100 Songs Read online

It’s a long way down and I don’t want to be forced

  Into a life of continual crime

  I can see for myself that the sun is sinking

  O’er the banks of the deep blue sea

  Tell me, am I wrong in thinking

  That you have forgotten me

  Now they worry and they hurry and they fuss and they fret

  They waste your nights and days

  Them, I will forget

  You, I’ll remember always

  It’s a cold black night and it’s midsummer’s eve

  And the stars are spinning around

  I still find it so hard to believe

  That someone would kick me when I’m down

  Meet me at the bottom, don’t lag behind

  Bring me my boots and shoes

  You can hang back or fight your best on the front line

  Sing a little bit of these workingman’s blues

  I’ll be back home in a month or two

  When the frost is on the vine

  I’ll punch my spear right straight through

  Half-ways down your spine

  I’ll lift up my arms to the starry skies

  And pray the fugitive’s prayer

  I’m guessing tomorrow the sun will rise

  I hope the final judgment’s fair

  The battle is over up in the hills

  And the mist is closing in

  Look at me, with all of my spoils

  What did I ever win?

  Gotta brand new suit and a brand new wife

  I can live on rice and beans

  Some people never worked a day in their life

  They don’t know what work even means

  Meet me at the bottom, don’t lag behind

  Bring me my boots and shoes

  You can hang back or fight your best on the front line

  Sing a little bit of these workingman’s blues

  AIN’T TALKIN’

  As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden

  The wounded flowers were dangling from the vines

  I was passing by yon cool and crystal fountain

  Someone hit me from behind

  Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

  Through this weary world of woe

  Heart burnin’, still yearnin’

  No one on earth would ever know

  They say prayer has the power to help

  So pray for me mother

  In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell

  I’m trying to love my neighbor and do good unto others

  But oh, mother, things ain’t going well

  Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

  I’ll burn that bridge before you can cross

  Heart burnin’, still yearnin’

  They’ll be no mercy for you once you’ve lost

  Now I’m all worn down by weepin’

  My eyes are filled with tears, my lips are dry

  If I catch my opponents ever sleepin’

  I’ll just slaughter them where they lie

  Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

  Through a world mysterious and vague

  Heart burnin’, still yearnin’

  Walking through the cities of the plague

  The whole world is filled with speculation

  The whole wide world which people say is round

  They will tear your mind away from contemplation

  They will jump on your misfortune when you’re down

  Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

  Eatin’ hog-eyed grease in hog-eyed town

  Heart burnin’, still yearnin’

  Someday you’ll be glad to have me around

  They will crush you with wealth and power

  Every waking moment you could crack

  I’ll make the most of one last extra hour

  I’ll avenge my father’s death then I’ll step back

  Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

  Hand me down my walkin’ cane

  Heart burnin’, still yearnin’

  Got to get you out of my miserable brain

  It’s bright in the heavens and the wheels are flying

  Fame and honor never seem to fade

  The fire’s gone out but the light is never dying

  Who says I can’t get heavenly aid?

  Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

  Carrying a dead man’s shield

  Heart burnin’, still yearnin’

  Walkin’ with a toothache in my heel

  The suffering is unending

  Every nook and cranny has its tears

  I’m not playing, I’m not pretending

  I’m not nursing any superfluous fears

  Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

  Walkin’ ever since the other night

  Heart burnin’, still yearnin’

  Walkin’ ’til I’m clean out of sight

  As I walked out in the mystic garden

  On a hot summer day, hot summer lawn

  Excuse me, ma’am, I beg your pardon

  There’s no one here, the gardener is gone

  Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

  Up the road around the bend

  Heart burnin’, still yearnin’

  In the last outback, at the world’s end

  BEYOND HERE LIES NOTHIN’

  (with Robert Hunter)

  I love you pretty baby

  You’re the only love I’ve ever known

  Just as long as you stay with me

  The whole world is my throne

  Beyond here lies nothin’

  Nothin’ we can call our own

  I’m movin’ after midnight

  Down boulevards of broken cars

  Don’t know what I’d do without it

  Without this love that we call ours

  Beyond here lies nothin’

  Nothin’ but the moon and stars

  Down every street there’s a window

  And every window made of glass

  We’ll keep on lovin’ pretty baby

  For as long as love will last

  Beyond here lies nothin’

  But the mountains of the past

  My ship is in the harbor

  And the sails are spread

  Listen to me pretty baby

  Lay your hand upon my head

  Beyond here lies nothin’

  Nothin’ done and nothin’ said

  THIS DREAM OF YOU

  How long can I stay in this nowhere café

  ’Fore night turns into day

  I wonder why I’m so frightened of dawn

  All I have and all I know

  Is this dream of you

  Which keeps me living on

  There’s a moment when all old things

  Become new again

  But that moment might have been here and gone

  All I have and all I know

  Is this dream of you

  Which keeps me living on

  I look away, but I keep seeing it

  I don’t want to believe, but I keep believing it

  Shadows dance upon the wall

  Shadows that seem to know it all

  Am I too blind to see?

  Is my heart playing tricks on me?

  Too late to stop now even though all my friends are gone

  All I have and all I know

  Is this dream of you

  Which keeps me living on

  Everything I touch seems to disappear

  Everywhere I turn you are always here

  I’ll run this race until my earthly death

  I’ll defend this place with my dying breath

  From a cheerless room in a curtained gloom

  I saw a star from heaven fall

  I turned and looked again but it was gone

  All I have and all I know

  Is this dream of you

  Which keeps me living on

  LONG AND WASTED YEARS

  It’s been such a lon
g, long time

  Since we loved each other and our hearts were true

  One time, for one brief day

  I was the man for you

  Last night I heard you talking in your sleep

  Saying things you shouldn’t say

  Oh, baby

  You just might have to go to jail some day

  Is there a place we can go?

  Is there anybody we can see?

  Maybe what’s right for you

  Isn’t really right for me

  I ain’t seen my family in twenty years

  That ain’t easy to understand

  They may be dead by now

  I lost track of them after they lost their land

  Shake it up baby, twist and shout

  You tell me what it’s all about

  What you doing out in the sun anyway?

  Don’t you know the sun can burn your brains right out?

  My enemy slammed into the earth

  I don’t know what he was worth

  But he lost it all, everything and more

  What a blithering fool he took me for

  I wear dark glasses to cover my eyes

  There’re secrets in them I can’t disguise

  Come back, baby

  If I hurt your feelings, I apologize

  Two trains running side by side

  Forty miles wide down the Eastern line

  You don’t have to go, I just came to you

  Because you’re a friend of mine

  I think when my back was turned

  The whole world behind me burned

  Maybe today, if not today, maybe tomorrow

  Maybe there’ll be a limit on all my sorrow

  We cried on a cold and frosty morn’

  We cried because our souls were torn

  So much for tears

  So much for those long and wasted years

  PAY IN BLOOD

  Well I’m grinding my life away, steady and sure

  Nothing more wretched than what I must endure

  I’m drenched in the light that shines from the sun

  I could stone you to death for the wrongs that you done

  Sooner or later you’ll make a mistake

  I’ll put you in a chain that you never can break

  Legs and arms and body and bone

  I pay in blood, but not my own

  Night after night, day after day

  They strip your useless hopes away

  The more I take, the more I give

  The more I die, the more I live

  I got something in my pocket make your eyeballs swim

  I got dogs that could tear you limb to limb

  I’m circling around in the southern zone

  I pay in blood, but not my own

  Another politician pumping out his piss

  Another ragged beggar blowin’ ya a kiss

  Life is short and it don’t last long

  They’ll hang you in the morning and sing ya a song

  Someone must have slipped a drug in your wine

  You gulped it down and you lost your mind

  My head so hard, it must be made of stone

  I pay in blood, but not my own

  How I made it back home nobody knows

  Or how I survived so many blows

  I been through hell, what good did it do?

  My conscience is clear, what about you?

  I’ll give you justice, I’ll fatten your purse

  Show me your moral virtues first

  Hear me holler, hear me moan

  I pay in blood but not my own

  You bit your lover in the bed

  Come here I’ll break your lousy head

  Our nation must be saved and freed

  You been accused of murder, how do you plead?

  This is how I spend my days

  I came to bury not to praise

  I’ll drink my fill and sleep alone

  I pay in blood, but not my own

  SCARLET TOWN

  In Scarlet Town where I was born

  There’s ivy leaf and silver thorn

  The streets have names you can’t pronounce

  Gold is down to a quarter of an ounce

  The music starts and the people sway

  Everybody says, are you going my way?

  Uncle Tom still working for Uncle Bill

  Scarlet Town is under the hill

  Scarlet Town in the month of May

  Sweet William on his deathbed lay

  Mistress Mary by the side of the bed

  Kissing his face, heaping prayers on his head

  So brave, so true, so gentle is he

  I’ll weep for him as he’d weep for me

  Little Boy Blue come blow your horn

  In Scarlet Town where I was born

  Scarlet Town in the hot noon hours

  There’s palm leaf shadows and scattered flowers

  Beggars crouching at the gate

  Help comes but it comes too late

  On marble slabs and in fields of stone

  You make your humble wishes known

  I touched the garment but the hem was torn

  In Scarlet Town where I was born

  In Scarlet Town the end is near

  The seven wonders of the world are here

  The evil and the good living side by side

  All human forms seem glorified

  Put your heart on a platter and see who’ll bite

  See who’ll hold you and kiss you good night

  There’s walnut groves and maple wood

  In Scarlet Town crying won’t do you no good

  In Scarlet Town you fight your father’s foes

  Up on the hill a chilly wind blows

  You fight ’em on high and you fight ’em down in

  You fight ’em with whisky, morphine and gin

  You got legs that can drive men mad

  A lot of things we didn’t do that I wish we had

  In Scarlet Town the sky is clear

  You’ll wish to God that you stayed right here

  Set ’em up Joe, play Walking The Floor

  Play it for my flat chested junkie whore

  I’m staying up late and I’m making amends

  While the smile of heaven descends

  If love is a sin then beauty is a crime

  All things are beautiful in their time

  The black and the white, the yellow and the brown

  It’s all right there for ya in Scarlet Town

  EARLY ROMAN KINGS

  All the early Roman Kings in their sharkskin suits

  Bowties and buttons, high top boots

  Driving the spikes in, blazing the rails

  Nailed in their coffins in top hats and tails

  Fly away little bird, fly away, flap your wings

  Fly by night like the early Roman Kings

  All the early Roman Kings in the early, early morn’

  Coming down the mountain, distributing the corn

  Speeding through the forest, racing down the track

  You try to get away, they drag you back

  Tomorrow is Friday, we’ll see what it brings

  Everybody’s talking ’bout the early Roman Kings

  They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers, they buy and they sell

  They destroyed your city, they’ll destroy you as well

  They’re lecherous and treacherous, hell bent for leather

  Each of them bigger than all men put together

  Sluggers and muggers wearing fancy gold rings

  All the women going crazy for the early Roman Kings

  I’ll dress up your wounds with a blood clotted rag

  I ain’t afraid to make love to a bitch or a hag

  If you see me coming and you’re standing there

  Wave your handkerchief in the air

  I ain’t dead yet, my bell still rings

  I keep my fingers crossed like the early Roman Kings

  I’ll
strip you of life, strip you of breath

  Ship you down to the house of death

  One day you will ask for me

  There’ll be no one else that you’ll want to see

  Bring down my fiddle, tune up my strings

  Gonna break it wide open like the early Roman Kings

  I was up on black mountain the day Detroit fell

  They killed them all off and they sent them to hell

  Ding Dong Daddy, you’re coming up short

  Gonna put you on trial in a Sicilian court

  I’ve had my fun, I’ve had my flings

  Gonna shake ’em all down like the early Roman Kings

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOB DYLAN has released thirty-eight studio albums, which collectively have sold over 120 million copies around the world. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor, a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. His memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, spent a year on the New York Times bestseller list.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Bob-Dylan

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  INDEX OF PUBLISHERS AND COPYRIGHT DATES

  AIN’T TALKIN’ Copyright © 2006 by Special Rider Music

  ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER Copyright © 1968 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1996 by Dwarf Music

  BALLAD OF A THIN MAN Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

  BALLAD OF HOLLIS BROWN Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

  BEYOND HERE LIES NOTHIN’ (with Robert Hunter) Copyright © 2009 by Special Rider Music and Ice Nine Publishing

  BILLY Copyright © 1972 by Ram’s Horn Music; renewed 2000 by Ram’s Horn Music

  BLIND WILLIE McTELL Copyright © 1983 by Special Rider Music

  BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND Copyright © 1962 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1990 by Special Rider Music

  BOB DYLAN’S 115th DREAM Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music