I think that songwriting, when it's really good, is not done from the conscious level of mind and memory, but from the subconscious and the superconscious. In other words, the write tunes in to sources he is not consciously aware of at all. You just surrender to the process. That's how Robbie Robertson may have done it, and that's how all those references may have crept in.

I've written stuff where I had no idea where it came from...until later. It's a mysterious process.

To put it another way...maybe God writes the song, and the singer is just the scribe and the voice that carries it.

- LH