Visions of Johanna

Producer

Written during a black out in New York, while he was dating folk singer Joan Baez, but was falling in love with his first wife, Sara. “Visions of Johanna” is one of Dylan’s… Read More

May 16, 19661 viewer154.2K views

Visions of Johanna Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Ain't it just like the night to play
Tricks when you're trying to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded
Though we're all doing our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

[Verse 2]
In the empty lot where the ladies play
Blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls
They whisper of escapades out on the "D" train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's insane
Louise, she's all right, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

[Verse 3]
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall
To be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
Oh, how can I explain?
It's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn

[Verse 4]
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo, "This is what salvation must be like after a while"
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeez, I can't find my knees"
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

[Verse 5]
The peddler now speaks
To the countess who's pretending to care for him
Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite
And I'll go out and say a prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"You can't look at much, can you, man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes everything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

Embed

About

Genius Annotation

Written during a black out in New York, while he was dating folk singer Joan Baez, but was falling in love with his first wife, Sara. “Visions of Johanna” is one of Dylan’s most beloved, debated and surreal epics yet it all boils down to one simple truth: he misses Johanna.

The original name was “Seems Like a Freeze-Out,” an apt description of the situation mentioned above.

It was somehow ironic that the song was recorded in one take on Valentine’s Day in 1966. (sourced here)

Andrew Motion, Britain’s Poet Laureate, once declared “Visions of Johanna” to have the best lyrics ever written.