He Disappeared to Key West and Came Back With a Song That Still Haunts Us: The Untold Story Behind Bob Dylan’s ‘Key West (Philosopher Pirate)’ click the link to read more

Just Key West. Not much of a story, but ten performances of the Rough and Rowdy Ways track from across 2021. Bob Dylan hit a masterstroke with his most recent album. He has toured it for four years and appears to show no sign of stopping. Rightly so. Any artist who can pull out a late-stage piece as strong as Rough and Rowdy Ways would be wise to perform it for as long as possible. Dylan may as well be the philosopher pirate mentioned in the title of his 2020 track. He is the swashbuckling artist, swinging from the ropes of longevity, looking back at the damage and dismay, trying to make sure it does not come again. What The Key West Story provides is not a rehash of the lyrical structure, which gives thanks to the Beat Generation, but of the instrumental overhaul the song received.

A song which was deemed by another publication as simply not as good as WAP, Key West is a musing on the heyday of Dylan’s career. He reaches deep into the pockets of history, far beyond that, in fact, to figure out the disarray of the modern world. Much of Rough and Rowdy Ways is hinged on that. One of Dylan’s most acclaimed songs to date, and nobody can quite make sense of it. The Land of Oz may be a reference to Australia or The Wizard of Oz, just one line of a nine-minute song. Listening to it in a live environment certainly helps get to grips with the heavy intertextuality. The Key West Story is not just a song repeated on stage verbatim, but a chance to hear the subtleties of a staggering piece of work. Dylan pieces the track together with fresh focus on new lines each time, the cultural cornerstones and moments in history which influence him are ever-changing, and as such, the song is too.

Look to the horizon, then, as Dylan does across these performances. A November 2, 2021 rendition opens the compilation, and the second track, performed just a day later, offers an instrumental variation, a booming, darker tone to the song from Dylan. His gruff-sounding vocals are a treat for a song like this, a track which needs the wizened, ageing voice to make sense of the past. Those teary-eyed reflections are phenomenal to listen to and repeat. An hour and a half of Key West is a surprisingly listenable compilation, even though it is just one song. Those differences Tony Garnier and the band offer this Rough and Rowdy Ways rip, that is the difference-maker. Slight rearrangements of a song which will go down as one of the all-time greats from Dylan. There is little better than that.

After all those live versions, head back to the original. The philosopher pirate has plundered the heart and soul, and after all that, an hour and a half of live versions, we are still no closer to figuring out the meaning. But Dylan has made it clear for over sixty years that to doubt yourself over the meaning of a song is only right. He will not give up the origins that easily. Key West remains one of his most elusive songs, even after it has been performed more than two hundred times. All we can do is hope our interpretation, that of Key West as a song of historied origins, much like the Florida city itself, is close to unlocking its dead presidential theme. William McKinley, John F. Kennedy, they all feature on Rough and Rowdy Ways as Dylan seeks a line of truth in a turbulent time for the United States.