This song has a strong narrative. Has a film ever been made based on it?
Is this an extra verse? (I don’t remember it on ‘Blood on the Tracks’)
Lily’s arms were locked around the man that she dearly loved to touch,
She forgot all about the man she couldn’t stand who hounded her so much.
“I’ve missed you so,” she said to him, and he felt she was sincere,
But just beyond the door he felt jealousy and fear.
Just another night in the life of the Jack of Hearts.
I’ve seen various interpretations of the lyrics:
is it ‘colt revolver clicked’ rather than ‘cold revolver clicked’?
are Lily and Rosemary the same person?
does Rosemary stab Big Jim?
does Rosemary escape hanging?
is Lily in disguise? (changing dresses, dying her hair)
who does Lily warn not to touch the wet paint? (Jack of Hearts?)
Yes, I never thought the JofH died. The click was the revolver being cocked, but before he shoots Rosemary stabs him. The last two verses leave you wondering whether the JofH is going to come back to save Rosemary from hanging, to take Lily away, both or neither.
I too heard about a proposed movie version, but nothing came of it and I don’t know details.
Lily taking all of the dye out of her hair was more a step towards becoming a respectible lady. Back then only whores and loose woman dyed their hair (like Belle Watling, kinown for her hair dyed “scarlett”). She is also thinking about her father, another sign of respectibility.
I do think that Jim kills Jack. The gang members are waiting for him, but he doesn’t show, and Lily isn’t thinking about him. But now it does seem ambiguous. Curse you, Bob D ylan. No, wait. It’s a helluva song.
This has been my take on the song as well. I’ve always looked on the song as a description of an elaborate caper. JoH went into the dance hall, fully intending to stip up a huge row between Jim, Rosemary, and Lilly. The hurly-burly provided cover for the boys to drill through the wall and clean out the bank safe. I’m pretty sure JofH got away clean, and Rosemary hanged. The very last verse, where Lilly is “thinkin’ about Rosemary and thinkin’ about THE LAW,” indicates to me Rosemary met justice at the end of a rope.
Annie Xmas, the gang was waiting by the riverside for one more member, because “they couldn’t go no further without the Jack of Hearts.”
Lily is thinking about JofH: "she was thinking of her father, whom she very rarely saw/thinking about about Rosemary, and thinking about the law/but most of all, she was thinking about the Jack of Hearts!
I always went with the “Rosemary stabs Jim to prevent the JoH from being shot and is hung for the murder” scenario. Jack meets up with the gang (they were waiting for him because “the boys finally made it through the wall” before Jack is confronted by Jim; it’s just timing).
My interpretation of the ending revolved around a more traditional “dying her hair to cover signs of age” reading.
I saw it more as her giving up on her dreams of being taken away from a life she deems beneath her. Her father largely abandoned her (my read on it), Jack has left her again and Jim, her fallback option, is now dead. She’s had a life of hook-ups with various men who “took her everywhere” and she still wound up playing caberet at a bar in some small town. She’s not getting younger and her options for an opulent lifestyle are largely gone.
I’ll also note that Lily doesn’t think about Jim – he was just a means to an end – but she does think about Rosemary who lived a miserable life being married to Jim for his money. They were different physical people but kindred characters. Rosemary had “done a lot of bad things”, I get the feeling that she was once like Lily.
I absolutely love the how the line “Rosemary started drinking hard and seeing her reflection in the knife” at the beginning ties in with “Big Jim laid covered up, killed by a penknife in the back” at the end.
As they say in theatre: If there’s a gun in Act I, it better go off in Act 3.
I have to admit, if I were ever to make one film, it would be a short using this as the soundtrack. I have every last frame storyboarded in my mind, and though it won’t emulate the story exactly (why bother filming exactly what you’re hearing?), the lyrics would serve as counterpoint to a similar western story I devised that was inspired by listening to this song (and, quite honestly, never completely understanding what happened). It would have love, sex, pursuit, death, and “justice” (and lots of flashbacks and flashforwards), all in one clean 8-minute package.
I know it’s a pipe dream, but every time I close my eyes, I can imagine every set-up, every camera movement, every cutaway as if it already exists. :sigh:
Also, Rosemary wanted to do one good thing before she died. That good thing is saving the JoH by stabbing Big Jim. There is no particular reason to take revenge after the fact.
As for the die, both Lily and Rosemary are actresses. We don’t see Lily’s role in the production, but she is playing cards with the cast and has a dressing room backstage. Rosemary is playing the role of Big Jim’s wife. The dye has a deeper meaning of change, but is also just removing die she used for the part.
What about the theory that someone took the bullets (maybe rosemary) out of Jim’s gun. It was a “cold revolver” after all, and it only clicked when he pressed the trigger.
Also, I think it’s pretty clear that JoH has a quickie with Lily in the dressing room, and then escapes in a monk costume (or just a hood of somekind) before Jim even breaks in with the gun.
The idea that the JOH was killed never occurred to me, and I’m completely unconvinced now.
“The only person on the scene missing was the Jack of Hearts.” Big Jim is dead, but not counted as missing; so apparently the JOH is somewhere else. I can’t imagine that Lily or Rosemary dragged his dead body off and concealed it.
I understand it would be a lot of work for someone to do this, but I’d love to read a straightforward (non-verse Cliff’s Notes style) summary of the narrative. This song, which I’ve heard maybe a thousand times over the years, confuses the hell out of me, probably because I haven’t given it my complete attention and sat down and parsed it out as many of you obviously have.
It might be interesting to try. For example, how closely can you pin the setting? From the lyrics, are there any indication where and when the narrative takes place? Or would the narrative begin, “Somewhere out West, at some point in the past…” Are there really diamond mines in the US, btw? Or must we posit that this narrative is set in South Africa?
There is the (now closed) Kelsey Lake mine in Colorado, and Crater of Diamonds in Arkansas. There have been a number of smaller finds. However, Dylan is clearly setting the scene in some generic Western mining town, and the town’s “only diamond mine” may well be a metaphorical reference to Jim simply being the wealthiest man in town (like Al Swearengen in Deadwood, the owner of the Gem Saloon).
I’m not clear on the need for a Cliff’s Notes type explanation; the lyrics are perfectly clear. Jack is a cad (with a reputation) intent on stealing money from Big Jim by stirring shit up with Jim’s mistress, Lily (who is in love with Jack) and Rosemary, Jim’s wife who knows about the affair and is jealous. In order to take the safe without detection, Jack walks into the cabaret to stir up some shit while his crew drills through the wall. Jim catches Jack fooling around with Lily (who is taunting Jack, thinking she has drawn him into her drama), who draws and cocks his pistol but is killed by Rosemary (“stabbed by a penknife in the back”) before he can shoot. Jack presumably ducks out to meet up with his crew in the riverbed with their haul, while Big Jim is buried, Rosemary hung, and Lily thinking about her past, future, but “most of all, she was thinking about the Jack of Hearts.” It is probably best not to think to hard about lines like, “Be careful not to touch the wall there’s a brand new coat of paint,” and “As the leading actor hurried by in the costume of a monk,” as Dylan often added nonsensical lyrics to keep meter and add baseless “complexity” to the narrative.
