Tryin’ to Get to Heaven (1997) – Bob Dylan

When you think that you’ve lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more

Welcome back to another music article on a Bob Dylan song. I’ve got to hand it to my small readership who have stayed along for the ride on this project so far – they’ll be well used to hearing about Dylan here time and again. When I was living in Melbourne in the early 2000s, I went on an eBay binge buying Bob Dylan memorabilia, mostly “still sealed” new LPs. I now have somewhere around 30, which my mother in Australia still looks after.

On the odd occasion I really splurged and bought other items, such as the “certified authentic” signature of the maestro shown above. Whether that signature is the real deal or made by a backwater schemer who forges signatures for a living in some Los Angeles basement akin to clandestine dives in Punch Drunk Love – well your guess is better than mine. I definitely didn’t take Dylan’s advice when I bought it: “Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb.”

Where am I going with this? Well, that photo of Dylan you see above was on the back of his widely praised “comeback to form” album Time Out of Mind (1997), for which he won three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. Today’s featured song, “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven,” comes from that record and is one of my favourites on it.

I remember clearly where I was when I first heard Time Out of Mind. I was living with an old Academy friend, Kevin, in a run-down house in the Canberra suburb of Dickson. One day I was just “lamping,” as Leon calls it on Curb Your Enthusiasm, by the fireplace and listened to the whole album. The song that struck me most was Not Dark Yet which I wrote about back in September 2023, but Tryin’ to Get to Heaven has only grown on me with each listen.

I really connect with these moody but highly evocative lyrics, set against a bouncy, bluesy rhythm. And a big shout-out to Dylan’s harmonica solo, which closes the song. It’s a real gem. Not long after recording this album, Dylan suffered a serious heart infection (histoplasmosis) that was close to fatal, but thankfully he recovered – and he’s still performing at the ripe old age of 84. I still read his setlists and audience reviews whenever they appear.

It almost feels as if, in making this record, he was sensing that brush with mortality and facing it head-on. No young person could have written this song – not even a young Bob Dylan. There are years of hard living in it. As critics have noted: like Not Dark Yet, it points toward the idea of redemption in the afterlife. He has travelled “all around the world” and, in the song’s unforgettable refrain, is “trying to get to heaven before they close the door.”

[Verse 1]
The air is getting hotter
There’s a rumbling in the skies
I’ve been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes
Every day your memory grows dimmer
It doesn’t haunt me like it did before
I’ve been walking through the middle of nowhere
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door

[Verse 2]
When I was in Missouri
They would not let me be
I had to leave there in a hurry
I only saw what they let me see
You broke a heart that loved you
Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
I’ve been walking that lonesome valley
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door

[Verse 3]
People on the platforms
Waiting for the trains
I can hear their hearts a-beatin’
Like pendulums swinging on chains
When you think that you’ve lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more
I’m just going down the road feeling bad
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door

[Verse 4]
I’m going down the river
Down to New Orleans
They tell me everything is gonna be all right
But I don’t know what “all right” even means
I was riding in a buggy with Miss Mary-Jane
Miss Mary-Jane got a house in Baltimore
I been all around the world, boys
Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door

[Verse 5]
Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I’ll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems
Some trains don’t pull no gamblers
No midnight ramblers like they did before
I been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door

References:
1. Tryin’ to Get to Heaven – Wikipedia