Romance in Durango (Live November 1975) – Bob Dylan

This is a fantastic Dylan performance of the ‘Mexican feel’ Romance in Durango; the seventh song (or the second song on Side 2 of the vinyl) on Bob Dylan’s 1976 album Desire. It has everything, a song with a cinematic story (similar to a cowboy movie scenario) and Dylan is fully locked into this performance with his facial expressions and his singing style and phrasing changing on different words/verses. Also, is there a more evocative opening of any Dylan song than this?

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Dust on my face and my cape.

The first-person narrator tells of an adventure in Durango, Mexico, where Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which Dylan both scored and acted in, had been filmed in 1972 and 1973.

Wikipedia states:
It was written by Dylan and Jacques Levy, who collaborated with Dylan on most of the songs on the album. The chorus contains several lines sung in Spanish, resulting in the song being released as a single in Spain in 1977….The song is performed in the key of D major and its arrangement has, according to Dylan scholar Tony Attwood, “a Mexican feel” imparted through the instrumentation (“the trumpet calls”) and percussion (“the rhythms associated with Central American music”)…The studio version features twenty musicians and backup singers, including Eric Clapton on guitar, the only recording from the earliest sessions of Desire that ended up on the album (before Dylan decided to shift to a more “small-band approach”

[Verse 1]
Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Dust on my face and my cape
Me and Magdalena on the run
I think this time we shall escape

Sold my guitar to the baker’s son
For a few crumbs and a place to hide
But I can get another one
And I’ll play for Magdalena as we ride

[Chorus]
No Ilores, mi querida (Do not cry my darling)
Dios nos vigila (God is watching over us)
Soon the horse will take us to Durango
Agarrame, mi vida (hold me, my love, my life)
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango

[Verse 2]
Past the Aztec ruins and the ghosts of our people
Hoof beats like castanets on stone
At night I dream of bells in the village steeple
Then I see the bloody face of Ramon

Was it me that shot him down in the Cantina
Was it my hand that held the gun?
Come, let us fly, my Magdalena
The dogs are barking and what’s done is done

[Chorus]

[Verse 3]
In the corrida we’ll sit in the shade
And watch the young torero stand alone
We’ll drink tequila where our grandfathers stayed
When they rode with Villa into Torreón

Then the padre will recite the prayers of old
In the little church this side of town
I will wear new boots and an earring of gold
You’ll shine with diamonds in your wedding gown

The way is long but the end is near
Already the fiesta has begun
The face of God will appear
With His serpent eyes of obsidian

[Chorus]

[Verse 4]
Was that the thunder that I heard?
My head is vibrating, I feel a sharp pain
Come sit by me, don’t say a word
Oh, can it be that I am slain?

[Chorus]

Further information from Wikipedia:
“Romance in Durango” placed 79th on a Rolling Stone list of the “100 Greatest Bob Dylan Songs”. In an article accompanying the list, Scott Avett of The Avett Brothers praised the song’s melody and lyrics: “The melody of ‘Romance in Durango’ makes the whole song work; it’s so serious and driven. And like most of Desire and Blood on the Tracks, it is relatively repetitive, but it’s so good it can kind of just keep going and going. That’s really much harder to do than I think anybody who isn’t trying to make music knows. As far as the lyrics go, it’s an amazing endeavor; Dylan was able to put his mind and heart into a specific scene – of being a lone renegade in the desert, up to all these trying and dangerous things. You’re buying all the masculinities and going right along with it. It’s convincing“

References:
1. Romance in Durango – Wikipedia
2. Romance in Durango; a brilliant end to a singular period in Dylan’s work – Untold Dylan