B-side Rita May Genre Rock, folk rock | Released May 16, 1966 Label Columbia | |
Recorded February 17, 1966,
Columbia Row Music Studios, Nashville, Tennessee Length 7:07 (album version)
3:35 (single version) | ||
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" is a song written by Bob Dylan that appears on his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. The album version also appears on 1971's Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II. An early studio take, done in a faster cut-time, was released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack in 2005. As the recording indicates, Dylan had difficulty fitting the words to the tempo, and evidently this led to its rearrangement, as heard on Blonde on Blonde, in a more "rock"-oriented 4/4 time.
Contents
A live version of this song appears on the 1976 album Hard Rain, and was also released as a single with "Rita May" as the B-side.
Recording
All twenty takes of "Stuck Inside of Mobile" were recorded in the early hours of February 17, 1966, in Columbia's Music Row Studios in Nashville. Dylan continuously reworked the song in the studio, revising lyrics and changing the song's structure as he recorded different takes. Eventually, after recording for three hours, a master take, the twentieth and final take, was chosen. Take five would eventually be released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7.
The entire recording session was released on the 18-disc Collector's Edition of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 in 2015, with highlights from the outtakes appearing on the 6-disc and 2-disc versions of that album.
Cover versions
The Grateful Dead covered the song in their live shows during the 1980s and 1990s, and performed it when Dylan himself toured with them in 1987. Cat Power covered the song on the soundtrack of the film I'm Not There. Spanish artist Kiko Veneno covered this song in a rumba (a subgenre of Flamenco) version. North Mississippi Allstars cover it on their 2011 album Keys to the Kingdom. Elvis Costello performed a solo version of the song live in Mobile, AL on March 13, 2015.
In popular culture
"Stuck Inside of Mobile" is used in the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and is mentioned in the book by Hunter S. Thompson. John Lennon wrote a spoof titled "Stuck Inside of Lexicon with the Roget's Thesaurus Blues Again," pointing out that Dylan was using obscure lyrics too extensively. This line is found in the song "Satire #2" on the John Lennon Anthology. The Sisters of Mercy song "Dominion/Mother Russia" features the line "stuck inside of Memphis with the mobile home", as a play on words on this song's title. The song also inspired the name of the Memphis Group, a 1980s design movement, with its title. The song was also used as the first and final songs of Mobile radio station 97.5 WABB on February 5, 1973 and February 29, 2012 respectively.