Interesting fact: Dylan hasn't played this song live since 1978. He has only played it a total of 68 times while touring from July to December of 1978. It is amazing that this footage even exists for such a rare song. Thanks for sharing!
@@tomc2681 Can't go wrong with any of them, and fantastic versions of each exist. If you haven't yet look up "movie 204" and you'll find a version of Like a Woman, by a youtuber named hollis1960 with a very special guest guitarist.
Dude this song is SO GOOD I’m surprised that even some die hard Dylan fans don’t know this one, but Street-Legal wasn’t one of his most notable albums. Such vivid imagery and storytelling though.
Just look at how Bob hops across the stage w/ his guitar, in his glitter suit, and acts all in control-- and then, he just puts it down,-- no change discernable in the music-- He cracks himself up at his own performance-- and then he just turns around, walks off stage-- Bob is in charge-- but NOTHING ever stops Bob from laughing about himself... I do love that about the guy :)
When I listen to this live version I cannot stop from crying. This song takes out of me all suffering and contradiction inside of me giving me a hope one day I will succeed thanks to the Queen of Spades.
What matters with a Dylan song is its 'feel' in performance and its impact on the listener. What is it that stays in the mind after we listen and bear witness? The 'feel' here is astonishing. Complex lyrical images, at once dense and elliptical, are driven home with enormous power and speed by a crack band whose musicianship underpins Dylan's startling vocal command. This combination and its serendipity drives the narrative. On the page, in part of this song, Dylan addresses apocalyptic and end of times concerns. In this performance, it is these concerns that are placed front and centre. Whilst a sense of foreboding about what is to come has often been embedded in Dylan's songs, this has rarely been revealed in performance as powerfully as it is here where Dylan tells us we must look to ourselves: ..."your hearts must have the courage of the changing of the guards".
I've always seen this song as an exquisite "fuck you" from Dylan to the music industry. >16 years, 16 banners united over the fields Street Legal (1978) was his 16th studio album and came out 16 years after his first. I believe the "I've moved your mountains and marked your cards" to be Bob telling the music business that he's performed their protest songs and made their hits and will now be doing as he pleases. Either way, a fantastic and ambiguous song with great imagery.
Oh yeah , it’s one of my all time favourites , especially the studio version it’s such an amazing piece of work you just go with it , and play it again and again .
I still have Bob Dylan's first album. Yes I am that old but I still listen and absolutely loved him with Traveling Wilburys everybody can say what they want or think what they want but it was our generation that brought it all out
I saw him three nights earlier in Columbia, SC. He did thee same encore and it looked and sounded just the way I remember it on 2/9/78. One of the best concerts I ever saw.
Songs from Street Legal & this tour my fave!! First witnessed him, as an impressionable 16yrold, in June78 on tour feat.Street Legal tracks. I'll always believe this "full band sound (horns,keys+b3,bkgrd chorus,et al)" with such high-passion performances from Bob will be my fave era Dylan. Though being a Dylanophile you can't ever have any bad Bob.
I am a huge fan of this album and was there in '78. Fans should buy the 2003 remix of Street Legal - you will know it's the remix as this track is now 7:04 instead of 6:37. The remix is superb - much better than the original release. :)
I agree. I've always loved this song, but I was pleasantly surprised when I first heard the extended ending on the 2003 album. The original version now feels like it ends a little too quickly!
Definitely agree with that. The whole album is underrated. Senor, , Is Your Love In Vain, Changing of the Guards...........this albums damn near perfect.
sonny, mr bob dylan has a history of notoriously manipulating the media, and he was a forerunner of "fake' news that you are seeing right now in 2017. "selling your soul" is a insiders term for signing on the dotted line to a record company of human beings. you are forced to produce albums to "sell". your "finite" wisdom about "christianity" is showing. you have no more real insight to bob dylan's personal life than i have about the size of nancy pelosi's turd feces that fall out onto the earth as she flys back and forth over the earth. it is my assumption that she dropped one on your house in bangor maine, or wherever you live in ignorant bliss.
JImmy nobody forced me to buy a single Dylan Album. Bob is a singer and no messenger, certainly not elected to office, gotta take what you can from his slant. I think it's sad when comments get nasty here, so let's agree to disagree. Dylan could have set himself up as a messiah in the 1970s and would probably have been killed by some nut, he just sings his songs. He has also had flop albums too, but not many.
I do feel that only Bob Dylan, after the great 1965-66 shows and later the transcendent Rolling Thunder Tour (among other stuff, in between), can do as follows. Take a back-up band including both talented artists, and a myriad of other performers, and lead them all into majestic performances like this one. And still, there's 'no time to think'.
Love love love this song & lyrics. How in the world he remembers all the lyrics is amazing - Meaning of the song - I don't think Dylan will ever let us know . . . . .
This is a great live version but I have to say, I love the original version better. In it, Bob sings very precisely and the whole melody is so original and different from anything I've heard him do before. It's an amazing song, especially the last two verses from "gentlemen he said".
Street Legal is my favorite and least favorite Dylan album. Changing of the Guard got better on the road the more Steve Douglas bent his sax reeds to Dylan's rooting around voice. The loss of drummer Howie Wyeth, Greenwich Village street engine of the Rolling Thunder Revue was tragic. His replacement behind the traps was deadly dull. Percussionista Bobbye Hall added colors and spices desperately needed. This clip doesn't seem to feature Wyeth's downtown rhythm section partner Rob Rothstein Stoner on bass and as Dylan's hired musical director. Rob added real kick even to the shamefully depressing Dylan tracks (couldn't really call 'em songs) like "New Pony" or cliched rhetorical sap from the battlefield of marriage like "Is Your Love In Vain?" Then there are the surprise woke moments on the breezy "True Love Tends to Forget" that are brilliant in their throwaway psychic improv reflexivity. "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)" is a necessary addition to the Dylan songbook. Now if he'd only had some of his literary pals like Ginzy, Shepard, Joni, Eric Andersen or Neuwirth provide some editing help to wrangle the spontaneous spewing forth scroll of a runaway megillah "No Time to Think" into the desperate and despairing reach for intimacy that lay under the IDiotic primal wail of emotional overload. But bless this rare rock star for trying to stay human scaled even when indulging what must've been reptilian temptations beyond imagining for demagoguery and playing the prophet... Dylan's lasting legacy will be his determination in his better human moments to undermine the whole mystique he so ingeniously colluded to create and that carried the out-of-tune Folk City open mic night warbler to truly literary and musical heights. With collaborators and mentors like Freddy Neil, Dave Van Ronk, Susie Rotolo, Teri Thal, Eric Andersen, Tuli, Ed and the Fugs, Joni Mitchell, Mavis, Pops, Pervis, Yvonne and Cleotha or the Staples family (who cut the 1963 kid's Masters of War before Tim Hardin and the rest of U.S. even knew of U.S. boots on the ground in Viet Nam), Catskill community, Richmond Shepard, Leon Russell, Christine Lakeland, Clydie King, Carolyn & Gabba Gabba Hai Dennis plus underground theater scribes like Murray Mednick, Jacques Levy and tour guide Jim Roger McGuinn along with his harshest serious critics in the rock and alt press like the Soho Weekly News and VILLAGE VOICE (especially the headline writer with newsprint ink in his veins that dared greet Dylan's wannabe underground rough cut vanity\mytho-poetic film project RENALDO & CLARA with this classic crown GONE WITH THE IDIOT WIND...). Not to forget Arlo & the Guthrie family living in the segregated Howard Beach public housing development built and owned by our President and inherited CEO's Dad, Fred Trump and way too many other Canadians (men and women of the North Country) to properly acknowledge. Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Shifters Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa Media Discussion List
@@ulpana I dig Is Your Love in Vain?...it is not more cliched than any of a zillion songs from Bach to CSN to Zep that utilze diatonic descending liason lines and I like the quotidianess of a line like "you can take the house, take the money, too"...or "I have dined with kings/been offered wings/but never been too impressed"....I am a big fan of Street Legal....I agree about New Pony, though...and overall, yeah, Bob has handled his ultra fame well enough...he is a strange dude, but who wouldn´t be with that early resume, a resume he has successfully added to for decades...he never took up the cause or the mantle, I like that...always kept people guessing, hahahahahaha
I don't need your organization, I've shined your shoes I've moved your mountains and marked your cards But Eden is burning, either getting ready for elimination Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards ....My favorite song
He doesn't....While warming up for a tour in the nineties in a bar in Mass. his band members would suggest and play HIS SONGS ! And He would go 'Oh Yeah'....Look it up!
I've yet to find Bob singing this one the exact same way on the shows available of this tour. Caught the Street Legal tour in Indianapolis. Still blows my mind.
This is one of Dylan's songs that I can play forever and ever. I never put on the album "Street Legal" to do anything really but listen to this tune over and over.
Easily one of his best songs he's ever written and sang just wish there was a live recording with Crisp clear sound. Street legal is such a great under appreciated dylan album
More guitars than I can count. I always wondered if all the guitars were his idea of a joke. I know it has given my friends and I much laughter after a toke and a listen.
You have no idea...Yes many, many thrilling times. And you? Evidently it thrills you to pester random people on the internet, oh well, they say all tastes are to be found in nature. Thrills are something one experiences when they take their eyes off their little screens and GET A LIFE.
Thanks for posting this. I was in row 4, center for this show. I have a copy from 1978, but it has tracking issues and was shot from farther away on the left side..
Mate in my eyes the way Dylan is as a person is part of why I love the guy, I'm doing a school project on Don't Look Back and Eat The Document and some interviews, honestly think his attitude is needed for the life he has just the coolest guy
In the middle of covering this with a collaboration group, hard to nail down. This is my first time hearing this live version. Sounds like the same tempo with we have down already. The lead solo, we are going to have ad that in no doubt
I saw him in 1979 at the Hollywood Sportatorium in Fl. A guy had a sign that said, Dylan Is God, and then he turned the sign over and it said, I Found It. Great concert.
I was at the same show. Effing Sporthole - I was sitting in the corner under the upper deck/balcony. Infamous Sporthole acoustics were in full effect there. Everything sounded like one big blare. Could barely tell one song from the next. Reserved seats or not, I can't remember why we didn't move. Goddamn giant aluminum tool shed out in the Everglades. What a dump.
Woke from a dream with a song in my ears. Still half asleep it kept rolling on until I became aware.. but what tune was it? I’ve only heard this a couple of times in my life. Then there it was Dylan words… Changing of the Guards. How is that possible? That how deeply this song buried into me..
Would love to know what the players backing up Bob on this. That guy went off on his guitar solo.....kicking ASS. That drummer is working hard too. Great stuff!
This frantic live version makes me kinda feel how every time he took the stage the band were just hanging on for dear life trying to keep up. I know there have been anecdotes like GE Smith mentioning how Dylan would say "we're gonna do [song] in [key] then start playing it in a totally different key, and the band just hung on and did it in Bob's key. This version is so different to the record but so like it too. Badass in a way nobody's been able to be that loose but tight since the 70s.
Maybe the most UNDERRATED song in the Dylan canon
100000000%
I say that all the time
Indeed. This song is top ten material and yet no one seems to appreciate it, Dylan himself included.
I have always absolutely loved this song!
TOTALLY agree
Bought Street Legal the day it came out, I still remember that thin wild mercury day in Summer 1978.
and where were you ……that thin wild mercury day……..so so long ago…
Such a legend, and such a contribution to society. Been listening to Dylan since i was 14. His contribution to all Americans is immeasurable.
Interesting fact: Dylan hasn't played this song live since 1978. He has only played it a total of 68 times while touring from July to December of 1978. It is amazing that this footage even exists for such a rare song. Thanks for sharing!
Interesting, I also consider it as one of his best songs ever.
@@OldSamVimes my favorite. Followed closely by forever young, just like a woman and tangled up in blue.
@@tomc2681 Can't go wrong with any of them, and fantastic versions of each exist. If you haven't yet look up "movie 204" and you'll find a version of Like a Woman, by a youtuber named hollis1960 with a very special guest guitarist.
@@Jerry11201 thanks. I'll look it up👍
Wow I am glad I saw his show the night before this in Memphis
Happy 80th birthday my fellow Minnesotan. I’ve had the privilege of seeing Dylan perform more than 40 times over 50 years.
Always one of my favorite Dylan songs. It's sad cuz it's so underrated. Street legal is also a great great album.
Peak Dylan, no question about it. The trumpet, the chorus, the roaring guitar, the overwhelming lyrics. Shiver down the spine, a genius.
Actually a saxophone
This man should never be forgotten. True legend.
He will never be forgotten his place in history is sealed along with the great artists in their field such as Picasso, Shakespeare ect ect
Dylan
: "It means something different every time I sing it. 'Changing of the Guards' is a thousand years old'".
this song is unbelievable
Did he really say this?!!! Can I please have a source or something?? I'd love it. Please.
@@AA-sn9lz he did
@@AA-sn9lz The quote is from an interview of Dylan by Jonathan Gott in a November 1978 issue of Rolling Stone magazine.
I’ve shined your shoes - moved your mountains and marked your cards 🎼. Dylan is the best. I love him ❤
Dude this song is SO GOOD I’m surprised that even some die hard Dylan fans don’t know this one, but Street-Legal wasn’t one of his most notable albums. Such vivid imagery and storytelling though.
Just look at how Bob hops across the stage w/ his guitar, in his glitter suit, and acts all in control-- and then, he just puts it down,-- no change discernable in the music-- He cracks himself up at his own performance-- and then he just turns around, walks off stage-- Bob is in charge-- but NOTHING ever
stops Bob from laughing about himself... I do love that about the guy :)
When I listen to this live version I cannot stop from crying. This song takes out of me all suffering and contradiction inside of me giving me a hope one day I will succeed thanks to the Queen of Spades.
Play the last track on this LP AND YOU HEAR even better lyrics and more hope
I think it's called journey through white heat
That´s most likely what this song does to me! Good to hear that I´m not the only one!
Hopefully you are where you need to be now, brother
This always puts a smile on my face....Bob playing and enjoying himself, filled with the spirit....
What matters with a Dylan song is its 'feel' in performance and its impact on the listener. What is it that stays in the mind after we listen and bear witness?
The 'feel' here is astonishing. Complex lyrical images, at once dense and elliptical, are driven home with enormous power and speed by a crack band whose musicianship underpins Dylan's startling vocal command. This combination and its serendipity drives the narrative.
On the page, in part of this song, Dylan addresses apocalyptic and end of times concerns. In this performance, it is these concerns that are placed front and centre. Whilst a sense of foreboding about what is to come has often been embedded in Dylan's songs, this has rarely been revealed in performance as powerfully as it is here where Dylan tells us we must look to ourselves:
..."your hearts must have the courage of the changing of the guards".
I've always seen this song as an exquisite "fuck you" from Dylan to the music industry.
>16 years, 16 banners united over the fields
Street Legal (1978) was his 16th studio album and came out 16 years after his first. I believe the "I've moved your mountains and marked your cards" to be Bob telling the music business that he's performed their protest songs and made their hits and will now be doing as he pleases.
Either way, a fantastic and ambiguous song with great imagery.
I was there! First time I saw His Bobness
g66ee lucky you
Fucking hell, imagine seeing this live! Amazing
One of my favorite songs of all time!
me too! i think its his best - gets me every time
For me too! One of the best songs of Bob Dylan!
I've completely worn out the grooves in my TH-cam on this one alone. Elvis was there that night?!
Oh yeah , it’s one of my all time favourites , especially the studio version it’s such an amazing piece of work you just go with it , and play it again and again .
I still have Bob Dylan's first album. Yes I am that old but I still listen and absolutely loved him with Traveling Wilburys everybody can say what they want or think what they want but it was our generation that brought it all out
That tour in 1978 was just fantastic - despite the disapproval of the committed folk fans and the critics.
I saw him three nights earlier in Columbia, SC. He did thee same encore and it looked and sounded just the way I remember it on 2/9/78. One of the best concerts I ever saw.
Songs from Street Legal & this tour my fave!! First witnessed him, as an impressionable 16yrold, in June78 on tour feat.Street Legal tracks. I'll always believe this "full band sound (horns,keys+b3,bkgrd chorus,et al)" with such high-passion performances from Bob will be my fave era Dylan. Though being a Dylanophile you can't ever have any bad Bob.
È stato il primo concerto di Dylan al quale ho assistito a Parigi. Mitico. Ho ancora la pelle d’oca a ricordarlo
Probably one of my favorite solos...the open note 3:54...pretty genius move
who is that on lead?
@@StratocastRS Billy Cross. He played guitar on "Street-Legal" album and also on the 1978 tour. 'Really knew how to use that Les Paul...
@@StratocastRS The guitar is smoke, listen to the sax reeds mouthed tone, that is the fire....
Tio Mitchito
Yeah it’s the perfect expression of raunch to balance those mystical lyrics
I am a huge fan of this album and was there in '78. Fans should buy the 2003 remix of Street Legal - you will know it's the remix as this track is now 7:04 instead of 6:37. The remix is superb - much better than the original release. :)
I agree. I've always loved this song, but I was pleasantly surprised when I first heard the extended ending on the 2003 album. The original version now feels like it ends a little too quickly!
Wow I cant believe how great this man is .Love you Bob.
This really grows in you after a few listens! I can't get enough.
Definitely agree with that. The whole album is underrated. Senor, , Is Your Love In Vain, Changing of the Guards...........this albums damn near perfect.
Yep, one of Those Albums of my life for sure.
Backup singers are great on this song.
I must have played the album version of this song 10 times today, I hear some new vocal inflections every time, and I'm floored every time.
Bob is singing his butt off on the studio cut. He goes full-on Bluegrass singer. I don't understand how some folks can't hear what is there.
One of the 10 greatest songs Bob has ever done! That was an incredible tour. I saw it in Toronto.
My first Dylan show & a great album💙💙🎶🎶🎶
This is really the best version
I fuckin' love you Bob Dylan
Bob is a Saint. A true horse.
Sold his life to the Devil...and admitted it in public more than once.
Why is someone so concrete listening to Dylan?
sonny, mr bob dylan has a history of notoriously manipulating the media, and he was a forerunner of "fake' news that you are seeing right now in 2017. "selling your soul" is a insiders term for signing on the dotted line to a record company of human beings. you are forced to produce albums to "sell". your "finite" wisdom about "christianity" is showing. you have no more real insight to bob dylan's personal life than i have about the size of nancy pelosi's turd feces that fall out onto the earth as she flys back and forth over the earth. it is my assumption that she dropped one on your house in bangor maine, or wherever you live in ignorant bliss.
JImmy nobody forced me to buy a single Dylan Album. Bob is a singer and no messenger, certainly not elected to office, gotta take what you can from his slant. I think it's sad when comments get nasty here, so let's agree to disagree. Dylan could have set himself up as a messiah in the 1970s and would probably have been killed by some nut, he just sings his songs. He has also had flop albums too, but not many.
Astonishing...Incredible version of one of my favorite songs!
I do feel that only Bob Dylan, after the great 1965-66 shows and later the transcendent Rolling Thunder Tour (among other stuff, in between), can do as follows. Take a back-up band including both talented artists, and a myriad of other performers, and lead them all into majestic performances like this one. And still, there's 'no time to think'.
Wow !! My mouth is hanging open.... Sorry !! Just too great !! LOL Bobby !!!
What a joyful noise
Love love love this song & lyrics. How in the world he remembers all the lyrics is amazing - Meaning of the song - I don't think Dylan will ever let us know . . . . .
love this faster version. He's in top form! thanks for sharing
Yes it definitely rocks!
This is a great live version but I have to say, I love the original version better. In it, Bob sings very precisely and the whole melody is so original and different from anything I've heard him do before. It's an amazing song, especially the last two verses from "gentlemen he said".
Love this version but I gotta agree with you, in this version he omits the "shaved her head" verse!
Bet there were amazing live performances of this song, but this is not one of them. Bob seems very coked up tbh.
Pure JOY! Thank you, Bob!
Changing of the Guards, greatest song ever from the greatest artist ever, yes I'm a bit of a Dylan fanatic :)
Street legal is probably my favourite Dylan Album. This song and Is your love in vain are my two favourite songs on it.
Street Legal is my favorite and least favorite Dylan album. Changing of the Guard got better on the road the more Steve Douglas bent his sax reeds to Dylan's rooting around voice. The loss of drummer Howie Wyeth, Greenwich Village street engine of the Rolling Thunder Revue was tragic. His replacement behind the traps was deadly dull. Percussionista Bobbye Hall added colors and spices desperately needed. This clip doesn't seem to feature Wyeth's downtown rhythm section partner Rob Rothstein Stoner on bass and as Dylan's hired musical director. Rob added real kick even to the shamefully depressing Dylan tracks (couldn't really call 'em songs) like "New Pony" or cliched rhetorical sap from the battlefield of marriage like "Is Your Love In Vain?"
Then there are the surprise woke moments on the breezy "True Love Tends to Forget" that are brilliant in their throwaway psychic improv reflexivity. "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)" is a necessary addition to the Dylan songbook. Now if he'd only had some of his literary pals like Ginzy, Shepard, Joni, Eric Andersen or Neuwirth provide some editing help to wrangle the spontaneous spewing forth scroll of a runaway megillah "No Time to Think" into the desperate and despairing reach for intimacy that lay under the IDiotic primal wail of emotional overload.
But bless this rare rock star for trying to stay human scaled even when indulging what must've been reptilian temptations beyond imagining for demagoguery and playing the prophet...
Dylan's lasting legacy will be his determination in his better human moments to undermine the whole mystique he so ingeniously colluded to create and that carried the out-of-tune Folk City open mic night warbler to truly literary and musical heights. With collaborators and mentors like Freddy Neil, Dave Van Ronk, Susie Rotolo, Teri Thal, Eric Andersen, Tuli, Ed and the Fugs, Joni Mitchell, Mavis, Pops, Pervis, Yvonne and Cleotha or the Staples family (who cut the 1963 kid's Masters of War before Tim Hardin and the rest of U.S. even knew of U.S. boots on the ground in Viet Nam), Catskill community, Richmond Shepard, Leon Russell, Christine Lakeland, Clydie King, Carolyn & Gabba Gabba Hai Dennis plus underground theater scribes like Murray Mednick, Jacques Levy and tour guide Jim Roger McGuinn along with his harshest serious critics in the rock and alt press like the Soho Weekly News and VILLAGE VOICE (especially the headline writer with newsprint ink in his veins that dared greet Dylan's wannabe underground rough cut vanity\mytho-poetic film project RENALDO & CLARA with this classic crown GONE WITH THE IDIOT WIND...). Not to forget Arlo & the Guthrie family living in the segregated Howard Beach public housing development built and owned by our President and inherited CEO's Dad, Fred Trump and way too many other Canadians (men and women of the North Country) to properly acknowledge.
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Shifters
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa
Media Discussion List
@@ulpana I dig Is Your Love in Vain?...it is not more cliched than any of a zillion songs from Bach to CSN to Zep that utilze diatonic descending liason lines and I like the quotidianess of a line like "you can take the house, take the money, too"...or "I have dined with kings/been offered wings/but never been too impressed"....I am a big fan of Street Legal....I agree about New Pony, though...and overall, yeah, Bob has handled his ultra fame well enough...he is a strange dude, but who wouldn´t be with that early resume, a resume he has successfully added to for decades...he never took up the cause or the mantle, I like that...always kept people guessing, hahahahahaha
‘Where are you tonight’ is a standout too - absolutely fantastic album, easily my favorite Dylan album.
Senor is up there
I've just discovered Bob Dylan and can't get enough of this song, love the energy.
I don't need your organization, I've shined your shoes
I've moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning, either getting ready for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards ....My favorite song
The way he walked off tho # Legendary
All those songs, all those lyrics, how does he remember them all?
He messes them up sometimes. That's what dylon's son said to patti smith when she forgot lyrics while honouring dylon.
He doesn't....While warming up for a tour in the nineties in a bar in Mass. his band members would suggest and play HIS SONGS !
And He would go 'Oh Yeah'....Look it up!
He writes them all on his wrist before each show.
Sixteen years
Sixteen banners united over the field
Where the good shepherd grieves
Desperate men, desperate women divided
Spreading their wings ’neath the falling leaves
Fortune calls
I stepped forth from the shadows, to the marketplace
Merchants and thieves, hungry for power, my last deal gone down
She’s smelling sweet like the meadows where she was born
On midsummer’s eve, near the tower
The cold-blooded moon
The captain waits above the celebration
Sending his thoughts to a beloved maid
Whose ebony face is beyond communication
The captain is down but still believing that his love will be repaid
They shaved her head
She was torn between Jupiter and Apollo
A messenger arrived with a black nightingale
I seen her on the stairs and I couldn’t help but follow
Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil
I stumbled to my feet
I rode past destruction in the ditches
With the stitches still mending ’neath a heart-shaped tattoo
Renegade priests and treacherous young witches
Were handing out the flowers that I’d given to you
The palace of mirrors
Where dog soldiers are reflected
The endless road and the wailing of chimes
The empty rooms where her memory is protected
Where the angels’ voices whisper to the souls of previous times
She wakes him up
Forty-eight hours later, the sun is breaking
Near broken chains, mountain laurel and rolling rocks
She’s begging to know what measures he now will be taking
He’s pulling her down and she’s clutching on to his long golden locks
Gentlemen, he said
I don’t need your organization, I’ve shined your shoes
I’ve moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning, either brace yourself for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards
Peace will come
With tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and the Queen of Swords
Copyright © 1978 by Special Rider Music
Read more: www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/changing-guards#ixzz3zMqPuFCr
Thanks
I've yet to find Bob singing this one the exact same way on the shows available of this tour. Caught the Street Legal tour in Indianapolis. Still blows my mind.
Una de las mejores canciones de Dylan. Por que nunca más canto esta cancion????
Happy 75th to the greatest living songwriter, even though I know I'm old enough to remember him in his early 20's.
I saw him play this song on October of 1978 in Chicago. I remember this concert so vividly
Me too
Same-both nights🙌🙌
Peace will come
♡ Bob Dylan
but will offer no reward when the false idols fall
With tranquillity and splendor!
Great version. Brilliant song
This is one of Dylan's songs that I can play forever and ever. I never put on the album "Street Legal" to do anything really but listen to this tune over and over.
Easily one of his best songs he's ever written and sang just wish there was a live recording with Crisp clear sound. Street legal is such a great under appreciated dylan album
This song seems to be written in a prophetical and biblical language, as running mirrors through Bob Dylan's live and career. Astonishing.
Wow .I have always loved this song. Amazing performance. Do you think Bob was in the zone. Wowzers.
such a beautifull song!
Dylan seems to be having a blast by playing this song. Should revisit it in the future, if he ever tours again (thanks, COVID-19).
This here might be my favorite live performance of Dylan's. I love the energy!
brilliant absolutely brilliant!!!!!!
been learning Alto since November, gonna learn this riff :)
COME BACK AND Bring it BACK because we NEED REAL MUSIC LIKE THIS AND NOT THE SHIT WE HAVE TODAY!
This song makes me happy on a bad day
One of the few artists that can take you on a journey and lead you to seldom-visited places
More guitars than I can count. I always wondered if all the guitars were his idea of a joke. I know it has given my friends and I much laughter after a toke and a listen.
Konig Corvus what a thrilling life you must lead
You have no idea...Yes many, many thrilling times. And you? Evidently it thrills you to pester random people on the internet, oh well, they say all tastes are to be found in nature. Thrills are something one experiences when they take their eyes off their little screens and GET A LIFE.
Wonderful saxo!!!, only and special Dylan live!!!
I took Mary Ellen to see him in Greensboro 1978 December 7th. Been lovin him for over 50 years.
mr Dylan , you sir created music, yes you with full respect.
Thanks for posting this. I was in row 4, center for this show. I have a copy from 1978, but it has tracking issues and was shot from farther away on the left side..
Bill Arnold can u email it to me kind sir would love to here it. My email is jbennett130700@gmail.com
So much energy!!
What an amazing performance, so great to see Bob boogying on down, and the sax just kills
one of my first concerts at the Providence civic center in RI. I was 14
What a song. What a man.
Mate in my eyes the way Dylan is as a person is part of why I love the guy, I'm doing a school project on Don't Look Back and Eat The Document and some interviews, honestly think his attitude is needed for the life he has just the coolest guy
Like Shakespeare, the more you listen to Dylan the more you get out of it.
You are so right. On one hand, he is so weird. On the other hand, the best one can be as weird as he wants.
having a blast....he LOVES it!
Oh Gosh !!! When will I see it again in life??
Gr8 version from an even gr8er album, thanx Bob.
Happy 76th birthday, Mr. Dylan! Thank you for this amazing album.
More action than I have ever seen in a performance
Yes, it is the most bouncy I have ever seen him :)
I love this Dylan song. The words
In the middle of covering this with a collaboration group, hard to nail down.
This is my first time hearing this live version.
Sounds like the same tempo with we have down already.
The lead solo, we are going to have ad that in no doubt
I saw him in 1979 at the Hollywood Sportatorium in Fl. A guy had a sign that said, Dylan Is God, and then he turned the sign over and it said, I Found It. Great concert.
I was at the same show. Effing Sporthole - I was sitting in the corner under the upper deck/balcony. Infamous Sporthole acoustics were in full effect there. Everything sounded like one big blare. Could barely tell one song from the next. Reserved seats or not, I can't remember why we didn't move. Goddamn giant aluminum tool shed out in the Everglades. What a dump.
Woke from a dream with a song in my ears. Still half asleep it kept rolling on until I became aware.. but what tune was it? I’ve only heard this a couple of times in my life. Then there it was Dylan words… Changing of the Guards. How is that possible? That how deeply this song buried into me..
great live version
My favorite Dylan song, off my favorite album (next to Slow Train). Such a shame these songs didn't get played more.
So grateful for having seen him on that tour.
712dal agreed, love the recorded version , well live any version . The lyrics are so impactful ; wonder how many get the lyrics
The last of the old testament prophets shouting down to the multitudes!!!! Love it!!!!
At 3:25 it says
"You have seen
The prophet
Is tired"
The prophet is tired
This is fantastic
Exquisite...........as Bob Dylan almost ALWAYS is....................thank-you veyr much and..........cheers!
Best Bob Dylan song (y)
what a performance
The finishing of the song was great...
Great song!!! Almost had a Johnny Lee, country and western sound. Comparable to "Cherokee fiddle" hope that doesn't piss off any fellow Dylan fans.
Happy 77th birthday Bob Dylan I hope you enjoy your day thank you for being the genius that you are and the Beautiful human being that you are
Would love to know what the players backing up Bob on this. That guy went off on his guitar solo.....kicking ASS. That drummer is working hard too. Great stuff!
What presence. Magnificent.
This frantic live version makes me kinda feel how every time he took the stage the band were just hanging on for dear life trying to keep up. I know there have been anecdotes like GE Smith mentioning how Dylan would say "we're gonna do [song] in [key] then start playing it in a totally different key, and the band just hung on and did it in Bob's key.
This version is so different to the record but so like it too. Badass in a way nobody's been able to be that loose but tight since the 70s.
So awesome. Just learned of this song recently. Love it.