly moving up and down the neck, frequently to the same sounding chord.

Both these elements are worth a few words before we turn to the real issue here.

Heylin and the Bass Strings

I suspect that the playing on the bass strings is what lies behind what is probably the strangest item of Dylan-judging out there: Clinton Heylin’s assessment of Dylan’s guitar playing on this track. In his otherwise useful and insightful book about Dylan’s recording sessions, Dylan Behind Closed Doors: The Recording Sessions [1960-1994], Heylin starts with this very precise description of the session:

Coming after forty minutes of insistent, whomping drums and reverberating bass, any Dylan acoustic performance was gonna feel like the aural equivalent of cool water.

But then he turns to the guitar playing on the track:

Even after Dylan had written the song, the guitar part proved problematic as he repeatedly hit the wrong strings accidentally in the studio. With only three strings necessary for what is actually a rather trite melody, the other three strings were taped down, at which point Dylan finally got the song on tape (p. 161).

This is, frankly, nonsense (by far transcending in stupidity Heylin’s own stubborn insistence that Bruce Langhorne played guitar on “Don’t Think Twice”).

Only three strings needed? Uh, no, Clinton. Six.

Repeated accidental wrong strings? Uh, no, Clinton. Repeated, yes, but quite deliberate.

And stupidest of all: three strings taped down?! Uh, you don’t play guitar, do you, Clinton?