The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
Encyclopedia
"The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" is a song on Bob Dylan
's 1967 album John Wesley Harding
. He has performed the song live in 1987 (with the Grateful Dead
), 1988, and 2000.
The plainly spoken ballad
is the longest song on John Wesley Harding, without chorus, bridge, or a refrain to vary its structure. Like the rest of the album, the instrumentation is very sparse. The story has Frankie Lee responding to suggestions and temptations of his friend Judas Priest, which leave him to die "of thirst" after 16 nights and days in a home with 24 women.
Andy Gill speculates that early verses of Frankie agonizing over Judas' offer of money echo Dylan's business dealings. To Frankie worldly delights are represented as "Paradise," though the devilish Judas recognizes their true price is "Eternity" - Frankie's mortal soul.
Unusually for a Dylan song, "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" ends with a moral, telling the listener "the moral of this story, the moral of this song, is simply that one should never be where one does not belong", to help one's neighbor with his load, and "don't go mistaking Paradise/for that home across the road."
Heavy metal
band Judas Priest
derived their name from this song.
Swedish Punk Rock
band Franky Lee
derived their name from this song.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
's 1967 album John Wesley Harding
John Wesley Harding (album)
John Wesley Harding is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's eighth studio album, released by Columbia Records in December 1967.Produced by Bob Johnston, the album marked Dylan's return to acoustic music and traditional roots, after three albums of electric rock music...
. He has performed the song live in 1987 (with the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
), 1988, and 2000.
The plainly spoken ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
is the longest song on John Wesley Harding, without chorus, bridge, or a refrain to vary its structure. Like the rest of the album, the instrumentation is very sparse. The story has Frankie Lee responding to suggestions and temptations of his friend Judas Priest, which leave him to die "of thirst" after 16 nights and days in a home with 24 women.
Andy Gill speculates that early verses of Frankie agonizing over Judas' offer of money echo Dylan's business dealings. To Frankie worldly delights are represented as "Paradise," though the devilish Judas recognizes their true price is "Eternity" - Frankie's mortal soul.
Unusually for a Dylan song, "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" ends with a moral, telling the listener "the moral of this story, the moral of this song, is simply that one should never be where one does not belong", to help one's neighbor with his load, and "don't go mistaking Paradise/for that home across the road."
Heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
band Judas Priest
Judas Priest
Judas Priest are an English heavy metal band from Birmingham, England, formed in 1969. The current line-up consists of lead vocalist Rob Halford, guitarists Glenn Tipton and Richie Faulkner, bassist Ian Hill, and drummer Scott Travis. The band has gone through several drummers over the years,...
derived their name from this song.
Swedish Punk Rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
band Franky Lee
Franky Lee
Franky Lee is a rock band from Sweden formed in 2006 by Mathias Farm , Fredrik Granberg and Magnus Hager .The band was formed at a party that all three members attended, and takes the name Franky Lee from a Bob Dylan song called "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest".The band's first album...
derived their name from this song.
Covers
- Jerry GarciaJerry GarciaJerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...
and David GrismanDavid GrismanDavid Grisman is an American bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist and composer of acoustic music. In the early 1990s, he started the Acoustic Disc record label in an effort to preserve and spread acoustic or instrumental music.-Biography:Grisman grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey...
: Been All Around This World (2004) - Martyna Jakubowicz on Tylko Dylan (2005), as Jot jak Judasz (in PolishPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
)