Bob Dylan Thought He Got ‘Carried Away’ When Writing This Lengthy Song

Bob Dylan isn’t a singer who has written many top-10 charting singles. He’s never concerned himself with writing pop hits, but he also releases songs often longer than most hit singles. However, even Bob Dylan thought he got carried away when he wrote this song that lasted more than 10 minutes. 

Bob Dylan thinks he got ‘carried away’ when he wrote ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’

“Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” was the final track of Dylan’s 1966 album Blonde on Blonde, and it took up the entire fourth side of the album. It’s an overwhelming song that lasts around 11 minutes and 23 seconds. In Dylan’s 1976 song, “Sara”, he confirmed this track was written for his first wife, Sara Dylan. 

Dylan has had mixed feelings toward the song throughout his career. At one point, he believed it was the “best song” he’d ever written. However, in 1969, Dylan told Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner that he had gotten “carried away” when he created this song. 

“It started out as just a little thing,” he said. “But I got carried away somewhere along the line. I just sat down at a table and started writing. At the session itself. And I just got carried away with the whole thing . . . I just started writing and I couldn’t stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning.”

Dylan recorded the track in one take

The origin of this track was very impromptu. In the book Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan 1957-1973, author Clinton Heylin writes that the track was written in 8 hours during a recording session. Musicians were waiting for Dylan to finish, and, finally, at four am, Dylan called them in to record the track. 

Drummer Kenny Buttrey said they followed Bob Dylan’s lead but had no idea that the “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” would be an 11-minute song. 

“If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody’s just peaking it up ’cause we thought, Man, this is it … This is gonna be the last chorus, and we’ve gotta put everything into it we can,” the drummer recalled. “And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse, and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel …After about ten minutes of this thing we’re cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?”

After the recording ended, Dylan informed the band they had nailed it after the first take. Upon its release, the song received mixed responses from critics and audiences, as some found the track too ambitious for its own good. However, it did have several fans, including George Harrison, who once said the chords from “Sad Eyed Lady” inspired The Beatles’ “Long Long Long,” a track he wrote for The White Album.