| From a Buick 6 |
|
|
|
|
| "From a Buick 6" | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song by Bob Dylan
from the album Highway 61 Revisited |
|||||
| Released | August 30, 1965 | ||||
| Recorded | Columbia Studios, New York, July 30, 1965 | ||||
| Genre | Rock, Folk rock | ||||
| Length | 3:19 | ||||
| Label | Columbia | ||||
| Writer | Bob Dylan | ||||
| Producer | Bob Johnston | ||||
| Highway 61 Revisited track listing | |||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
||||
| Problems listening to this file? See media help. | |||||
"From a Buick 6" is a song by Bob Dylan from his album Highway 61 Revisited. It was released as a single as the B-side of Positively 4th Street. It has also been covered by musicians such as Gary U.S. Bonds, Mitch Ryder, Treat Her Right, Mike Wilhelm and Johnny Winter.[1] Dylan's version that is included on Highway 61 Revisited was recorded on July 30, 1965[2]
The song is a raucous blues song played recklessly by a band that included Al Kooper on organ and Mike Bloomfield on guitar[3] The guitar part is patterned after older blues riffs by Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton and Big Joe Williams.[4] It also features a backbeat from drummer Bobby Gregg, a bass line from Harvey Brooks, and a soaring harmonica break.[3][5] The song starts with a snare shot that is similar to the opening song of Highway 61 Revisited, "Like a Rolling Stone".[2][5] The song is partially based on Sleepy John Estes' 1930 song "Milk Cow Blues", even taking a few lyrics from the older song, but its approach is more similar to The Kinks' version of a Kokomo Arnold song that was also called "Milk Cow Blues".[3]
Although the closest thing to a love song, in blues tradition it is as bitter as it is sweet, and shows the dark side of the love relationship.[2] Like other Dylan songs of this period, the song is a tribute to an earth mother.[4] References to her include a description as a "soulful mama" who "don't make me nervous / she don't talk too much", as well as a "graveyard woman", a "junkyard angel", a "steam shovel mama" and a "dump truck baby".[5] Some of the more flattering lyrics can be taken as a peaen to Dylan's first wife Sara Lownds.[2][5] However, the woman described by the song also resembles the subject of a previous Dylan song, "She Belongs to Me".[6] In "She Belongs to Me", the narrator described a woman that he claims to have, when clearly she has him.[6] Similarly, in "From a Buick 6", the narrator claims that he "got this graveyard woman" but she is the one he is dependent on her, she does all the work, and everything that happens to the narrator occurs as a result of her actions.[6] She keeps him as a prisoner, as described in lines such as "she keeps me hid" and "brings me bread", and that prison can be viewed as his sexuality, symbolized by the Buick 6 itself.[6] In a sense, rather than being merely an earth mother, the woman described by the song can be viewed as being Mother Nature itself.[6]
"From a Buick 6" can be seen as having evolved from the original version of the song that precedes it on Highway 61 Revisited, "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry".[7] That version included a stanza that contained the type of free association lyrics that make up "From a Buick 6".[7]
