“Before the scene started we walked down to a little lake. It was a cold fall day with a low sun in a grey sky. I was barefoot, and we stood under a tree and spoke softly, like two normal people. For a very few minutes we went back to another time, when we were nineteen years old, standing with brown leaves falling all around and snow in our hair….I knew the magic would stop when we turned around, but I didn’t mind. We walked back up the hill to do the “scene.” In front of the camera I said everything that came into my head. I asked Bob why he’d never told me about Sara, and what he thought would have happened to us if we’d gotten married way back then. He couldn’t improvise well, so I answered my own questions. I said it wouldn’t have worked out because I was too political and he lied too much, and he just stood there with his hand on the bar smiling and embarrassed because he didn’t know what else to do, though what I said was no news to him.” —Joan Baez, ‘And A Voice To Sing With,’ 1987.
thanks to O My Soul
This is a truly fascinating Bobby song and at various times when interviewed he seems to have forgotten having written it [sic] He has never sung it from what we can find and maybe he was content to find it so beautifully covered by Joan and left it to her but it is listed on the Dylan site as his so folks who think he left her to get credit for its are mistaken and yet it remains amongst my favourite Bobby songs. The bitter pangs of heartbreak pinned down forever here. Also there is much ado about varying verses and at first Joan seems to have sung it whilst it being written as it shifted and altered as the versions accrued. The version here is my favourite and notable Joan adds a verse at the very end that is not mentioned on the Bob Dylan Website in the archive of lyrics!
Seems like only yesterday
I left my mind behind
Down in the Gypsy Café
With a friend of a friend of mine
Sat with baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
A phrase in connection first with she occurred
That love is just a four letter word
Outside a rambling storefront window
Cats meowed to the break of day
Me, I kept my mouth shut,
To you I had no words to say
My experience was limited and underfed
You were talking while I hid
To the one who was the father of your kid
You probably didn’t think I did but I heard
You say that love is just a four letter word
I said goodbye unnoticed
Pushed t’wards things in my own games
Drifting in and out of lifetimes
Unmentionable by name
Searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried and failed at finding any door
I must have thought that there was nothing more
Absurd than that love is just a four letter word
Though I never knew just what you meant
When you were speaking to your man
I can only think in terms of me
And now I understand
After waking enough times to think I see
The Holy Kiss that’s supposed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke, its destiny
Falls on strangers, travels free
Yes, I know now, traps are only set by me
And I do not really need to be
Assured that love is just a four letter word
The missing verse here:
Strange it is to be beside you,
many years, the tables turned
You'd probably not believe me
if I told you all I’ve learned
and it is very, very weird indeed
to hear words like ‘forever please’
though ships run through my mind I cannot cheat
It’s like looking in the teachers face complete
I can say nothing to you but repeat what I heard
That love is just a four letter word*
*these are my version of the song's words and others disagree (including the Dylan website but hey . . . . . watch gonna do?) ;)
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