Bob Dylan – “Visions of Johanna”
A D E7 A
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?
D E7 A
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
E A
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
D A
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
D A
In this room the heat pipes just cough
D
The country music station plays soft
A E7
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
A D E7 A
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
D A E7 A D A
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.
A D E7 A
In the empty lot where the ladies play blind man’s bluff with the key chain
D E7 A
And the allnight girls, they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
E
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
A
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s realy insane
D A
Louise, she’s allright, she’s just near
D A
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
D
But she just makes it all too concice and too clear
A E7
That Johanna’s not here
A D E7 A
The ghost of ‘lectricity howls in the bones of her face
D A E7 A D A
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.
A D E7 A
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
D E7 A
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
E A
And when bringing her name up He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
D A
He’s sure got a lotta gall
D A
to be so useless and all
D
Muttering small talk at the wall
A E7
while I’m in the hall
A D E7 A
How can I explain? Oh, it’s so hard to get on
D A E7 A D A
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn.
A D E7 A
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
D E7 A
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
E A
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles
D A
See the primitive wallflower freeze
D A
When the jellyfaced women all sneeze
D A E7
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze, I can’t find my knees”
A D E7 A
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
D A E7 A D A
But these visions of Johanna they make it all seem so cruel.
A D E7 A
The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Sayin’ “Name me someone that’s not a parasite
D E7 A
and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him.” But like Louise
E
always says, “Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?” As she, herself, pre
A
-pares for him
D A
And Madonna, she still has not showed
D D
We see this empty cage now corrode
D A
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
D A
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
D A
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
D A E7
On the back of the fish truck that loads While my conscience explodes
A D E A
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
D A E7 A
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain
