The seventh track on Tempest, a heavy blues built on the stop-time riff familiar from Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy".
The words
A swaggering portrait of brutal, powerful men who rule by force and fear no one.
The song describes a gang of arrogant, well-dressed strongmen, part ancient emperors and part modern hoodlums, and the narrator sometimes seems to speak as one of them. It unfolds as a series of boasts and threats over a single stomping riff that never lets up. The tone is darkly comic and menacing at once. An accordion adds a dusty, border-town color to the grinding Chicago-style blues underneath.
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗Listen and watch
The words
A swaggering portrait of brutal, powerful men who rule by force and fear no one.
The song describes a gang of arrogant, well-dressed strongmen, part ancient emperors and part modern hoodlums, and the narrator sometimes seems to speak as one of them. It unfolds as a series of boasts and threats over a single stomping riff that never lets up. The tone is darkly comic and menacing at once. An accordion adds a dusty, border-town color to the grinding Chicago-style blues underneath.
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗The same year · 2012
Read onMusicBrainz ↗