It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (1965) – Bob Dylan

You can see Dylan holding his sunnies there on the Highway 61 Revisited cover. I bet he didn’t find them broken like I did mine this morning when I took them out of their case. I didn’t dwell on it for long though. I put on this lazy, toe-tapping acoustic-electric blues number and that lifted me out of my little lull. I must go back to ‘Dollar City’ first thing tomorrow and buy me a new pair.

The jolly saloon piano sounds so good here, Mama. It merrily rolls the whole song along and has such a great vibe. How does he do it? The music itself feels like a train gently rolling down the tracks. It differs from some of the aggression in other songs Dylan wrote during this period. Speaking of which, on the same day he recorded It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, he also recorded Positively 4th Street and Tombstone Blues.

The song closes with the sweetest wailing harmonica solo, providing a lovely counterpoint to the light-hearted feel of the rest of the music. Dylan’s cutesy voice here also adds so much to the whimsical nature of the song. It’s relaxed, lilting, and carries a conversational tone with a touch of world-weary resignation.

I always got a kick out of the title too. It’s like – wait, what?! Read that again. It’s a nice play on words with a bit to unpack, even in that sentence alone. I certainly can relate to “It takes a train to cry,” since that’s how it feels sometimes. It would also take a train not to enjoy this song. Such is its catchiness and wry, grinning delivery. It’s one of the coolest songs.

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Snippets from Wikipedia:

(It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry) is one of three blues songs on the album (the others being “From a Buick 6” and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues“.

It is made up of lines taken from older blues songs combined with Dylan’s own lyrics. The imagery is sexual, and the song can be interpreted as an allegory of someone who is sexually frustrated.

Musically, the song has a lazy tempo driven by lazy-slap drumming with a shuffling beat and slight emphasis on the offbeat from session drummer Bobby Gregg. There is also a barrelhouse piano part played by Paul Griffin, a raunchy bass part played by Harvey Brooks, an electric guitar part played by Mike Bloomfield and an unusual harmonica part.

An earlier version of the song went by the title “Phantom Engineer“. This version has a more upbeat tempo and four lines of different lyrics.

Steely Dan borrowed a line from the song as the title of their debut album Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972).

[Verse 1]
Well, I ride on a mail train, baby
Can’t buy a thrill
Well, I been up all night
Leanin’ on the windowsill
Well, if I die
On top of the hill
And if I don’t make it
You know my baby will

[Verse 2]
Don’t the moon look good, mama
Shining through the trees?
Don’t the brakeman look good, mama
Flaggin’ down the “Double E?”
Don’t the sun look good
Goin’ down over the sea?
But don’t my gal look fine
When she’s comin’ after me?

[Verse 3]
Now the wintertime is coming
The windows are filled with frost
I went to tell everybody
But I could not get across
Well, I want to be your lover, baby
I don’t want to be your boss
Don’t say I never warned you
When your train gets lost

References:
1. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry – Wikipedia