Jokerman (A Song & Dance Man Excerpt)

From Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan - Vol. 2: Yonder Comes Sin.
Written by Michael Gray. Reprinted With Permission

To accompany the our latest podcast, Dylan.FM S03 E08 Jokerman, here is an extended excerpt from the 50 page Chapter 5: Jokerman.

Chapter Five: Jokerman

‘Jokerman’, alone among the released tracks from the “Infidels” sessions, is a song you can inhabit, as you can so much of Bob Dylan’s earlier work. It isn’t a sermon or a pop song but a real creation, a work you can wander inside, explore, breathe in, pass through, wrap around you. It looks different in different lights. It’s always shifting, but this is because it’s alive, not because it’s nebulous (though it may be that too). Its complexity isn’t off-putting, nor distancing. On the contrary, Dylan sings you through the complexity with almost as much generosity of expression, almost as much bestowing of concentrated warmth, as he gives out on, say, ‘Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’, a nebulous and complicated song fr…