Bob Dylan / 2:50
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Bruce Langhorne: guitar
Al Gorgoni: guitar
Kenny Rankin: guitar
John Hammond Jr.: guitar (?)
Joseph Macho Jr.: bass (?)
William E. Lee: bass (?)
Bobby Gregg: drums, tambourine
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: January 13 and 14, 1965
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: Roy Halee and Pete Dauria
“Love Minus Zero, No Limit” is the second love song on Dylan’s fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home. The literary references are varied. Dylan uses the languid atmosphere of the poem “The Sick Rose” by William Blake, the “thing of evil” that follows the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s narrative poem “The Raven” on his slow descent into madness, and the biblical book of Daniel with its reference to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II’s statue built of precious metals, which is destroyed by a single stone. This song, especially the lyrics, confirms the psychedelic turn taken by Dylan. “The bridge at midnight trembles / The country doctor rambles / Bankers’ nieces seek perfection / Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring.” Robert Hilburn from the Los Angeles Times highlights the ease with which Dylan produces punchy aphorisms such as, “She knows there’s no success like failure / And that failure’s no success at all.” The singer said in 2004, “I didn’t invent this, you know… Robert Johnson would sing some song and out of nowhere there would be some kind of Confucius saying that would make you go, ‘Wow, where did that come from?’”20
“Love Minus Zero, No Limit” is a poetic evocation of a loved one, or, to be more precise, the fragility of love as the last stanza reveals: “My love she’s like some raven / At my window with a broken wing.”
Who is this woman he’s singing about, “My love she speaks like silence / Without ideals or violence”? Sara, Dylan’s future wife, for sure. She was sensitive to Eastern philosophies and Zen, while Dylan himself discovered the I Ching and Buddhism under the influence of Allen Ginsberg. When Dylan met Sara, she lived with her daughter (Maria) in a room at the Chelsea Hotel, a hotel famous for the number of artists who lived there, among them Jack Kerouac and Dylan Thomas. The songwriter moved into Room 221 in early 1965 and wrote some of his finest songs there. While living in the hotel, Bob and Sara decided to get married. The wedding ceremony took place on November 22, 1965, in Mineola, Long Island.
Once again, it is ironic that Dylan did not hesitate, consciously or unconsciously, to find sources of inspiration in Musicians some of his own melodies when writing others. This is the case for “Love Minus Zero, No Limit,” which is close to “If Not for You,” released on his album New Morning in 1970. The similarity between the two songs is apparent, without one being a copy of the other. Dylan apparently loves this kind of coincidence.
The original working title of the song “Love Minus Zero, No Limit” was “Dime Store,” which originates in a reference in the first line of the second stanza, “In the dime stores and bus stations.” At the first recording session on January 13, Dylan worked alone on this title, playing acoustic guitar. The following day he resumed recording with his band and began the second session with “Love Minus Zero, No Limit.” As usual, he played acoustic guitar and harmonica (A) and his vocal had a light delay “slap back” effect. Bruce Langhorne played guitar solo, and Kenny Rankin and Al Gorgoni provided other guitar parts, one responding harmonically to Langhorne’s performance and the other adding rhythm with a clearly pronounced vibrato. Joe Macho Jr. probably played bass with a pick, with Bobby Gregg on drums and tambourine. The group made two recordings of the song, but it seems that an insert was recorded after the second take and added at 2:38 at the end of the last verse, causing a harmonic anomaly. Thus completed, the second take was used as the master tape.
Bob Dylan performed “Love Minus Zero, No Limit” for the first time on February 12, 1965, in concert at the Armory in Troy, New York, but it only became a repertory standard after the Rolling Thunder Revue tours of 1975 and 1976.