Long and Wasted Years

"Long and Wasted Years" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan that appears as the fourth track on his 2012 studio album Tempest. Like much of Dylan's 21st-century output, he produced the song himself using the pseudonym Jack Frost.

"Long and Wasted Years"
Song by Bob Dylan
from the album Tempest
ReleasedSeptember 10, 2012
RecordedJanuary-March, 2012
StudioGroove Masters
GenreFolk, Rock and roll
Length3:47
LabelColumbia Records
Songwriter(s)Bob Dylan
Producer(s)Jack Frost (Bob Dylan)

Unusually for a Dylan song, there is no musical chorus or bridge and there is no lyrical refrain. Dylan recites verses over a "descending chord progression that becomes relentlessly more intense" as it repeats for nearly four minutes.[1]

Reception

Music journalist Patrick Doyle, writing in a 2020 Rolling Stone article where the song ranked 14th on a list of "The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century", compared the song's themes to Martin Scorsese's film The Irishman, observing that both feature a narrator looking back and surveying "the wreckage of a messy life."[1] Doyle praised the "small details" that make the song, "like when Dylan says, 'I ain’t seen my family in 20 years/That ain’t easy to understand, they may be dead by now/I lost track of ’em after they lost their land.'”[2]

In their book Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track, authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon synopsize the song as describing the "twilight of a couple's contentious relationship" and raise the possibility that it may be "an allusion to the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden as described in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost." They note that Dylan's "singing is strong, half-sarcastic, half-ferocious".[3]

Musicologist and Dylan scholar Eyolf Ostrem called it Dylan's "craziest song in many years" and compared it to "Idiot Wind" as a "fabulous post-break up song".[4]

Live performances

Between 2013 and 2019, Dylan performed the song live 359 times on the Never Ending Tour.[5]

References
  1. Vozick-Levinson, Jon Dolan,Patrick Doyle,Andy Greene,Brian Hiatt,Angie Martoccio,Rob Sheffield,Hank Shteamer,Simon; Dolan, Jon; Doyle, Patrick; Greene, Andy; Hiatt, Brian; Martoccio, Angie; Sheffield, Rob; Shteamer, Hank; Vozick-Levinson, Simon (2020-06-18). "The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2021-01-01.
  2. "Long and Wasted Years | The Official Bob Dylan Site". www.bobdylan.com. Retrieved 2021-01-01.
  3. Margotin, Philippe. Bob Dylan : all the songs : the story behind every track. Guesdon, Jean-Michel (First ed.). New York. ISBN 1-57912-985-4. OCLC 869908038.
  4. "Long and Wasted Years". dylanchords.info. Retrieved 2021-01-01.
  5. "Bob Dylan Tour Statistics | setlist.fm". www.setlist.fm. Retrieved 2021-01-01.
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