Silvio

"Silvio" has Dylan contemplating his own past and future. He's gotten himself into a rough spot in life, but refuses to get down about it or to whine about his ordeal. The song is summed up by the last two lines of the fifth verse: Since every pleasure's got an edge of pain Pay for your ticket and don't complain An interesting aspect of the song is that the chorus ("Silvio, silver and gold won't buy back the beat of a heart grown cold") suggests poverty isn't the problem Dylan is dealing with. It may be the exact opposite, in fact, as the "silver and gold" threaten to make him lifeless and cold.

The natural assumption is that "Silvio" is the person Dylan is embodying in this song, but the chorus makes it clear that Silvio is actually the person he's addressing. Dylan (or whoever Dylan is speaking as in the song) is telling Silvio he (Dylan) has got to go. No details about Silvio are given.

Dylan composed the music to this song while Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote the words. It's one of two Down in the Groove songs featuring that collaboration, with the other being "Ugliest Girl In The World." "Ugliest Girl" is the first track on Side 2 of the album. "Silvio" immediately follows. In his book of collected lyrics, A Box of Rain, Hunter mentions this collaboration with a simple parenthetical message, stating, "Bob Dylan released this is as a single in 1988." In 2009, 21 years after releasing Down in the Groove, the pair worked together on nearly every track on Dylan's album Together Through Life.