‘Walls of Red Wing’: Laurie Anderson’s favourite Bob Dylan song
Picking out your favourite Bob Dylan song is no easy task. With a career spanning six decades and 40 studio albums, each of them further proving the folk legend’s songwriting prowess, there are countless compositions to choose from. From the soothing words of ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ to the stirring ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’, Dylan’s discography is designed with universality in mind, making it rich with potential favourites.
For avant-garde aficionado and electronic artist Laurie Anderson, though, there is one song that stands out more than any other. Rather than going with the grain and picking out one of the folk songwriter’s more well-known hits, Anderson has named ‘Walls of Red Wing’ as her favourite Dylan track, an outtake released as part of the ongoing Bootleg Series.
Though it’s a lesser-known entry into his discography, ‘Walls of Red Wing’ contains all the characteristics of a Dylan classic. Opening with a harmonica, the folk track dives into a protest with a description of its namesake. Dylan’s lyrics tell stories from inside the walls of a detention centre in Red Wing, detailing the barbed wire and cast iron gates keeping young inmates locked inside.
“Oh it’s all afternoon you remember your hometown,” he laments, “Inside the walls, the walls of Red Wing.” It’s a bleak picture, one with a personal connection to Anderson’s family. Speaking about her love for the song during a conversation with The Line of Best Fit, the artist recalled the story of her grandfather, Axel Anderson, who endured a stay at the Minnesotan prison.
Initially, the family were led to believe that Anderson’s grandfather had made the journey to Minnesota at just six years old, swiftly marrying and starting a business when he arrived. “Okay, this guy is a fantasist to say the least!” Anderson joked, “But he had 12 kids, so they all kind of believed this thing, because nobody actually questioned him.”
Really, Anderson had moved with his parents and, following the death of his mother, found himself in Red Wing. “His father put him into a prison for boys,” Anderson explained, “a prison that had an electric fence, where they beat the boys. It was in Minnesota, and he was there until he was eighteen. It was called Red Wing.”
Upon realising that this was part of her family history, Anderson was taken by the track and its honest depiction of the struggles endured by inmates. “I only understood this song by Dylan when I realised that my grandfather was a prisoner there,” she admitted, “That he had suffered so much he made up a whole other story of his life, where he hadn’t been in Red Wing. It’s not so much a protest song as a song of description and empathy.”
“He’s not saying, ‘Tear the walls down’, he’s just saying what the walls are like,” she concluded, “And I appreciate that very much.” ‘Walls of Red Wing’ may be considered a protest song for its subject matter, but that protest element stems from Dylan’s masterful description of the suffering endured by his subjects.
The song’s impact on Anderson demonstrates the mammoth impact Dylan’s songwriting can have on individuals. Listen to the track below.
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