Bob Dylan's 'Slow Train Coming' and 'On the Slow Train' by Michael Williams
24 July 2010
Somebody asked me the other day if my book 'On the Slow Train' was influenced by the famous 1979 Bob Dylan song 'Slow Train Coming'. Much as I love Dylan, I'm not certain he's into Britain's railways - although you never know! Paul Simon wrote his famous song 'Homeward Bound' while waiting for a connection on Widnes station in Cheshire. But I checked out Dylan's lyrics just to make sure – and I found the following words – which have more than a little resonance, given current events surrounding BP in the Gulf of Mexico...
'All that foreign oil controlling American soil.
Look around you, it's just bound to make you embarrassed...
Deciding America's future from Amsterdam and to Paris
And there's a slow, slow train coming up around the bend.'
Dylan – ever the prophet!
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