Nashville Skyline - Songs

Songs

Unlike other country-rock excursions, like The Byrds' landmark Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Nashville Skyline was rooted far more in modern country than in rural folk music. By 1969, the country music establishment was following popular trends, moving away from its roots and closer to mainstream pop. Nashville Skyline was a reflection of this, complete with a number of clichés associated with the genre.

The album begins with a new version of "Girl from the North Country", Dylan's duet with Johnny Cash. A close friend of Dylan's since their meeting at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, Cash also wrote the Grammy-winning album notes for the album. One verse ("Many times I've often prayed/In the darkness of my night") is also deleted in this performance.

"Peggy Day", "Country Pie", and "Nashville Skyline Rag" are perhaps the humblest recordings on Nashville Skyline. Upbeat and uptempo, lyrically they have little ambition ("Nashville Skyline Rag" is actually an instrumental), but the recordings center on the performances, not the words. This became more apparent many years later when Dylan used "Country Pie" as a live, improvisational showcase in the early 2000s.

"'Tell Me That It Isn't True' is the voice of a suspicious man who promises himself he'll take his woman's word for her fidelity, all the time denying the 'rumors all over town' that she's 'been seen with some other man,'" writes music critic Tim Riley. "Dylan gives it a forced sincerity of someone who can't help deceiving himself, and the song catches a quiet terror."

"Lay Lady Lay" turned out to be one of Dylan's biggest pop hits, reaching #7 in the US, and giving him his biggest single in three years. "Lay Lady Lay" was originally written for the film Midnight Cowboy, but Dylan did not deliver it in time for it to be included in the score. He was initially reluctant to authorize the single's release, but eventually approved at the insistence of Columbia president Clive Davis.

"Sometimes... I go to the artist and say, 'What do you hear on the drums?' Because sometimes when people write songs they can hear it completed, they hear everything they think's gonna be on it", says drummer Ken Buttrey. "I went over to Dylan and said, 'I'm having a little trouble thinking of something to play. Do you have any ideas on ?'... He said, 'Bongos'... I immediately disregarded that, I couldn't hear bongos in this thing at all... So I walked into the control room and said, 'Bob, what do you hear as regards drums on this thing?'... said, 'Cowbells.'... Kris Kristofferson was working at Columbia Studios at the time as a janitor and he had just emptied my ashtray at the drums and I said, 'Kris, do me a favor, here, hold these two things... hold these bongos in one hand and the cowbells in the other,' and I swung this mike over to the cowbells and the bongos... I had no pattern or anything worked out. I just told Kris, 'This is one of those spite deals. I'm gonna show 'em how bad their ideas're gonna sound.'... We started playing the tune and I was just doodling around on these bongos and the cowbells and it was kinda working out pretty cool... Come chorus time I'd go to the set of drums. Next time you hear that, listen how far off-mike the drums sound. There were no mikes on the drums, it was just leakage... But it worked out pretty good... To this day it's one of the best drum patterns I ever came up with."

"I Threw It All Away" was another hit single for Nashville Skyline. Riley describes it as "a glimmer of honesty from a person who has taken love for granted, squandered its rewards, and lived to sing about it." ("Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand/And rivers that ran through ev'ry day/I must have been mad/I never knew what I had/Until I threw it all away.")

"Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You" is "perhaps the best song of the sessions", writes Clinton Heylin, "a fine cousin to John Wesley Harding's 'I'll Be Your Baby Tonight.'" Both songs closed their respective albums on a relaxed, romantic note with a hint of sexual longing. Dylan actually wrote "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You" in February 1969 at a Ramada Inn on one of the motel's notepads. The third and final single from Nashville Skyline, like the previous two singles, it would also be a hit.