Songfacts®:

• Shelved for nearly 30 years, "Eternal Circle" remains one of Dylan's lesser-known songs. It's also one of the more inventive from his early career.
  
  In "Eternal Circle," Dylan sings about a woman watching him intently as he performs onstage. He gets frustrated because he wants to get through the song so he can chat her up. He finally completes the performance and sets down his guitar only to find that she has vanished - she'd been into the song, not him, and bailed as soon as it was over. Dylan picks the guitar back up and starts playing the next one.
  
  With "Eternal Circle," Dylan created an interesting situation in which he was living out the story of the song even as he was playing it, transfixing his audience with a song about transfixing his audience. At just 22, the soon-to-be-icon couldn't have guessed that fans would very soon stop leaving after the songs were over - nor that he'd passionately wish they would.
• Dylan cared about this song and wanted it to work. During 1963 sessions for The Times They Are a-Changin', his third studio album, he did at least 12 takes of "Eternal Circle," spanning August 7, August 12, and October 24. This was an unusually high number of takes for Dylan. Despite his best efforts, something just wasn't clicking. The recordings remained unconvincing, and the song was left off the album. It didn't reach the public until the 1991 release of The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991.
  
  This version was the first take from the last session on October 24, 1963. The fourth take from the August 12 sessions was released on The 50th Anniversary Collection 1963 in 2013.
• It's believed Dylan wrote this in the summer of 1963. In June of that year, he played it for his friend Tony Glover in Minneapolis.
• Dylan performed "Eternal Circle" as part of his regular live set up to February 1964, when he dropped it from rotation.