“I figured it would last forever”: The moment Bob Dylan awkwardly summoned his ex-wife to a serenade in a bid to save their marriage
Somewhere in ancient scripture, it is written, “A fool is the folk who underestimates the profound pulling power of the guitar”.
Over the years, Bob Dylan has embodied this bygone idiom that I just made up, by singing more autobiographical songs of love and love-lost than a particularly shy bird has twittered half-notes from a treetop. All despite being dubbed a scruffy vagabond by his old flame Joan Baez, and smelly by his pal/enemy, Joni Mitchell.
He may have championed the voice of a generation for spearheading society with his protest songs, but the token title of a modern-day Casanova may well have been more apt for the iconoclastic lothario. Without gloss or cynicism, he speaks from a place of poignant honesty, often casting himself as an unreliable narrator in the piece. Sometimes, he’s even the ironic villain in his own story.
However, with the ability to pen poetic lines like, “The future for me is already a thing of the past / You were my first love, and you will be my last,” it’s easy to see how he’s been the source of so many swoons. On the other hand, with lines such as, “You can’t be wise and in love at the same time,” it’s equally easy to see how plenty of his serenades have raced through the sanguine notes of C, F and G, towards the soured end of the scale.
In short, the troubadour has traversed more scrapes with Cupid than a long-running sitcom character. His candid yet universal tales are borne from this realm of smitten smiles and their searing goodbyes. His pen certainly races when he is scorned, but it is far from ponderous when moved with affection either. Sara Lownds, the ‘sad-eyed lady’ herself, was often the subject of many from both sides of the tracks.
In Suze Rotolo’s memoir (his first proper girlfriend), she labels him “funny and affectionate one minute,” but “capable of total withdrawal the next”. The relationship with his first wife seemed no different.
The posthumous biography of his old tour manager, Victor Maymudes, describes him as being shocked that Dylan was marrying Sara Lownds and not fellow troubadour Joan Baez, to which Dylan apparently replied, “Because Sara will be there when I want her to be home, she’ll be there when I want her to be there, she’ll do it when I want to do it. Joan won’t be there when I want her. She won’t do it when I want to do it.”
Despite that rather one-way reported quote, the relationship was a true partnership. Lownds completely transformed Dylan. She sobered him up and set him on the straight and narrow. As his old personal assistant once commented:
“Until Sara, I thought it was just a question of time until he died. But later, I had never met a more dedicated family man.”
Lownds may have offered up a domesticated shelter away from the gaudy storm of the limelight, but her impact was far more spiritual than merely that alone. Dylan frequently eulogises his first wife in his memoir and speaks of his eternal love for her in glowing terms. Unquestionably, she saved his life in one way or another.
Thus, when things hit the rocks and Dylan was kicked out of their home after late nights began to turn into late weekends, he desperately tried to repair things. His life was docked in a tempestuous bay at the time, with success waning.
However, being kicked out of the family home turned out to be a tragedy that saw him get his mojo back with Blood on the Tracks. As he later recalled, “A lot of people tell me they enjoyed that album. It’s hard for me to relate to that – I mean, people enjoying that type of pain.”
When it comes to Desire, his wound was healing, but the creative flame of regret was still burning brightly. As Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys commented, “I pay quite a lot of attention to songwriters as good as Bob Dylan. […] When I was in New York, I used to listen to Desire quite often, and I really got into that song, ‘One More Cup Of Coffee’.”
He continues, “I’d never really got into that album – years before, I’d listen more to the likes of Highway 61 Revisited or the other early albums, which I’m very familiar with. But that Desire album is something else.” It soars and finds Dylan almost frenzied. He throws the kitchen sink at the songs, and one of them is fired up like an SOS flare.
As the story goes in Bob Spitz’s autobiography, in July of 1975, Dylan was putting the finishing touches to Desire in New York. He summoned Lownds to the Columbia studios without much warning and even less context. Therein, Dylan set about serenading her with the song that declared her “the love of his life” and listed off myriad works he had written for her.
He would shred his vocals in a tale of the depths of his undying devotion that had remained even through the turmoil of recent times, with a track titled simply ‘Sara’.
As Spitz recalls: “Bob obviously wanted to surprise her with it. He hadn’t told anyone he intended to record it, not even the band who were expected to follow him. Those of us sitting in the control room stopped talking and froze. Nobody moved, not a word was said.” An understandable reaction if I’ve ever heard one.
The shocked Spitz continues: “Bob had the lights dimmed more than usual, but as the music started, he turned and sang the song directly at Sara, who sat through it all with an impervious look on her face. It was as if she had put on an expressionless mask. The rest of us were blown away, embarrassed to be listening in front of them. He was really pouring out his heart to her. It seemed as if he was trying to reach her, but it was obvious she was unmoved.”
The tale of devotion’s last-ditch attempt to throw a life-ring into the choppy rapids of marital waters imbues the ode of ‘Sara’ with bottomless depth. In the end, Dylan was left remarking:
“Marriage was a failure. Husband and wife was a failure, but father and mother wasn’t a failure.”
He continues, “I wasn’t a very good husband… I don’t know what a good husband is. I figured it would last forever.” While their marriage might not have, ‘Sara’ is the sort of anthem that surely will.
Contrary to how his dower decree on a failed marriage may sound, the song steps over the tired idea of love coming with an expiration date and simply transfigures the final throes of a love affair with a sense of circumstantial reality amid an otherwise dreamy ever-after. In short, ‘it didn’t work out’ doesn’t sound like such a sad sentiment after all.
Lamentable, yes, but the sentence it implies before the full stop is anything but.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.