{"id":119396,"date":"2026-02-02T00:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T00:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/119396\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T00:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T00:10:12","slug":"this-bob-dylan-album-closer-went-back-in-time-two-decades-inspired-by-a-fleeting-moment-with-a-manhattan-call-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/119396\/","title":{"rendered":"This Bob Dylan Album Closer Went Back in Time Two Decades, Inspired by a Fleeting Moment With a Manhattan Call Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first few seconds of Bob Dylan\u2019s<\/a> 23rd studio album, Empire Burlesque, a cavernous snare clues the listener in to the fact that this album came out smack dab in the middle of the 1980s. But by the closing track, said listener could reasonably assume that they had just traveled back in time two decades to a much younger, much folkier Dylan frequenting nightclubs around Greenwich Village. \u201cDark Eyes\u201d, the tenth and final track to Empire Burlesque, was, appropriately, the last song Dylan recorded for the album.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, it was only partially Dylan\u2019s choice to do so. The famously independent musician took the advice of the album\u2019s producer, Arthur Baker, who told Dylan he ought to end the album with a stark acoustic number. The only problem, of course, is that Dylan didn\u2019t have anything on hand to use for the closing track. \u201cI knew he was right,\u201d Dylan recalled in his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One<\/a>. \u201cThe night the album was being completed, I told him I\u2019d see what I could come up with. Saw the importance of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dylan found his inspiration later that night after leaving the studio. And in true Dylan fashion, the song he created from that experience was an opaque, five-minute-long expansion of a seconds-long encounter with a woman he saw in a hotel hallway.<\/p>\n

The Story Behind \u201cDark Eyes\u201d, the Closer to Bob Dylan\u2019s \u2018Empire Burlesque\u2019<\/p>\n

Bob Dylan didn\u2019t get back to his hotel, the Plaza on 59th Street, until after midnight. With his recent conversation with Arthur Baker still swimming in his head, Dylan\u2019s mind was on potential ideas for a closing track to Empire Burlesque. He recounted in his memoir, \u201c[I] went through the [hotel] lobby and headed upstairs. As I stepped out of the elevator, a call girl was coming towards me in the hallway\u2014pale yellow hair wearing a fox coat\u2014high-heeled shoes that could pierce your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe had blue circles around her eyes,\u201d he continued, \u201cblack eyeliner, dark eyes. She looked like she had been beaten up and was afraid that she\u2019d get beat up again. In her hand, crimson purple wine in a glass. \u2018I\u2019m just dying for a drink,\u2019 she said as she passed me in the hall. She had a beautifulness, but not for this kind of world. Poor wretch, doomed to walk this hallway for a thousand years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dylan turned this brief encounter into \u201cDark Eyes\u201d while overlooking Central Park out of his hotel window. \u201cI recorded it the next night with only an acoustic guitar. It was the right thing to do,\u201d Dylan wrote. Unlike the rest of Empire Burlesque, \u201cDark Eyes\u201d harkened back to the early Dylan days<\/a>, when only an acoustic guitar and a racked harmonica accompanied him. The track was a stark contrast from the rest of the \u00fcber-1980s production on the album, which helped hammer its introspective point home.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, time is short, and the days are sweet, and passion rules the arrow that flies,\u201d Dylan sings in the final verse. \u201cA million faces at my feet, but all I see are dark eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo by Luciano Viti\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first few seconds of Bob Dylan\u2019s 23rd studio album, Empire Burlesque, a cavernous snare clues the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[15940,75,84,83,9,24,63,1572],"class_list":{"0":"post-119396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-bob-dylan","9":"tag-manhattan","10":"tag-manhattan-headlines","11":"tag-manhattan-news","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-rock-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}