They sound absolutely great when Baez sings them...and absolutely great when Bob does...but completely different. That's what is so cool about it. I love 'em both ways.

This song became one of Baez' anthems, and deservedly so. No recording of Bob doing it surfaced (officially, that is) until the Bootleg Series in the 90's as far as I recall.

It's a truly great piece of poetry.

Farewell Angelina The bells of the crown
Are being stolen by bandits
I must follow the sound
The triangle tingles
And the trumpets play slow
Farewell Angelina
The sky is on fire
And I must go.

There's no need for anger
There's no need for blame
There's nothing to prove
Ev'rything's still the same
Just a table standing empty
By the edge of the sea
Farewell Angelina
The sky is trembling
And I must leave.

The jacks and queens
Have forsaked the courtyard
Fifty-two gypsies
Now file past the guards
In the space where the deuce
And the ace once ran wild
Farewell Angelina
The sky is folding
I'll see you in a while.

See the cross-eyed pirates sitting
Perched in the sun
Shooting tin cans
With a sawed-off shotgun
And the neighbors they clap
And they cheer with each blast
Farewell Angelina
The sky's changing color
And I must leave fast.

King Kong, little elves
On the rooftoops they dance
Valentino-type tangos
While the make-up man's hands
Shut the eyes of the dead
Not to embarrass anyone
Farewell Angelina
The sky is embarrassed
And I must be gone.

The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it's quiet.

Absolutely gorgeous poetry, with a few unforgettable phrases... What does it mean. Well, a whole lot of things, and none of them exclusively. Dylan often writes using what I call universal images...and this song is full of them. Such images do not have one literal meaning, but link symbolically to many different levels of meaning, and take the listener to whichever level is relevant to that listener. If the listener is incapable of understanding anything other than literal meanings, they don't take him very far...

This song is about the end of something..or of many things. The complete and final end...of a dream, a relationship, a fantasy, a personal or national philosophy, an expectation, a cultural or political or economic age...you name it. It has the feeling (as do so many of Dylan's songs...of a final catastrophic collapse, an apocalypse...whether on a personal or on a larger level.

Throughout the song there are images of the sacred and the profane, in stark contrast to one another...the "bells of the crown" (sacred) are "being stolen by bandits". Does that not say something to you about society or even religion or politics? No? Okay let's try something else.

He follows the sound of what is sacred. The sound is now all that's left, but he follows it. "The sky is on fire" Sounds like an apocalypse to me...

"There's no need for anger, no need for blame" Correct. That is a great spiritual truth, and a great statement. All that was sacred and certain has fallen, and the table is now empty, and the sky is trembling (great fear in people's hearts)...but to cast anger and blame would be of absolutely no avail under such conditions.

The 3rd verse uses playing card images in a very interesting way as symbols, but it is not about playing cards in any literal sense. It is about the departure or demise of the old authority figures and the privileged few, as gypsies (the homeless, the wanderers, the castoffs of society) march through the empty courtyards where the royalty once held sway. And "the sky is folding"...the old hand has been played, found wanting, and is folding...in other words, it's over and done.

There is a lot of allusion to war and chaos in this song, and the "cross-eyed pirates" in the 4rth verse are those who thoughtlessly resort to violence and destruction, because they are too primitive to know what else to do when an old order collapses around them. The neighbours (Joe Ordinary Public?) are equally primitive...they clap and cheer as the shots are fired. (those shots could just as well be nuclear missiles as shotguns). There is much the same feeling in this song as in "Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall" although the style of delivery is gentler by far. The sky's changing colour...yeah, nuclear war can have that effect on the sky all right.

The next verse offers up a truly devastating image. King Kong and the little elves dance madly on the rooftops (open insanity in the midst of disaster), "while the makeup man's hands close the eyes of the dead, not to embarrass anyone"!!! Does that not sound like the ultimate exposure of social hypocrisy? People can die, they can die by the millions...but let's make sure no one is embarrassed...we'll put makeup on the corpses and carefully shut their eyes. Think about the 6 O'Clock News, and how it sanitizes reality for you every day, and reports what is "saleable" (for a brief time) while ignoring what is not.

But...the sky IS embarrassed. The sky is God, the sky is the eye of Truth, and the sky is not fooled.

The last scene returns to scenes of warfare, rock throwing, time bombs...(it's happening like that right now in the Middle East).

A messenger brought you all this. He did it instinctively, not be calculation. Poetry like this is not preplanned, it just happens. He gave voice to what what was not publicly spoken.

Call him any name you like, he will never deny it (cos it makes no difference what you call him anyway...). The sky is erupting, and it's time for him to leave, to go "where it's quiet".

And where is that? Maybe beyond this life. Maybe into Spirit. Maybe just to a peaceful place on this Earth...if one can be found.

And Angelina...she is Bob's eternal muse, she is the Queen of Heaven, she is every man's beloved, and every child's mother, she is whatever female archetype you could care to name. Or she is Bob's last girlfriend at the time, but to say that she is that alone would be trivial.

That's part of what the song is about, and it's about other things too. You could say it's about the end of a relationship if you want to. Do with it what you will. It works for me.

- LH