That was an inspired song that came to me. I felt like I was just putting down words that were coming from somewhere else, and I just stuck it out.
~Bob Dylan (“Biograph” notes)“That’s an excellent song, very painless song to write,… It took like 12 seconds – or that’s how it felt.”
~Bob Dylan (to Robert Hilburn – Feb 1992)…But “Every Grain of Sand” is something special: the “Chimes of Freedom” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” of Bob Dylan’s Christian period. A pearl among swine, it has surety and strength all down the line. Also vulnerability.
~Paul Nelson (from his famous “Rolling Stone Magazine” review of “Shot Of Love” – Oct. 1981)
On 11th place on my top 200 list comes this diamond. A masterpiece with lyrics so beautiful you almost loose the music listening to it… the music is also fantastic and it contains two of Dylan’s best harmonica solos’s.
It was recorded early May 1981 @ Clover Recorders, Los Angeles, California.
The love in ‘Every Grain Of Sand’ , though firmly rooted in Dylan’s conversion experience and his Bible studies, immediately and obviously reaches beyond it’s context to communicate a deeply felt devotional spirit based on universal experiences: pain of self-awareness, and sense of wonder or awe of the beauty of the natural world.
~Paul Williams (BD Performing Artist 1974-86)
As Paul Williams points out.. you don’t have to be a religious person to find beauty & comfort here:
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand
Here is a GREAT video… matching pictcures to the lyrics in a brilliant way:
The key to the performance is its motion: it moves like the sea, forth and back and forth and back, filled with the quality of restfulness but never resting.
~Paul Williams (BD Performing Artist 1974-86)
