To think you could record a track such as this and then not release it for several years is staggering to me. It was recorded for the Oh Mercy album in 1989 and the producer, Daniel Lanois, believed it should have been the opening track of that album. It finally appeared at the end of 58 tracks on The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991. As if to make up for this omission it has now appeared in various versions on at least another 4 compilation albums. However a song of this quality deserves a place at the centre of a great album, which perhaps Oh Mercy could have been if another famous track recorded at the same time, Dignity, had also been included along with classics such as Everything Is Broken and Most Of The Time.
Back to the song, its resonance comes from the way it updates the classic Dylan of the 60s and is one of his last songs to still rock as if he wanted to be a Beatle or even Bruce Springsteen rather than a gravel voiced bluesman. The galloping drums (Daniel Lanois also produced U2) promise a redemption which of course never quite arrives, but we are certainly hurled towards another world by the building, chiming guitars of Mason Ruffner. The vocal phrasing is particularly strong and dylanesque, constantly tripping you up with the unexpected meanings, and when he gets to the punchline (Into the path you are hurled) the music soars, and his voice rises to the occasion.
This is a song which takes his dazzling work of the 60s and refracts it to render a more modern and mature vision. The lyrics are neither verbose nor florid, as they could have been in the 60s, they are simply trying to accurately describe a state of mind. In a sense it is a summation of his career, which can indeed appear as a series of dreams given his chameleon like metamorphosis from folk, protest, rock, surrealism, country, troubadour and guignol into an elder statesman on a never ending tour. There is a sense of sadness and languor, an absolute belief in his refusal to be a spokesman with all the answers, yet the mystery of existence still haunts and the extra terrestrial cards are nearly within his grasp. The emotion of a life lived pours through this song, a joyous requiem to the mystery of the unconscious.
The point he is making – that life is seriously a never ending Sisyphean task and yet also a series of vignettes which repeat outside comprehension, that his dreams have constructed his reality and so it has come to be, reflect a desire we all recognise – to arrive at a moment where we are at peace with our own dreams. In their bare and graphic descriptions we understand these incoherent dreams, perhaps we feel we have shared them. (I certainly do.) This man is no longer haunted by the history of his vivid imagination and crazy life, nor his frightening dreamscape, it has all become one and he accepts it for the madness that it was and may still be. There is still wonder, but no longer any fear, he is an observer who does not have to understand everything in order to see the chance of redemption. Surely the sign of a man who has gone the distance, no more worries, just thinking.
Bob Dylan thinking of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), author of Illuminations.
Stills from the official video for Series of Dreams 1991.
A sense of the series of dreams referred to in the song can be garnered from the official video, which quotes from many historical aspects of Bob’s life:
Original Release 1991 : The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991.
This track also appears on : Greatest Hits Volume 3 (1994), The Bootleg Series, Vol 8: Tell Tale Signs (2008), The Real…Bob Dylan (2012), Side Tracks (2013).
The Official Lyrics
Some versions contain this extra verse:
Thinking of a series of dreams
Where the middle and the bottom drop out
And you’re walking out of the darkness
And into the shadows of doubt
Wasn’t going to any great trouble
You believe in it’s whatever it seems
Nothing too heavy to burst the bubble
Just thinking of a series of dreams