Just like the last song I posted on Dylan – Long and Wasted Years, today’s featured track Love Minus Zero/No Limit has no musical chorus or bridge. Dylan recites 8 four-line verses about what the singer thinks is his perfect woman and how she brings a needed zen-like calm to his chaotic world. Effectively this is a poem in the form of a song, and one of Dylan’s best of the period, and that’s saying a lot considering the quantity of outstanding music he was unveiling to the world. Love Minus Zero/No Limit is read “Love Minus Zero over No Limit, so it’s intended to be read as a fraction.
[Verse 1]
My love she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence
She doesn’t have to say she’s faithful
Yet she’s true, like ice, like fire
[Verse 2]
People carry roses
And make promises by the hours
My love she laughs like the flowers
Valentines can’t buy her
[Verse 3]
In the dime stores and bus stations
People talk of situations
Read books, repeat quotations
Draw conclusions on the wall
[Verse 4]
Some speak of the future
My love she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all
A lot of the following information is from various parts of the Wikipedia reference below which intrigued me:
Love Minus Zero/No Limit is a song on his fifth studio album Bringing It All Back Home, released in 1965. The song uses surreal imagery, which some authors and critics have suggested recalls Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and the biblical Book of Daniel. Critics have also remarked that the style of the lyrics is reminiscent of William Blake’s poem “The Sick Rose“. The initial title of the song was “Dime Store“, in a reference to an included lyric; it was also briefly referred to as “(Tune Z) Dimestore” on the recording sheet.
Clinton Heylin suggested that the lyrics reflect the Zen-like detachment of the singer’s lover through a series of opposites, for example, that she “speaks like silence” and is both “like ice” and “like fire“. Another famous line from the song that captures this dichotomy is, “She knows there’s no success like failure, and that failure’s no success at all.” In a 2005 reader’s poll for Mojo magazine, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” was listed as the #20 all-time greatest Bob Dylan song, and a similar poll of artists ranked the song #32.
References:
1. Love Minus Zero/No Limit – Bob Dylan
