Songs ▶ Lyrics

Farewell Angelina
The bells of the crown
Are being stolen by bandits
I must follow the sound
The triangle tingles
The music play slow
But farewell Angelina
The night is on fire
And I must go

There is no use in talking
And there is no need for blame
There is nothing to prove
Ev’rything still is the same
A table standing empty
By the edge of the stream
But farewell Angelina
The sky's changing colors
And I must leave

The jacks and the queens
They forsake the courtyard
Fifty-two gypsies
Now file past the guards
In the space where the deuce
And the ace once ran wild
Farewell Angelina
The sky is folding
I’ll see you after a while

See the cross-eyed pirates
Sittin' perched in the sun
Shooting tin cans
With a sawed-off shotgun
And the corporals and neighbors
Clap and cheer with each blast
But farewell Angelina
The sky is trembling
And I must leave fast

King Kong, little elves
In the rooftops they dance
Valentino-type tangos
While the hero's clean hands
Shut the eyes of the dead
Not to embarrass anyone
Farewell Angelina
The sky is flooding over
And I must be gone

(Harmonica Interlude)

The camouflaged parrot
He flutters from fear
When something he doesn't know about
Suddenly appears
What cannot be imitated
Perfect must die
Farewell Angelina
The sky is flooding over
And I must go where it is dry

Machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
At misunderstood visions
And at the faces of clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
But Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
And I must go where it’s quiet

(Harmonica Ending)

Farewell Angelina
The bells of the crown
Are being stolen by bandits
I must follow the sound
The triangle tingles
And the trumpets play slow
Farewell Angelina
The sky is on fire
And I must go.

There’s no need for anger
There’s no need for blame
There is nothing to prove
Ev’rything’s still the same
Just a table standing empty
By the edge of the sea
Means Farewell Angelina
The sky is trembling
And I must leave.

The jack and the queen
Have forsaked the courtyard
Fifty-two gypsies
Now file past the guards
In the space where the deuce
And the ace once ran wild
Farewell Angelina
The sky is falling
I’ll see you in a while

See the cross-eyed pirates
Sittin' perched in the sun
Shooting tin cans
With a sawed-off shotgun
And the neighbors they clap
And they cheer with each blast
But farewell Angelina
The sky’s changing color
And I must leave fast

King Kong, little elves
On the rooftops they dance
Valentino-type tangos
While the makeup man’s hands
Shut the eyes of the dead
Not to embarrass anyone
But farewell Angelina
The sky is embarrassed
And I must be gone













The machine guns are roaring
And the puppets heave rocks
And fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
But farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it’s quiet

deduce and ace (二仔與王牌): smallest (number two) and largest (number one) cards of a deck.
heave (拋扔): lift or haul (something heavy) with great effort.
fiend (惡魔﹑狂徒): an evil spirit or demon, informally an enthusiast or devotee.

Adieu Angelina
Les cloches de la couronne
Ont été volé à l'aube
Je les entends qui sonnent
Et je me dépêche, je dois les rattraper
Adieu Angelina
Le ciel est en feu et je m'en vais

Ce n'est pas la peine d'en faire une affaire
Ce n'est pas la peine d'ameuter toute la terre
C'est une table vide sur le bord de la mer
Adieu Angelina
Le ciel a tremblé, je dois m'en aller

Les rois et les reines quittent la basse-cour
200 bohémiennes sont entrées à la cour
Dans la salle du tout-va, rien ne va plus pour moi
Adieu Angelina
Le ciel s'écroule, je te verrai plus tard

Regarde ces pirates dans la voie lactée
Qui tirent sur des boîtes avec un canon scié
Les voisins applaudissent, poussent des cris de joie
Adieu Angelina
Le ciel se décolore, je dois me sauver

King Kong et les elfes vont danser sur les toits
De longs tangos typiques tandis que de leurs doigts
Des maquilleurs s'escriment à fermer les yeux de la mort
Adieu Angelina
Le ciel est trop sombre, je dois m'échapper

Les mitrailleuses crépitent, les poupées mobilisent
Des bombes en plastique éclatent dans les églises
Appelle-moi comme tu veux, je ne discute pas
Mais adieu Angelina
Le ciel se déchaîne, je vais chercher la paix

Adieu Angélina, je vais chercher la paix.
Adieu Angélina, je vais chercher la paix.

Farewell Angelina
The bells of the crown
Have been stolen at dawn
I hear them ringing
And I need to hurry, gotta catch up to them
Farewell Angelina
The sky is on fire and I'm leaving

It's not worth making a lot out of it
It's not worth letting everyone know
It's an empty table by the seashore
Farewell Angelina
The sky is shaking, I have to go

Kings and queens leave the barnyard
Two hundread gypsies entered the court
In the room where anything goes, nothing is fine with me
Farewell Angelina
The sky is falling, I'll see you later

Look at those pirates in the Milky Way
Who shoot boxes with a sawed-off shotgun
Neighbors applaud, shouting with joy
Farewell Angelina
The sky is fading, I have to save myself

King Kong and the elves will dance on the rooftops
Typical long tangos, even while, with their fingers
Make-up artists try to close the eyes of death
Farewell Angelina
The sky is too dark, I have to escape

Machine guns spatter, dolls mobilize
Plastic bombs explode in churches
Label me as you wish, I will not argue
But farewell Angelina
The sky is unleashed, I will seek peace

Farewell Angelina, I will seek peace
Farewell Angelina, I will seek peace

This is a classic piece written by Bob Dylan, with a simple melody but a richly imaginative crafted lyrics.

“Farewell, Angelina” marks a step forward in Dylan's writing style. He sings the coming birth of a new world from the ashes of the old one. His poetic approach is both symbolist and surrealist. The lyrics paints a forthcoming disaster (Farewell) amid elegant images (Angelina), describing a world falling apart. It sounds like a mysterious world with strange events, or is this the real world?

Perhaps Dylan was saying farewell to his former self, as he would transform from a folk singer with acoustic guitar to a rock musician with electric guitar, disappointing many of his folk fans.

Most likely Bob Dylan penned this song in later November 1964. On 13 January 1965, he recorded the song during the first session for his album “Bringing It All Back Home”. The track was omitted from the final album because he had given the song to Joan Baez, who named her 1965 album “Farewell, Angelina”.

Bob Dylan never performed this song onstage. His recording was finally released in 1991, as a track in “The Bootleg Series Volume 2”.

Dylan's interpretation is a model of its kind: a few chords on acoustic guitar and his voice in multiple variations, intensely emotional.

The song is composed of six stanzas or verses, each with nine lines.

In the seventh line of each verse, Dylan sings 'Farewell, Angelina' with a monotone, vaguely lilting resignation, subtly transmitting a great depth of emotion with his understated vocals. The penultimate line in each verse describes the sky. First it's on fire, then trembling, folding, changing color, being embarrassed, and finally erupting.

The final line in each verse is Dylan telling this unidentified Angelina that he must leave, must go where it's quiet — each verse ends with a slightly different sentiment of departure. The song discusses the coming of an apocalyptic event, and insists that we must go.

The apocalyptic feel of the song recalls the world events in that era. The Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 nearly brought a nuclear war. In August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous speech "I Have a Dream". That year John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November. Then President Johnson pushed for stiffer policies on Vietnam. In 1964, the Beatles appeared on Sullivan Show in February, and the Civil Rights Act was passed in U.S. in July.

This song has been covered by many artists, before Dylan's original recording was revealed in 1991. The original lyrics of Dylan was slight different from Joan Baez's version, with an extra verse:

The camouflaged parrot, he flutters from fear
When something he doesn't know about suddenly appears
What cannot be imitated perfect must die
Farewell Angelina, the sky is flooding over and I must go where it is dry. way.

The song was adapted and translated into French by Pierre Delanoë as “Adieu Angélina”, performed by the female Greek singer Nana Mouskouri.

In 2019, composer Melissa Dunphy arranged “Farewell, Angelina” for solo voice and viola, commissioned by soprano Elise Brancheau for a concert benefiting coLAB Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Brancheau describes her impetus for the commission as follows,

I was immediately struck by the juxtaposition of the sweetly lilting vocal line (and gently strumming guitar accompaniment) with the apocalyptic text.
       The words, while strange and surreal, seemed to perfectly depict the sense of unrest and violence that fills our world today. The intimacy of the repeated “farewells” to a loved one while the world literally falls apart feels especially poignant; the almost absurd contrast between lines like “I’ll see you in awhile” and “the sky is falling” reminds me of the feeling of wanting to draw inward and deny the frightening things happening around us while also being unable to ignore them.
       I began imagining what the music would sound like if it reflected the sense of chaos and destruction of Dylan’s poetry, and commissioned Melissa Dunphy to compose such an arrangement for voice and viola.

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, Bob Dylan grew up in a Jewish middle-class family in Minnesota. As a teenager he listened to the popular rock and country music of the era, and played in various bands.

With time his interest in music deepened, with a particular passion for American folk music and blues. One of his idols was Woody Guthrie, a renowned folk musician and beat poet. “You could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live,” said Dylan of Guthrie’s music.

Dylan moved to New York City in 1961 and began to perform in clubs and cafés in Greenwich Village. He met the record producer John Hammond with whom he signed a contract for his debut self-titled album, Bob Dylan (1962).

In the following years he recorded a number of albums which have had a tremendous impact on popular music. His productivity continued in the following decades, resulting in several masterpieces. He has been called “the voice of a generation”.

During the last six decades he has released more than 50 albums and written in excess of 500 songs, some of the most famous being “Blowin’ In The Wind”, “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “Like A Rolling Stone”. His songs have been covered more than 6,000 times by various artists.

With this profound sense of freedom to freely muse and snatch a semblance of beauty and understanding from anywhere and everywhere, he has inspired generations of songwriters. Bob Dylan said:

The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?

Born in 1941, Joan Chandos Baez is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her mother was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, but her father, Albert Baez, was born in Mexico. Albert studied mathematics and physics and received his PhD degree at Stanford University in 1950. Albert was later credited as a co-inventor of the X-ray microscope. Joan Baez's cousin, John C. Baez, is a mathematical physicist at the University of California.

Due to her Mexican heritage, Joan Baez was subjected to racial slurs and discrimination while growing up. She became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and nonviolence. In an interview, she stated that,

Social justice is the true core of my life, looming larger than music.

In the 1960s, Joan Baez was the Queen of folk music. Her debut solo self-titled album Joan Baez (1960), followed by Joan Baez Volume 2 (1961) and Joan Baez in Concert (1962), all achieved Gold Record status, establishing her as a star.

Joan Baez has been folk royalty from the moment she took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. Her clear, strong voice and political activism helped define the growing Greenwich Village folk scene. At the same time, Baez recognized a rising star there, Bob Dylan.

Baez first heard Dylan perform in 1961, but the two didn’t meet until 1963. Dylan was an unknown kid from the Midwest with a penchant for barbed wit infused with penetrating insight. He was the focus of her attention and she introduced him to the big wide world of folks.

Baez included Dylan's songs in her live performances. They often performed together, and they had an intense two-year romance that deeply affected both of them. Together, they were not only seen as the king and queen of folk music, but they were seen as spokespeople for civil rights and social issues of the day. They appeared and performed at the Lincoln Memorial the day Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his riveting “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963.

But their paths were not meant to be parallel for long. Dylan embraced electric music, folk-rock, and apolitical songwriting, leaving the banner of “the cause” to Baez.

Baez had fond memories of Dylan, “[his] eyes were bluer than robin's eggs.” In a song, she famously wrote about him,

Well you burst on the scene already a legend
         The unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond

At a live performance introducing this song, Baez described Dylan as “by far, the most talented and crazy person I've ever worked with.”

Joan Baez is best remembered for her folk music performances of the 1960s, which included 14 songs at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. After 60 years of performing, Baez announced her retirement in 2019.

In 2016, Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel prize in literature, “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

Bob Dylan's songs are rooted in the rich tradition of American folk music. He is influenced by the poets of modernism and the beatnik movement. Early on, Dylan's lyrics incorporated social struggles and political protest, like “Blowin' in the Wind”. Love and religion are other important themes. His writing is often characterized by refined rhymes and it paints surprising, sometimes surreal imagery, like “Farewell, Angelina”.

Additionally, that Dylan had created a new vernacular in popular music was apparent at every turn. An entire generation of recording artists seemed suddenly to have adopted Dylan's vocabulary, his expansive lyrical frame of reference, his sneer, his put-down style, his questioning of tradition and his ambivalent attitude toward romance. These were all novel things at the time, even his belligerence operating on a higher intellectual plane than the traditional greaseball snottiness of Elvis and other classic rockers.

The New York Times reported: “Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his [Nobel] selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901.”

A novelist Rabih Alameddine tweeted, “Bob Dylan winning a Nobel in Literature is like Mrs Fields being awarded 3 Michelin stars.” The cookies from Debbi Fields are famous around the world.

Dylan's songwriting peer and friend Leonard Cohen said that no prizes were necessary to recognize the greatness of the man who transformed pop music. “To me,” Cohen said, “the Nobel is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.”

Bob Dylan remained silent for days after receiving the award, before telling a journalist that getting the award was “amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?”

Dylan did not attend the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm on 10 December 2016. His acceptance speech (in Chinese) was read by the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden. He recounted his reaction to the Nobel prize,

I was out on the road when I received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to properly process it.
       I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. [...] When he was writing Hamlet, I’m sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: “Who’re the right actors for these roles?” [...] I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare’s mind was the question “Is this literature?”
       [...]
       Like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life’s mundane matters. [...] “Is this song in the right key?” Some things never change, even in 400 years.
       Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?”
       So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.

Besides giving the acceptance speech, Dylan was to deliver a Nobel Lecture, otherwise the prize money would be forfeited. Dylan recorded a video lecture, which was posted on the Nobel Prize website 5 days before the deadline 10 June 2017. He made several references to literature, ending with these words,

That’s what songs are too. Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, “Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.”

Homer was an ancient Greek bard who was said to be blind. His famous epic poems were passed down orally. Muses are nine goddesses of literature and art in Greek mythology. They are in charge of art and science, and give inspiration to artists.