Book Excerpt: Counting Down Bob Dylan: His 100 Finest Songs

93. “Abandoned Love” (from Biograph, 1985)

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“Abandoned Love,” a stunning heartbreaker of a song, was recorded in 1975 but deemed by Bob Dylan not suitable for Desire, his album released in ’76. That decision is a head-scratcher, of course, but it wouldn’t be Bob if he didn’t have beauties lying around unreleased, now would it? Many feel that it was a mistake to choose “Joey” for inclusion instead of “Abandoned Love,” but “Joey,” flaws and all, has an ambitiousness to it that’s hard to resist.

If you want to nitpick, “Abandoned Love” is definitely a better song than “Mozambique,” but the latter works on the album as a respite from all of the heavier stuff around it. The bottom line is that the subject matter of “Abandoned Love” is more akin to what was found on Dylan’s previous album, Blood on the Tracks, so there’s a good argument to be made for leaving it off. Why it didn’t make it to subsequent releases is another matter entirely.

Anyway, songs like “Abandoned Love” tend to grow in legend over the years, especially when they aren’t performed live. Dylan’s lone performance of this song came when he was called onto the stage at a Ramblin’ Jack Elliott concert in 1975 and performed a stunning acoustic version. He gave it a go for Desire, with the violin of Scarlet Rivera providing the exotic touch that could be found on so many of the songs on that album. Yet, for whatever reason, Bob didn’t like the result, and, well, abandoned it.

When it showed up on Biograph, it immediately took its place among the other “lost” classics in the Dylan canon. Such songs really are an important part of his mystique. Other artists leave lots of stuff unrecorded for the bootleggers to fetishize until they eventually see the light of day. (Think the Beatles’ Anthology or Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks for two obvious examples out of many.)

 Yet none can match Bob in terms of the sheer quantity and, most importantly, quality of these songs, and a few more are scheduled to make appearances on this list before it’s over. While it’s fun to try to get inside Dylan’s head and speculate why these songs were left on the cutting-room floor, most of the best have reached consumers now through Biograph and the various Bootleg Series compilations, so they’re out there for anyone to enjoy and appreciate. They’re not really lost anymore.

“Abandoned Love” is all about the eternal battle between head and heart, but Dylan goes beyond the clichés to reveal that this struggle rarely produces a true winner. The protagonist can see all of the deceptions clearly now, both those perpetrated by this woman’s charms and those instigated by his own foolishness (“the clown inside of me”).

There is nothing on which he can rely to help him make his decision; even his “patron saint” has deserted him in his time of need. Everyone in the whole world is lying to each other and to themselves (“Everybody’s wearing a disguise / To hide what they’ve got left behind their eyes”). Dylan recently returned to that rhyme in the excellent slowburner “Long and Wasted Years” from Tempest, singing, “I wear dark glasses to cover my eyes / There’s secrets in ’em that I can’t disguise.” The lines are slightly different, but the gist is the same: Everybody is covering up instead of revealing themselves to each other, a continuous pattern of futile behavior.

In the midst of this artifice, the narrator gains a modicum of clarity (“The pot of gold is only make-believe”), but the price he pays is the impending loss of a love he still deeply feels. So he asks for just one more look, one more smile, one more moment of passion before he brings the curtain down. Of course, the possibility exists that this experience will confuse him anew, thus beginning the whole hopeless cycle once again. It’s never easy to walk away when it’s real.

Dylan fans all tread their own separate paths in their allegiance. Some love the minutiae and the trivia of it all. It’s certainly easy to get swept up in that from time to time, especially when it comes to the master’s decision-making process and song selection. Yet that can be detrimental if it colors one’s appreciation for the songs themselves.

“Abandoned Love” is a wondrous creation, no matter where it ended up. Best to just enjoy it, and let the lore take care of itself.

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