Caribbean Wind

"Caribbean Wind"
Song by Bob Dylan
from the album Biograph
Released	November 7, 1985 (1985-11-07)
Recorded	April 7, 1981
Studio	Los Angeles
Genre	Rock
Label	Columbia
Songwriter	Bob Dylan

"Caribbean Wind" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in 1980. Dylan attempted to record it repeatedly during the sessions for his 1981 album Shot of Love but was never satisfied with the results, and the song was left off the record. A studio take from April 7, 1981 was eventually issued on the 1985 retrospective box set Biograph. Dylan performed the song in concert only once, at the Fox Warfield Theatre in San Francisco on November 12, 1980; that performance and an earlier rehearsal were released in 2017 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981.

The song exists in several substantially different lyrical versions, the product of extensive rewriting that Dylan later said had cost him the original inspiration. Despite—or because of—its unfinished state, "Caribbean Wind" has attracted sustained critical attention, and is frequently discussed alongside "Angelina" and "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" as one of the major songs Dylan withheld from Shot of Love. Biographer Clinton Heylin has called the Warfield rendition Dylan's single greatest in-concert performance.

Background and composition

"Caribbean Wind" was written in the second half of 1980, after the conclusion of Dylan's gospel tour in May of that year and during a period of prolific songwriting that also produced "Every Grain of Sand", "Angelina" and "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar". Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin has characterized "Caribbean Wind" and "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" as songs that set the narrator's troubled romantic life against the demands of religious commitment.

Heylin has grouped "Caribbean Wind" with "Angelina" and "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" as closely related works written in the same period, reading "Angelina" as a commentary on the closing verses of the other two. None of the three appeared on the original vinyl release of Shot of Love: "Caribbean Wind" was set aside unfinished, "Angelina" was cut from the preliminary sequence, and "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" was issued instead as the B-side of the "Heart of Mine" single and included on the cassette edition. "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" was subsequently added to the ten-track compact disc version of Shot of Love and then to the 1985 vinyl reissue, and has appeared on all later pressings; the other two remained unreleased until Biograph and The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 respectively.

"Caribbean Wind" is built on a descending bassline beneath verses of six lines, alternating with a chorus that gives the song its title and invokes the Caribbean as a zone of heat, exile and desire. Its imagery draws on both the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Revelation, and across the various versions the narration shifts between first and third person while the time frame moves between past and present.

Versions and recording

"Caribbean Wind" is among the most heavily rewritten songs in Dylan's catalogue; the lyrics differ markedly from one recording to the next, and the text published on Dylan's official website corresponds closely to none of the earliest versions. Four versions are known to circulate:

• A rehearsal recorded at Rundown Studios, Santa Monica, California, on September 23, 1980, featuring pedal steel guitar.
• The live performance at the Fox Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, on November 12, 1980.
• A studio version recorded on March 31, 1981 at Studio 55 during the Shot of Love sessions, produced by Jimmy Iovine and featuring David Mansfield on mandolin. It remains officially unreleased, though it has long circulated among collectors; writing in Uncut, Allen Jones judged it the strongest of the four and regretted its omission from Springtime in New York.
• The version recorded on April 7, 1981 and released on Biograph.

An extensively rewritten and rearranged version was also attempted at Chuck Plotkin's Clover Studios in Los Angeles in late April or May 1981, but Dylan was again dissatisfied and the song was set aside.

During the March 1981 sessions at Rundown and Studio 55, at which Dylan was auditioning Iovine as a potential producer, "Caribbean Wind" was the principal focus of the work. The song had already generated interest in the rock press following its single live airing, and was regarded as a likely centerpiece for the forthcoming album, but Dylan did not consider it finished. Repeated attempts during the Iovine sessions were unsuccessful, and Dylan grew increasingly pessimistic about the song; by contrast, "Angelina" was captured quickly and marked for inclusion. However, "Angelina" was in the event also dropped: having originally been chosen to close Shot of Love, it was removed along with "Magic" when Dylan reviewed the preliminary sequence on May 13, 1981, so that neither of the two songs the sessions had been built around appeared on the finished record.

Release

The April 7, 1981 recording was issued on disc three of Biograph, released by Columbia Records on November 7, 1985, as one of eighteen previously unreleased tracks in the set.

In 2017, two further versions appeared on The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981: the November 12, 1980 Warfield performance, included on the two-disc edition as well as the eight-disc deluxe set, and the September 23, 1980 pedal-steel rehearsal, included on disc four of the deluxe set only.

Live performance

Dylan played "Caribbean Wind" in concert only once, on November 12, 1980 at the Fox Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, during the residency that opened his fall 1980 tour. Critic Paul Williams is reported to have asked Dylan directly to perform the song. Dylan introduced it with an extended spoken preamble concerning Lead Belly, drawing an implicit parallel between the reception of Lead Belly's changing repertoire and the response to his own recent gospel material. Dylan appeared unhappy with the performance and did not return to the song at any of the remaining 1980 shows. The recording nonetheless circulated widely as an audience tape and became, for many listeners, the definitive rendering of the song; see Reception below.

Dylan's official website lists the song as having been performed once.

Lyrics and interpretation

The Biograph text opens with a woman identified through layered biblical and literary allusion—the Rose of Sharon of the Song of Songs, Paradise Lost, and a city of seven hills read variously as Jerusalem or Rome—and moves through a narrative involving a performance in Miami, a third figure described in predatory terms, and a woman whose brothers have been killed. The chorus sets the Caribbean between Nassau and Mexico, pairing images of ice and furnace.

Commentators have generally read the successive rewrites as a record of Dylan gradually distancing the song from the specific circumstances that prompted it, and from the explicitly evangelical idiom of Slow Train Coming and Saved. The earlier versions carry more overtly Christian and more topical material—including references to political violence in Central America—while the released version is more oblique.

Dylan's assessment

In the interviews with Cameron Crowe published in the Biograph booklet, Dylan discussed the song at length. He said he had been unable to grasp what it was about once he had finished it, and described the experience of returning to an unfinished song only to find the original inspiration gone—after which, he said, completing it becomes a struggle and frustration sets in. He also told Crowe that he had begun the song in St. Vincent after waking from a strange dream, and that he had been thinking about staying with someone for the wrong reasons.

Dylan's remarks on the song's construction were markedly more favourable. Explaining why it had been held back, he said it was unlike anything else he had written, describing how the storyline moves from third person to first, how that figure becomes the listener, and how the time frame shifts into the distant past and returns to the present—a technique he judged effective. His stated dissatisfaction therefore concerned his loss of purchase on the song's subject rather than its shifting narration, a device he had used deliberately in earlier work such as "Tangled Up in Blue".

Reception

"Caribbean Wind" has been widely treated as one of Dylan's significant unreleased works. Heylin has described the November 1980 Warfield rendition as Dylan's single greatest in-concert performance, and argued that it ought to have been released far earlier. Paul Williams likewise described the Warfield performance as the high point of the fall 1980 concerts and called the song a masterpiece that never came together in the studio, judging the Biograph take inferior both lyrically and musically; he compared the song's construction to "Visions of Johanna" and "Idiot Wind" in the range of feeling it is able to hold.

Reviewing Springtime in New York for Uncut, Allen Jones called "Caribbean Wind" the greatest song missing from the Shot of Love era, describing it as an epic treatment of romantic upheaval and Armageddon cast in the shifting narrative manner of "Tangled Up in Blue", and dismissing the Biograph recording as lumpy by comparison with the circulating Studio 55 take.

Critical opinion remains divided over which version is strongest. The Biograph recording is generally credited with the most coherent lyric and a strong vocal, though its comparatively polished production—including the backing vocalists' wind effects—has drawn criticism, while the Warfield performance is admired for its intensity despite a lyric that some hear as less resolved.

References

Sources

• Gray, Michael (2006). The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-6933-5.
• Heylin, Clinton (2011). Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2, 1974–2008. Constable. ISBN 978-1-84901-598-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Heylin, Clinton (2011a). Behind the Shades: The 20th Anniversary Edition. Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-27240-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Heylin, Clinton (2017). Trouble in Mind: Bob Dylan's Gospel Years – What Really Happened. Route. ISBN 978-1-901927-70-4. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Margotin, Philippe; Guesdon, Jean-Michel (2022). Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track (Expanded ed.). Black Dog & Leventhal. ISBN 978-0-7624-7573-5.
• Trager, Oliver (2004). Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. Billboard Books. ISBN 978-0-8230-7974-2.
• Williams, Paul (2004) [1994]. Bob Dylan: Performing Artist. 1974–1986 The Middle Years. Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-1-84449-096-7.

External links

• "Caribbean Wind" at Bob Dylan's official website