Bob Dylan / 16:32
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Daniel Lanois: guitar
Augie Meyers: organ
Jim Dickinson: keyboards
Tony Garnier: bass
Tony Mangurian: percussion, drums (?)
Recording Studio
Criteria Recording Studios, Miami: January 1997
Technical Team
Producer: Daniel Lanois (in association with Jack Frost Productions)
Sound Engineer: Mark Howard
The lyrics of “Highlands” were inspired by “My Heart’s in the Highlands” by Robert Burns, an eighteenth-century Scottish poet who was famous for, among other things, having collected the folk songs of his homeland. Dylan adapted and rewrote the text. Like Burns’s poem, Dylan’s song is about death, specifically about what comes after death. The narrator’s soul seems to wander in a kind of void as if carried by a mysterious wind: “The wind, it whispers to the buckeyed trees in rhyme.” Dylan sings, “Every day is the same thing out the door.” Which door is it? The door of freedom from “a world of mystery”? In this case, the “highlands” could be the symbol of the Garden of Eden from Genesis.
The closing track of the album, “Highlands” is the longest song recorded by Dylan to date. Robert Burns might have been the inspiration for his long poem, but the guitar riff was borrowed from the father of the Delta blues, Charley Patton. In 1997, Dylan told Robert Hillburn, “I had the guitar run off an old Charley Patton record for years and always wanted to do something with that… with that sound in my mind and the dichotomy of the highlands with that seemed to be a path worth pursuing.”20 The sixteen-minute-long song is a standard twelve-bar blues. The two main guitars are played by Dylan and Lanois; Garnier is on bass, Meyers on organ, Dickinson on Wurlitzer, and Mangurian on drums. The song is carried by itself. It is actually a sixteen-minute loop. “Highlands” is probably the least surprising title on the album. Lanois did create long loops during the preproduction in New York City, as he said, “Those long blues numbers have those preparations in their spine.”150 But the instrumental parts only support the text and do not develop them. Thus the music creates an hypnotic effect, allowing the songwriter to easily superimpose his vocal part.