Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)

An early version of "Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)" was recorded during sessions for Infidels, Dylan's 1983 album, as "Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart".[1] A total of thirteen takes of the song were recorded at the Power Station Studio in New York City, in three of the recording sessions, on April 16, April 25 and April 26.[2] On the recording sheet, the song was listed as "Hold of My Heart".[2] One of the April 25 takes was released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.[1]

The following musicians played on the recording released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991:[3]

• Bob Dylan – guitar, harmonica, vocals
• Mick Taylor – guitar
• Mark Knopfler – guitar
• Alan Clark – Keyboards
• Robbie Shakespeare – bass guitar
• Sly Dunbar – drums

Dylan used the basic track from one of the "Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart" takes from 1983, and added vocal overdubs in January 1985, including vocals by female backup singers.[4]

Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor in the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon. Dylan borrowed lines from this and other Bogart films for "Tight Connection to My Heart".

Dylan biographer Michael Gray notes that, as elsewhere on the Empire Burlesque album, "Tight Connection to My Heart" includes references to a number of lines of dialogue from Humphrey Bogart films.[5] In Sirocco, Bogart says, "'I've got to move fast: I can't with you around my neck", which becomes "Well I had to move fast/And I couldn't with you around my neck" in the song. Also in Sirocco, Bogart says, "I don't know whether I'm too good for you or you're too good for me", changed to "But I can’t figure out if I’m too good for you/Or if you’re too good for me" in "Tight Connection to My Heart".[5] In The Maltese Falcon, when Bogart's character [Sam Spade] is told "We wanna talk to you, Spade", he replies, "Well, go ahead and talk"; Dylan turns this into "You want to talk to me/Go ahead and talk".[5] Gray writes that Dylan's line "I’ll go along with the charade/Until I can think my way out" is said in the movie Tokyo Joe[5] (this line has elsewhere been attributed to another Bogart film, Sahara).[6] A variation on this same line was also used in the Star Trek episode "The Squire of Gothos" in 1967.[5] In The Oklahoma Kid, Bogart says to James Cagney: "I wanna talk to you, kid;" Cagney replies: "Go ahead and talk." Cagney is later arrested for a crime he didn't commit, and kills two men for attempting to get away when he is arresting them for the crime. The song includes the lines "You wanna talk to me/Go ahead and talk/I must be guilty of something" and "Later he'll be shot for resisting arrest."

Gray additionally hears references to some non-Bogart films in the song. In Now and Forever, from 1934, Gary Cooper says about some police officers that "Close up they don’t look as large as they do from a distance;" in the song this becomes "What looks large from a distance/Close up ain’t never that big."[5] Other references are to "Memphis in June", the Hoagy Carmichael song used in Johnny Angel, and to the film title Town Without Pity.[5]

About the film references, biographer Clinton Heylin complains of Dylan's "reliance on the dialogue of Hollywood scriptwriters for any lyrical gaps, as he replaced blazingly original lines from Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart with excerpts from Humphrey Bogart movie scripts."[7] Jonathan Lethem, contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, is likewise disappointed that the rewrite "replaces the original's vulnerable tone with a Bogartishly hardboiled one."[8] Gray writes that "these film script snatches...are so unmemorable and unarresting as content yet are mostly so attractive, tersely energetic and imitable as conversational rhythms, and offer cadences of heightened moment: they are great movie lines, in fact, and understandably appealing to [Dylan]."[5] He adds that, in some of the instances, "Dylan’s sub-editing, his tightening-up, gives [the lines] their radiance. You might feel that they’re easy building blocks for writer‘s-block sufferers, or for singer-songwriters with nothing special to say. Or you might feel that Dylan has made himself inward with, and then re-expressed creatively, yet another branch of American popular culture: one that may have been handed down from above, from the on-highs of Hollywood, but one that has inhabited the shared minds of millions of ordinary people."[5]

The following musicians played on the recording released on Empire Burlesque:[9]

• Bob Dylan – keyboards, vocals
• Mick Taylor – guitar
• Ted Perlman – guitar
• Robbie Shakespeare – bass guitar
• Sly Dunbar – drums
• Carol Dennis – backing vocals
• Queen Esther Marrow – backing vocals
• Peggi Blu – backing vocals