TRACK TALK #206 Where Are You Tonight?

WHERE ARE YOU TONIGHT? (JOURNEY THROUGH DARK HEAT)
ALBUM : Street Legal (1978)
Recorded : 27 Avril 1978
Released : 15 Juin 1978

Première performance live : Camberley (15 Juillet 1978)
Dernière performance live : Columbia (9 Décembre 1978)
Total : 33 fois.



Lyrics
There’s a long-distance train rolling through the rain
Tears on the letter I write
There’s a woman I long to touch and I miss her so much
But she’s drifting like a satellite

There’s a neon light ablaze in this green smoky haze
Laughter down on Elizabeth Street
And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone
Where she bathed in a stream of pure heat

Her father would emphasize you got to be more than streetwise
But he practiced what he preached from the heart
A full-blooded Cherokee, he predicted to me
The time and the place that the trouble would start

There’s a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage
And a longtime golden-haired stripper onstage
And she winds back the clock and she turns back the page
Of a book that no one can write
Oh, where are you tonight?

The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure
To live it you have to explode
In that last hour of need, we entirely agreed
Sacrifice was the code of the road

I left town at dawn, with Marcel and St. John
Strong men belittled by doubt
I couldn’t tell her what my private thoughts were
But she had some way of finding them out

He took dead-center aim but he missed just the same
She was waiting, putting flowers on the shelf
She could feel my despair as I climbed up her hair
And discovered her invisible self

There’s a lion in the road, there’s a demon escaped
There’s a million dreams gone, there’s a landscape being raped
As her beauty fades and I watch her undrape
I won’t but then again, maybe I might
Oh, if I could just find you tonight

I fought with my twin, that enemy within
’Til both of us fell by the way
Horseplay and disease is killing me by degrees
While the law looks the other way

Your partners in crime hit me up for nickels and dimes
The guy you were lovin’ couldn’t stay clean
It felt outa place, my foot in his face
But he should-a stayed where his money was green

I bit into the root of forbidden fruit
With the juice running down my leg
Then I dealt with your boss, who’d never known about loss
And who always was too proud to beg

There’s a white diamond gloom on the dark side of this room
And a pathway that leads up to the stars
If you don’t believe there’s a price for this sweet paradise
Remind me to show you the scars

There’s a new day at dawn and I’ve finally arrived
If I’m there in the morning, baby, you’ll know I’ve survived
I can’t believe it, I can’t believe I’m alive
But without you it just doesn’t seem right
Oh, where are you tonight?

Suite à un entretien avec Dylan pour le Melody Maker en 78, Robert Shelton parle de la dimension très personnelle du morceau, de ce qu'elle nous dit sur la relation de Dylan avec son public et son art.

"A close listening to many of the lyrics of "Street-Legal" reveals
a set of narrators who are oppressed, lonely, wandering and
alienated - in a foreign country.

"Where Are You Tonight?" may very well be his most direct
confessional of pain and loss. Yet at Blackbushe, he'd changed the
new song, brightened its tempo, muted the oppresive tone.

The pained lyrics hid behind the music of dark glasses, yet they
were still there. That time, the song seemed less to express
anguish than to convey that anguish had been exercised.

Recently, Dylan's been showing rare candour in stepping out from
behind another persona by introducing "Shelter From The Storm" as
"the story of my life".

The song tells of the flight of a man, who is living in a foreign
country, from toil, blood and doom. In his moment of greatest
need, the narrator finds that safe, warm shelter with a woman. Then,
he loses her. I find the desperation of that search still strong
in "Street-Legal".

I pressed Dylan to tell me more about one of his most intriguing
formulations: "No man can fight another like the man who fights
himself. Who could be a stronger enemy?"

"It's true that a man is his own worst enemy, just as he is his
own best friend. If you deal with the enemy within, then no enemy
without can stand a chance", Dylan says.

I probed dangerous territory. What is "the enemy without"? Dylan
replied tersely: "Suspicion". Could he put his finger on "the
enemy within"?

He laughed at my question. "I'll draw you a picture for the cover
of your book", he said, "with a big finger pointing to the enemy
within!" He poked his index-finger toward his heart.

"Come on, man", I pleaded. Cautiously, Bob said: "It's all in
those two verses of that last song,", directing me to "Where Are
You Tonight?".

The lines begin: "I fought with my twin, that enemy within/'til
both of us fell by whe way..." (Copyright © 1978, Big Ben Music,
Ltd.) The clue haunts me. Is "the enemy within" Dylan's Gemini
twins locked in mortal combat? Is it the id battling the ego? Is
it the death-trip threatening the life-force?

In an earlier song, there was an encounter with a different kind
of "twin". In "Simple Twist Of Fate" Dylan sang: "People tell me
it's a sin/To know and feel too much within". (Copyright © 1978,
Big Ben Music, Ltd.)

That's how we can all have our dialogue with Dylan, and he with
us. During most interviews, he has used wit and cunning to conceal
his personal emotions. Then he'll turn around and tell the whole
world about his feelings in his lyrics, if you can penetrate the
ambiguities and the codes and the shifting personas."