124488803-Digital-Booklet-Bob-Dylan-The-Collection-pdf.pdf
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Albums
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Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Another Side Of Bob Dylan
Bringing It All Back Home
Highway 61 Revisited
Blonde On Blonde
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
John Wesley Harding
Nashville Skyline
Self Portrait
New Morning
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2
Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid
Dylan
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Planet Waves
Before The Flood
Blood On The Tracks
The Basement Tapes
Desire
Hard Rain
Street-Legal
Bob Dylan At Budokan
Slow Train Coming
Saved
Shot Of Love
Infidels
Real Live
Empire Burlesque
Biograph
Knocked Out Loaded
Dylan & The Dead
Down In The Groove
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Oh Mercy
Under The Red Sky
The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3
Good As I Been To You
The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration World Gone Wrong
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3
MTV Unplugged
Time Out Of Mind
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4
The Essential Bob Dylan
“Love And Theft”
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7
The Best Of Bob Dylan
Modern Times
Rare Tracks from the Vaults
You’re No Good Talkin’ New York In My Time Of Dyin’ Man Of Constant Sorrow Fixin’ To Die Pretty Peggy-O Highway 51 Blues
Gospel Plow Baby, Let Me Follow You Down House Of The Risin’ Sun Freight Train Blues Song To Woody See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
The first album by the unknown 20 year-old, produced by legendary record company executive John Hammond, who had also discovered Billie Holiday, Count Basie and guitar genius Charlie Christian. In November 1961 Dylan entered the studio alone with his guitar (and harmonica) and recorded an album full of the kinds of traditional songs he had been busy absorbing in Minneapolis and Greenwich Village. Although sometimes thought of as merely a warm-up for the great things to come, Bob Dylan already showed that the young singer paid little mind to the folk orthodoxies of his moment, mixing Anglo-American folk material such as “Man of Constant Sorrow” and “Pretty Peggy-O” with blues-based material like Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” and Bukka White’s “Fixin’ To Die.” The album contained only two original songs, a talking blues about his arrival in New York City, and the fine “Song To Woody,” an homage to balladeer Woody Guthrie, Dylan’s idol at the time he arrived in New York City. Bob Dylan was issued in March 1962 to poor sales, and its star was dubbed “Hammond’s Folly” around the Columbia Records offices. But not for long.
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Bob Dylan
Produced by John Hammond Released on March 19, 1962
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Blowin’ In The Wind Girl From The North Country Masters Of War Down The Highway Bob Dylan’s Blues A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
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Bob Dylan’s Dream Oxford Town Talkin’ World War III Blues Corrina, Corrina Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance I Shall Be Free
A giant step forward, Dylan’s second album, released in the spring of 1963, is still one of the finest in his recorded oeuvre. With the exception of the traditional “Corrina, Corrina” and “Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance,” it is made up entirely of Dylan originals, including “Blowin’ In The Wind,” which became the Dylan song most recorded by other artists, eventually including Peter, Paul & Mary, Elvis Presley, Marlene Dietrich and Duke Ellington. As he would do for another couple of years, Dylan performs solo (except on “Corrina”), delivering songs that were increasingly political (“Masters of War,” “Oxford Town,” and the quasi-apocalyptic “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”) and increasingly crystallized presentations of a persona that could deliver love songs like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Girl From The North Country” as well as playful, wry sketches like “Bob Dylan’s Blues” and “I Shall Be Free.” Freewheelin’ was such an advance over Dylan’s debut that it overwhelmed nearly everyone, and established him both as the fastest-rising star in the folk music world and its most powerful songwriter.
THE FREEWHEELIN’ DYLAN BOB
Blowin’ in the Wind Girl From the North Country Masters of War Down the Highway Bob Dylan’s Blues A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
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Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right Bob Dylan’s Dream Oxford Town Talkin’ World War III Blues Corrina, Corrina Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance I Shall Be Free
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan Produced by John Hammond Released on May 27, 1963
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
THE FREEWHEELIN’ BOB DYLAN original liner notes
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Of all the precipitously emergent singers of folk songs in the continuing renascence of that selfassertive tradition, none has equaled Bob Dylan singularity of impact. As Harry Jackson, a cowboy singer and a painter, has exclaimed: “He’s so goddamned real it’s unbelievable!” The irrepressible reality of Bob Dylan is a compound of spontaneity, candor, slicing wit and an uncommonly perceptive eye and ear for the way many of us constrict our capacity for living while a few of us don’t. Not yet twenty-two at the time of this albums release, Dylan is growing at a swift, experiencehungry rate. In these performances, there is already a marked change from his first album (Bob Dylan, Columbia CL 1779/CS 8579), and there will surely be many further dimensions of Dylan to come. What makes this collection particularly arresting that it consists in large part of Dylan’s own compositions The resurgence of topical folk songs has become a pervasive part of the folk movement among city singers, but few of the young bards so far have demonstrated a knowledge of the difference between well-intentioned pamphleteering and the creation of a valid musical experience. Dylan has. As the highly critical editors of Little Sandy Review have noted, “...right now, he is certainly our finest contemporary folk song writer. Nobody else really even comes close.” The details of Dylan’s biography were summarized in the notes to his first Columbia album; but to recapitulate briefly, he was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. His experience with adjusting himself to new sights and sounds started early. During his first nineteen years, he lived in Gallup, New Mexico: Cheyenne, South Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Phillipsburg, Kansas; Hibbing, Minnesota (where he was graduated from high
school), and Minneapolis (where he spent a restless six months at the University of Minnesota). “Everywhere he went,” Gil Turner wrote in his article on Dylan in Sing Out, “his ears were wide open for the music around him. He listened to the blues singers, cowboy singers, pop singers and others—soaking up music and styles with an uncanny memory and facility for assimilation. Gradually, his own preferences developed and became more , the strongest areas being Negro blues and county music. Among the musicians and singers who influenced him were Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Jelly Roll Morton, Leadbelly, Mance Lipscomb and Big Joe Williams.” And, above all others, Woody Guthrie. At ten he was playing guitar, and by the age of fifteen, Dylan had taught himself piano, harmonica and autoharp. In February 1961, Dylan came East, primarily to visit Woody Guthrie at the Greystone Hospital in New Jersey. The visits have continued, and Guthrie has expressed approval of Dylan’s first album, being particularly fond of the “Song to Woody” in it. By September of 1961, Dylan’s singing in Greenwich Village, especially at Gerde’s Folk City, had ignited a nucleus of singers and a few critics (notably Bob Shelton of The New York Times) into exuberant appreciation of his work. Since then, Dylan has inexorably increased the scope of his American audiences while also performing briefly in London and Rome. The first of Dylan’s songs in this set is “Blowin’ in the Wind.” In 1962, Dylan said of the song’s background: “I still say that some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong and they know it’s wrong. I’m only 21 years old and I know that there’s been too many wars...You people over 21 should know better.” All
that he prefers to add by way of commentary now is: “The first way to answer these questions in the song is by asking them. But lots of people have to first find the wind.” On this track, and except when otherwise noted, Dylan is heard alone—accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica. “Girl From the North Country” was first conceived by Bob Dylan about three years before he finally wrote it down in December 1962. “That often happens,” he explains. “I carry a song in my head for a long time and then it comes bursting out.” The song-and Dylan’s performance-reflect his particular kind of lyricism. The mood is a fusion of yearning, poignancy and simple appreciation of a beautiful girl. Dylan illuminates all these corners of his vision, but simultaneously retains his bristling sense of self. He’s not about to go begging anything from this girl up north. “Masters of War” startles Dylan himself. “I’ve never really written anything like that before,” he recalls. “I don’t sing songs which hope people will die, but I couldn’t help it in this one. The song is a sort of striking out, a reaction to the last straw, a feeling of what can you do?” The rage (which is as much anguish as it is anger) is a away of catharsis, a way of getting temporary relief from the heavy feeling of impotence that affects many who cannot understand a civilization which juggles its own means for oblivion and calls that performance an act toward peace. “Down the Highway” is a distillation of Dylan’s feeling about the blues. “The way I think about the blues,” he says, “comes from what I learned from Big Joe Williams. The blues is more than something to sit home and arrange. What made the real blues singers so great is that they were able to state all the problems they had; but at the same time, they
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were standing outside them and could look at them. And in that way, they had them beat. What’s depressing today is that many young singers are trying to get inside the blues, forgetting that those older singers used them to get outside their troubles.” “Bob Dylan’s Blues” was composed spontaneously. It’s one of what he calls his “really off-thecuff songs. I start with an idea, and then I feel what follows. Best way I can describe this one is that it’s sort of like walking by a side street. You gaze in and walk on.” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” represents to Dylan a maturation of his feelings on this subject since the earlier and almost as powerful “Let Me Die in My Footsteps,” which is not included here but which was released as a single record by Columbia. Unlike most of his song-writing contemporaries among city singers, Dylan doesn’t simply make a polemical point in his compositions. As in this sing about the psychopathology of peace-throughbalance-of-terror, Dylan’s images are multiply (and sometimes horrifyingly) evocative. As a result, by transmuting his fierce convictions into what can only be called art, Dylan reaches basic emotions which few political statements or extrapolations of statistics have so far been able to touch. Whether a song or a singer can then convert others is something else again. “’Hard Rain,’” adds Dylan, “is a desperate kind of song.” It was written during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 when those who allowed themselves to think of the impossible results of the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontation were chilled by the imminence of oblivion. “Every line in it,” says Dylan, “is actually the start of a whole song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one.” Dylan treats “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” differently from most city singers. “A lot of people,” he says, “make it sort of a love song-
slow and easy-going. But it isn’t a love song. It’s a statement that maybe you can say to make yourself feel better. It’s as if you were talking to yourself. It’s a hard song to sing. I can sing it sometimes, but I ain’t that good yet. I don’t carry myself yet the way that Big Joe Williams, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Lightnin’ Hopkins have carried themselves. I hope to be able to someday, but they’re older people. I sometimes am able to do it, but it happens, when it happens, unconsciously. You see, in time, with those old singers, music was a tool-a way to live more, a way to make themselves feel better at certain points. As for me, I can make myself feel better some times, but at other times, it’s still hard to go to sleep at night.” Dylan’s accompaniment on this track includes Bruce Langhorne (guitar), George Barnes (bass guitar), Dick Wellstood (piano), Gene Ramey (bass) and Herb Lovelle (drums). “Bob Dylan’s Dream” is another of his songs which was transported for a time in his mind before being written down. It was initially set off after allnight conversation between Dylan and Oscar Brown, Jr., in Greenwich Village. “Oscar,” says Dylan, “is a groovy guy and the idea of this came from what we were talking about.” The song slumbered, however, until Dylan went to England in the winter of 1962. There he heard a singer (whose name he recalls as Martin Carthy) perform Lord Franklin, and that old melody found a new adapted home in Bob Dylan’s Dream. The song is a fond looking back at the easy camaraderie and idealism of the young when they are young. There is also in the Dream a wry but sad requiem for the friendships that have evaporated as different routes, geographical and otherwise, are taken. Of Oxford Town, Dylan notes with laughter that “it’s a banjo tune I play on the guitar.” Otherwise, this account of the ordeal of James Meredith speaks grimly for itself. “Talking World War III Blues” was about half formulated beforehand and half improvised at the
recording session itself. The “talking blues” form is tempting to many young singers because it seems so pliable and yet so simple. However, the simpler a form, the more revealing it is of the essence of the performer. There’s no place to hide in the talking blues. Because Bob Dylan is so hugely and quixotically himself, he is able to fill all the space the talking blues affords with unmistakable originality. In this piece, for example, he has singularly distilled the way we all wish away our end, thermonuclear or “natural.” Or at least, the way we try to. “Corrina, Corrina” has been considerably changed by Dylan. “I’m not one of those guys who goes around changing songs just for the sake of changing them. But I’d never heard Corrina, Corrina exactly the way it first was, so that this version is the way it came out of me.” As he indicates here, Dylan can be tender without being sentimental and his lyricism is laced with unabashed passion. The accompaniment is Dick Wellstood (piano), Howie Collins (guitar), Bruce Langhorne (guitar), Leonard Gaskin (bass) and Herb Lovelle (drums). “Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance” was first heard by Dylan from a recording by a now-dead Texas blues singer. Dylan can only remember that his first name was Henry. “What especially stayed with me,” says Dylan, “was the plea in the title.” Here Dylan distills the buoyant expectancy of the love search. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Dylan isn’t limited to one or two ways of feeling his music. He can be poignant and mocking, angry and exultant, reflective and whoopingly joyful. The final I Shall Be Free is another of Dylan’s off-the-cuff songs in which he demonstrates the vividness, unpredictability and cutting edge of his wit. This album, in sum, is the protean Bob Dylan as of the time of the recording. By the next recording, there will be more new songs and insights and experiences. Dylan can’t stop searching and looking and reflecting upon what he sees and hears.
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“Anything I can sing,” he observes, “I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem. Anything I can’t sing or anything that’s too long to be a poem, I call a novel. But my novels don’t have the usual story lines. They’re about my feelings at a certain place at a certain time.” In addition to his singing and song writing, Dylan is working on three “novels.” One is about the week before he came to New York and his initial week in that city. Another is about South Dakota people he knew. And the third is about New York and a trip from New York to New Orleans. Throughout everything he writes and sings, there is the surge of a young man looking into as many diverse scenes and people as he can find (“Every once in a while I got to ramble around”) and of a man looking into himself. “The most important thing I know I learned from Woody Guthrie,” says Dylan. “I’m my own person. I’ve got basic common rightswhether I’m here in this country or any other place. I’ll never finish saying everything I feel, but I’ll be doing my part to make some sense out of the way we’re living, and not living, now. All I’m doing is saying what’s on my mind the best way I know how. And whatever else you say about me, everything I do and sing and write comes out of me.” It is this continuing explosion of a total individual, a young man growing free rather than absurd, that makes Bob Dylan so powerful and so personal and so important a singer. As you can hear in these performances. — Nat Hentoff Mr. Hentoff is a frequent distributor to such periodicals as The Reporter, The New Yorker, Playboy, Commonweal and The Village Voice and is a Contributing Editor to HiFi/Stereo Review.
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The Times They Are A-Changin’ Ballad Of Hollis Brown With God On Our Side One Too Many Mornings North Country Blues
Only A Pawn In Their Game Boots Of Spanish Leather When The Ship Comes In The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll Restless Farewell
Dylan’s third album consisted entirely of his original songs, including the anthemic title track, which remains one of his best-known compositions. The album, recorded within weeks of Dylan’s August 1963 appearance at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., and released only two months after President Kennedy was assassinated, contains several of Dylan’s most potent socially conscious songs, including “Only A Pawn In Their Game,” about the killing of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” and the antiwar classic “With God On Our Side.” It solidified Dylan’s position at the top of the folk music world and made him the pacesetter for many other “protest” singer-songwriters of the time, including Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton. But Dylan may already have been getting restless with the “voice of a generation” label that was being hung on him. The dark-tinged, introspective “Restless Farewell” and “One Too Many Mornings,” with their compressed imagery and wanderlust, indicated that he had more on his mind than being the next Woody Guthrie.
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The Times They Are A-Changin’ Produced by Tom Wilson Released on February 10, 1964
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ original liner notes 11 Outlined Epitaphs By Bob Dylan
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I end up then in the early evenin’ blindly punchin’ at the blind breathin’ heavy stutterin’ an’ blowin’ up where t’ go? what is it that’s exactly wrong? who t’ picket? who t’ fight? behind what windows will I at least hear someone from the supper table get up t’ ask “did I hear someone outside just now?” yesterday an hour ago it came t’ me in a second’s flash an’ was all so clear it still is now yes it is it’s maybe hidin’ it must be hidin’ the shot has shook me up . . . for I’ve never heard that sound before bringing wild thoughts at first ragged wild numb wild now though they’ve leveled out an’ been wrung out leavin’ nothin’ but the strangeness the roots within a washed-out cloth drippin’ from the clothesline pole strange thoughts doubtin’ thoughts
useless an’ unnecessary the blast it’s true startled me back but for a spell content with all pictures, posters an’ the like that’re painted for me ah but I turned an’ the nex’ time I looked the gloves of garbage had clobbered the canvas leavin’ truckloads of trash clutterin’ the colors with a blindin’ sting forcin’ me t’ once again slam the shutters of my eyes but also me to wonderin’ when they’ll open much much stronger than anyone whose own eyes’re aimed over here at mine “when will he open up his eyes?” “who him? doncha know? he’s a crazy man he never opens up his eyes” “but he’ll surely miss the world go by” “nah! he lives in his own world” “my my then he really must be a crazy man” “yeah he’s a crazy man” an’ so on spangled streets an’ country roads I hear sleigh bells jingle jangle virgin girls far into the field sing an’ laugh with flickerin’ voices softly fadin’
I stop an’ smile an’ rest awhile watchin’ the candles of sundown dim unnoticed unnoticed for my eyes’re closed __________ The town I was born in holds no memories but for the honkin’ foghorns the rainy mist the rocky cliffs I have carried no feelings up past the Lake Superior hills the town I grew up in is the one that has left me with my legacy visions it was not a rich town my parents were not rich it was not a poor town an’ my parents were not poor it was a dyin’ town (it was a dyin’ town) a train line cuts the ground showin’ where the fathers an’ mothers of me an’ my friends had picked up an’ moved from north Hibbing t’ south Hibbing. old north Hibbing . . . deserted already dead with its old stone courthouse decayin’ in the wind long abandoned windows crashed out the breath of its broken walls
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being smothered in clingin’ moss the old school where my mother went to rottin’ shiverin’ but still livin’ standin’ cold an’ lonesome arms cut off with even the moon bypassin’ its jagged body pretendin’ not t’ see an’ givin’ it its final dignity dogs howled over the graveyard where even the markin’ stones were dead an’ there was no sound except for the wind blowin’ through the high grass an’ the bricks that fell back t’ the dirt from a slight stab of the breeze . . . it was as though the rains of wartime had left the land bombed-out an’ shattered south Hibbing is where everybody came t’ start their town again. but the winds of the north came followin’ an’ grew fiercer an’ the years went by but I was young an’ so I ran an’ kept runnin’ . . . I am still runnin’ I guess but my road has seen many changes for I’ve served my time as a refugee in mental terms an’ in physical terms an’ many a fear has vanished an’ many an attitude has fallen an’ many a dream has faded an’ I know I shall meet the snowy North again-but with changed eyes nex’ time ‘round t’ walk lazily down its streets an’ linger by the edge of town find old friends if they’re still around talk t’ the old people
an’ the young people runnin’ yes . . . but stoppin’ for a while embracin’ what I left an’ lovin’ it-for I learned by now never t’ expect what it cannot give me __________ In times behind, I too wished I’d lived in the hungry thirties an’ blew in Woody t’ New York City an’ sang for dimes on subway trains satisfied at a nickel fare an’ passin’ the hat an’ hittin’ the bars on eighth avenue an’ makin’ the rounds t’ the union halls but when I came in the fares were higher up t’ fifteen cents an’ climbin’ an’ those bars that Woody’s guitar rattled . . . they’ve changed they’ve been remodeled an’ those union halls like the cio an’ the nmu come now! can you see’em needin’ me for a song or two ah where are those forces of yesteryear? why didn’t they meet me here an’ greet me here?
the underground’s gone deeper says the old chimney sweeper the underground’s outa work sing the bells of New York the underground’s more dangerous ring the bells of Los Angeles the underground’s gone cry the bells of San Juan but where has it gone to ring the bells of Toronto strength now shines through my window regainin’ me an’ rousin’ me day by day from the weariness of walkin’ with ghosts that rose an’ had risen from the ruins an’ remains of the model T past even though I clutched t’ its sheet I was still refused an’ left confused for there was nobody there t’ let me in a wasteland wind whistled from behind the billboard “there’s nobody home all has moved out” flatly denied I turned indeed flinched at first but said “ok I get the message” feelin’ unwanted? no unloved? no I felt nothin’ for there was nobody there I didn’t see no one t’ want or unwant to love or unlove maybe they’re there but won’t let me in
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not takin’ chances on the ones the grittin’ of my teeth for only a second would mean my mind has just been swallowed whole an’ so I step back t’ the street an’ then turn further down the road poundin’ on doors lost? not really just out lookin’ a stranger? no not a stranger but rather someone who just doesn’t live here never pretendin’ t’ be knowin’ what’s worth seekin’ but at least without ghosts by my side t’ betray my childishness t’ leadeth me down false trails an’ maketh me drink from muddy waters yes it is I who is poundin’ at your door if it is inside who hears the noise _______________ Jim Jim where is our party? where all member’s held equal an’ vow t’ infiltrate that thought among the people it hopes t’ serve an’ sets a respected road for all of those like me who cry “I am ragin’ly against absolutely everything that wants t’ force nature t’ be unnatural (be it human or otherwise) an’ I am violently for absolutely
everything that will fight those forces (be them human or otherwise)” oh what is the name of this gallant group? lead me t’ the ballot box what man do we run? how many votes will it take for a new set of teeth in the congress mouths? how many hands have t’ be raised before hair will grow back on the white house head? a Boston tea party don’t mean the same thing . . . as it did in the newborn years before. even the meanin’ of the word has changed. ha ha . . . t’ say the least yes that party is truly gone but where is the party t’ dump the feelings of the fiery cross burners an’ flamin’ match carriers? if there was such a party they would’ve been dumped long before this . . . who is supposed t’ dump ‘em now? when all can see their threads hang weak but still hold strong loyal but dyin’ fightin’ for breath who then will kill its misery? what sea shall we pollute? when told t’ learn what others know in order for a soothin’ life an’ t’ conquer many a brainwashed dream I was set forth the forces on records an’ books from the forces that were sold t’ me an’ could be found in hung-up style wanderin’ through crowded valleys searchin’ for what others knew with the eagles’ shadows
silent hungry watchin’ waitin’ from high mountains an’ me just walkin’ butterflies in my head an’ bitter by now (here! take this kid an’ learn it well but why sir? my arms’re so heavy I said take it. it’ll do yuh good but I ain’t learned last night’s lesson yet. am I gonna have t’ get mad with you? no no gimme gimme just stick it on top a the rest a the stuff here! if yuh learn it well yuh’ll get an A . . . an’ don’t do anything I wouldn’t do) and with each new brightnin’ phrase more messy till I found myself almost swallowed deep in burden spinnin’ walkin’ slower heavier heavier glassy-eyed but at last I heard the eagle drool as I zombie strolled up past the foothills thunderstruck an’ I stopped cold an’ bellowed “I don’t wanna learn no more I had enough” an’ I took a deep breath turned around an’ ran for my life shoutin’ shoutin’ back t’ the highway away from the mountain not carin’ no more
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what people knew about things but rather how they felt about things runnin’ down another road through time an’ dignity an’ I have never taken off my boots no matter how the miles have burnt my feet . . . an’ I’m still on that road, Jim I’m still sleepin’ at night by its side an’ eatin’ where it’ll lead me t’ food where state lines don’t stand an’ knowledge don’t count when feelings are hurt an’ I am on the side a them hurt feelings plunged on by unsensitive hammers an’ made t’ bleed by rusty nails an’ I look t’ you, Jim where is the party for those kind of feelings? how’re the gamblers that wheel an’ deal an’ shuffle ‘em around gonna be got outa the game? from here in beyond this an’ from now on
“why?” “cause I’m calmly lookin’ outside an’ watchin’ the night unwind” “what’d yuh mean unwind?” “I mean somethin’ like there’s no end t’ it an’ it’s so big that every time I see it it’s like seein’ for the first time” “so what?” “so anything that ain’t got no end’s just gotta be poetry in one way or another” “yeah, but . . . “ “an’ poetry makes me feel good” “but . . .” “an’ poetry makes me feel happy” “ok but . . . “ “for the lack of a better word” “but what about the songs you sing on stage?” “they’re nothin’ but the unwindin’ of my happiness”
__________
Woody Guthrie was my last idol he was the last idol because he was the first idol I’d ever met face t’ face that men are men shatterin’ even himself as an idol an’ that men have reasons for what they do an’ what they say an’ every action can be questioned leavin’ no command untouched an’ took for granted obeyed an’ bowed down to forgettin’ your own natural instincts (for there’re a million reasons
Al’s wife claimed I can’t be happy as the New Jersey night ran backwards an’ vanished behind our rollin’ ear “I dig the colors outside, an’ I’m happy” “but you sing such depressin’ songs” “but you say so on your terms” “but my terms aren’t so unreal” “yes but they’re still your terms” “but what about others that think in those terms” “Lenny Bruce says there’re no dirty words . . . just dirty minds an’ I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds” “but how’re you happy an’ when ‘re you happy” “I’m happy enough now”
__________
in the world an’ a million instincts runnin’ wild an’ it’s none too many times the two shall meet) the unseen idols create the fear an’ trample hope when busted Woody never made me fear and he didn’t trample any hopes for he just carried a book of Man an’ gave it t’ me t’ read awhile an’ from it I learned my greatest lesson you ask “how does it feel t’ be an idol?” it’d be silly of me t’ answer, wouldn’t it . . .? __________ A Russian has three an’ a half red eyes five flamin’ antennas drags a beet-colored ball an’ chain an’ wants t’ slip germs into my Coke machine “burn the tree stumps at the border” about the sex-hungry lunatics out warmongerin’ in the early mornin’ “poison the sky so the planes won’t come” yell the birch colored knights with patriotic shields “an’ murder all the un-Americans” say the card-carryin’ American book burners (yes we burned five books last week) as my friend, Bobby Lee, walks back an’ forth free now from his native Harlem where his ma still sleeps at night hearin’ rats inside the sink an’ underneath her hardwood bed an’ walls of holes where the cold comes in
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scared wrapped in blankets an’ she, God knows, is kind an’ gentle ain’t there no closer villains that the baby-eaten’ Russians rats eat babies too
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I talked with one of the sons of Germany while walkin’ once on foreign ground an’ I learned that he regards Adolf Hitler as we here in the states regard Robert E. Lee fasten up your holster mr. gunslinger an’ buy new bolts for your neck there is only up wing an’ down wing last night I dreamt that while healin’ ceiling up in Harlem I saw Canada ablaze an’ nobody knowin’ nothin’ about it except of course who held the match __________ Yes, I am a thief of thoughts not, I pray, a stealer of souls I have built an’ rebuilt upon what is waitin’ for the sand on the beaches
carves many castles on what has been opened before my time a word, a tune, a story, a line keys in the wind t’ unlock my mind an’ t’ grant my closet thoughts backyard air it is not of me t’ sit an’ ponder wonderin’ an’ wastin’ time thinkin’ of thoughts that haven’t been thunk thinkin’ of dreams that haven’t been dreamt an’ new ideas that haven’t been wrote an’ new words t’ fit into rhyme (if it rhymes, it rhymes if it don’t, it don’t if it comes, it comes if it won’t, it won’t) no I must react an’ spit fast with weapons of words wrapped in tunes that’ve rolled through the simple years teasin’ me t’ treat them right t’ reshape them an’ restring them t’ protect my own world from the mouths of all those who’d eat it an’ hold it back from eatin’ its own food (influences? hundreds thousands perhaps millions for all songs lead back t’ the sea an’ at one time, there was no singin’ tongue t’ imitate it) t’ make new sounds out of old sounds an’ new words out of old words an’ not t’ worry about the new rules for they ain’t been made yet an’ t’ shout my singin’ mind knowin’ that it is me an’ my kind that will make those rules . . . if the people of tomorrow really need the rules of today
rally ‘round all you prosecutin’ attorneys the world is but a courtroom yes but I now the defendants better ‘n you and while you’re busy prosecutin’ we’re busy whistlin’ cleanin’ up the courthouse sweepin’ sweepin’ listenin’ listenin’ winkin’ t’ one another careful careful your spot is comin’ up soon __________ Oh where were these magazines when I was bummin’ up an’ down up an’ down the street? is it that they too just sleep in their high thrones . . . openin’ their eyes when people pass expectin’ each t’ bow as they go by an’ say “thank you Mr. Magazine. did I answer all my questions right?” ah but mine is of another story for I do not care t’ be made an oddball bouncin’ past reporters’ pens cooperatin’ with questions aimed at eyes that want t’ see “there’s nothin’ here go back t’ sleep or look at the ads on page 33” I don’t like t’ be stuck in print starin’ out at cavity minds who gobble chocolate candy bars quite content an’ satisfied their day complete at seein’ what I eat for breakfast the kinds of clothes I like t’ wear an’ the hobbies that I like t do
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I never eat I run naked when I can my hobby’s collectin’ airplane glue
that I “expose” myself every time I step out on the stage
“come come now Mr. Dylan our readers want t’ know the truth” “that is the bare hungry sniffin’ truth” “Mr. Dylan, you’re very funny, but really now” “that’s all I have t’ say today” “but you’d better answer” “that sounds like some kind a threat” “it just could be ha ha ha ha” “what will my punishment” “a rumor tale on you ha ha” “a what kind of tale ha ha ha ha” “yes well you’ll see, Mr. Dylan, you’ll see”
__________
an’ I seen or rather I have saw your questions’re ridiculous an’ most of your magazines’re also ridiculous caterin’ t’ people who want t’ see the boy nex’ door no I shall not corporate with reporters’ whims there’re other kinds of boys nex’ door. even though they’ve slanted me they cannot take what I do away from me they can disguise it make it out t’ be a joke an’ make me seem the ridiculous one in the eyes of their readers they can build me up accordin’ t’ their own terms so that they are able t’ bust me down an’ “expose” me in their own terms givin’ blind advice t’ unknown eyes who have no way of knowin’
The night passes fast for me now an’ after dancin’ out its dance undresses leavin’ nothin’ but its naked dawn proudly standin’ smilin’ smilin’ turnin’ turnin’ gently gently I have seen it sneak up countless times . . . leavin’ me conscious with a thousand sleepy thoughts untamed an’ tryin’ t’ run I think at these times of many things an’ many people I think of Sue most times beautiful Sue with the lines of a swan frightened easy as a fawn in the forest by this time deep in dreams with her long hair spread out the color of the sun soakin’ the dark an’ scatterin’ light t’ the dungeons of my constant night I think love poems as a poor lonesome invalid knowin’ of my power t’ destroy the good souls of the road that know no sickness except that of kindness (you ask of love? there is no love except in silence an’ silence doesn’t say a word)
ah but Sue she knows me well perhaps too well an’ is above all the true fortuneteller of my soul I think perhaps the only one (you ask of truth? there is no truth what fool can claim t’ carry the truth for it is but a drunken matter romantic? yes tragic? no I think not) the door still knocks an’ the wind still blows bringin’ me my memories of friends an’ sounds an’ colors that can’t escape trapped in keyholes Eric . . . bearded Eric far in Boston buried beneath my window yes I feel t’ dig the ground up but I’m so tired an’ know not where t’ look for tools rap tap tap the rattlin’ wind blows Geno in tellin’ me of philistines that he’d run into durin’ the night he stomps across my floor I laugh an’ drink cold coffee an’ old wine light of feelin’ as I listen t’ one of my own tongues take the reins guide the path an’ drop me off . . . headin’ back again t’ take care of his end of the night slam an’ Geno then too is gone outside a siren whines leadin’ me down another line
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I jump but get sidetracked by clunkin’ footsteps down the street (it is as though my mind ain’t mine t’ make up any more) I wonder if the cockroaches still crawl in Dave an’ Terri’s fifteenth street kitchen I wonder if they’re the same cockroaches ah yes the times’ve changed Dave still scorns me for not readin’ books an’ Terri still laughs at my rakish ways but fifteenth street has been abandoned we have moved . . . the cats across the roof mad in love scream into the drain pipes bringing’ in the sounds of music the only music an’ it is I who is ready ready t’ listen restin’ restin’ a silver peace reigns an’ becomes the nerves of mornin’ an’ I stand up an’ yawn hot with jumpin’ pulse never tired never sad never guilty for I am runnin’ in a fair race with no racetrack but the night an’ no competition but the dawn __________ So at last at least the sky for me is a pleasant gray meanin’ rain or meanin’ snow constantly meanin’ change
but a change forewarned either t’ the clearin’ of the clouds or t’ the pourin’ of the storms an’ after it’s desire returnin’ returnin’ with me underneath returnin’ with it never fearful finally faithful it will guide me well across all bridges inside all tunnels never failin’ . . . with the sounds of Francois Villon echoin’ through my mad streets as I stumble on lost cigars of Bertolt Brecht an’ empty bottles of Brendan Behan the hypnotic words of A. L.. Lloyd each one bendin’ like its own song an’ the woven’ spell of Paul Clayton entrancin’ me like China’s plague unescapeable drownin’ in the lungs of Edith Piaf an’ in the mystery of Marlene Dietrich the dead poems of Eddie Freeman love songs of Allen Ginsberg an’ jail songs of Ray Bremser the narrow tunes of Modigliani an’ the singin’ plains of Harry Jackson the cries of Charles Aznavour with melodies of Yevtushenko through the quiet fire of Miles Davis above the bells of William Blake an’ beat visions of Johnny Cash an’ the saintliness of Pete Seeger strokin’ my senses down down drownin’ drownin’
when I need t’ drown for my road is blessed with many flowers an’ the sounds of flowers liftin’ lost voices of the ground’s people up up higher higher all people no matter what creed no matter what color skin no matter what language an’ no matter what land for all people laugh in the same tongue an’ cry in the same tongue endless endless it’s all endless an’ it’s all songs it’s just one big world of songs an’ they’re all on loan if they’re only turned loose t’ sing lonely? ah yes but it is the flowers an’ the mirrors of flowers that now meet my loneliness an’ mine shall be a strong loneliness dissolvin’ deep t’ the depths of my freedom an’ that, then, shall remain my song there’s a movie called Shoot the Piano Player the last line proclaimin’ “music, man, that’s where it’s at” it is a religious line outside, the chimes rung an’ they are still ringin’
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All I Really Want To Do Black Crow Blues Spanish Harlem Incident Chimes Of Freedom I Shall Be Free No. 10 To Ramona
Motorpsycho Nitemare My Back Pages I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) Ballad In Plain D It Ain’t Me, Babe
14 All I Really Want To Do Black Crow Blues Spanish Harlem Incident Chimes Of Freedom I Shall Be Free No. 10 To Ramona Motorpsycho Nitemare My Back Pages I Don’t Believe You Ballad In Plain D It Ain’t Me Babe
Another Side Of Bob Dylan Produced by Tom Wilson Released on August 8, 1964
People seem not to have been too sure what to make of this record when it came out late in 1964. After the one-two punch of political engagement on Freewheelin’ and The Times They Are A-Changin’, Dylan released an album of acerbic, ironic love songs, full of word play, bitterness, tenderness and sometimes corrosive humor. His voice and image seemed to be changing as well; in place of the rough-sounding old-timey voice of his earlier albums, the songs were delivered in a more nasal, sometimes mocking sound – a switch from corduroy to leather. And there was not a “protest song” to be heard. Songs like “All I Really Want To Do” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe” were a new kind of love song, full of ambivalence, teasing, truth telling, and evasion. “My Back Pages,” which, like “All I Really Want to Do,” became a hit for the folk-rock band The Byrds, was also something new – a kind of self-dramatization in imagist poetic lines, a technique that he would expand on greatly. But it is “Chimes of Freedom,” with its tumbling, hallucinatory, juxtaposed imagery that points most unambiguously in the direction Dylan was heading.
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
ANOTHER SIDE OF BOB DYLAN original liner notes Some Other Kinds Of Songs . . . Poems by Bob Dylan
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baby black’s been had ain’t bad smokestacked chicken shacked dressed in black silver monkey on her back mammy ma juiced pa janitored between the law brothers ten rat-faced gravestoned ditch dug firescaped an’ substroked choked baby black hits back robs, pawns lives by trade sits an’ waits on fire plug digs the heat eyes meet picket line across the street head rings of bed springs freedom’s holler you ask of order she’d hock the world for a dollar an’ a quarter baby black dressed in black gunny sack
about t’ crack been gone carry on i’m givin’ you myself t’ pawn __________ for françoise hardy at the seine’s edge a giant shadow of notre dame seeks t’ grab my foot sorbonne students whirl by on thin bicycles swirlin’ lifelike colors of leather spin the breeze yawns food far from the bellies or erhard meetin’ johnson piles of lovers fishing kissing lay themselves on their books. boats. old men clothed in curly mustaches float on the benches blankets of tourist in bright red nylon shirts with straw hats of ambassadors (cannot hear nixon’s dawg bark now) will sail away as the sun goes down the doors of the river are open i must remember that i too play the guitar it’s easy t’ stand here
more lovers pass on motorcycles roped together from the walls of the water then i look across t’ what they call the right bank an’ envy your trumpet player __________ “i could make you crawl if i was payin’ attention” he said munchin’ a sandwich in between chess moves “what d’ you wanna make me crawl for?” “i mean i just could” “could make me crawl” “yeah, make you crawl!” “humm, funny guy you are” “no, i just play t’ win, that’s all” “well if you can’t win me, then you’re the worst player i ever played” “what d’ you mean?” “i mean i lose all the time” his jaw tightened an’ he took a deep breath “hummm, now i gotta beat you” straight away an’ into the ring juno takes twenty pills an’ paints all day. life he says
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is a head kinda thing. outside of chicago, private come down junkie nurse home heals countless common housewives strung out fully on drugstore dope, legally sold t’ help clean the kitchen. lenny bruce shows his seventh avenue hand-made movies, while a bunch of women sneak little white tablets into shoes, stockings, hats an’ other hidin’ places. newspapers tell neither. irma goes t’ israel an’ writes me that there, they hate nazis much more ‘n we over here do. eichmann dies yes, an’ west germany sends eighty-year-old pruned-out gestapo hermit off t’ the penitentiary. in east berlin renata tells me that i must wear tie t’ get in t’ this certain place i wanna go. back here, literate old man with rebel flag above home sweet home sign says he won’t vote for goldwater. “talks too much. should keep his mouth shut” i walk between backyards an’ see little boy with feather in his hair lyin’ dead on the grass. he gets up an’ hands feather t’ another little boy who immediately falls down. “it’s my turn t’ be the good guy . . . take that, redskin” bang bang. henry miller stands on other side of ping pong table an’ keeps talkin’ about me. “did you ask the poet fellow if he wants something t’ drink” he says t’ someone gettin’ all the drinks. i drop my ping pong paddle an’ look at the pool. my worst
enemies don’t even put me down in such a mysterious way. college student trails me with microphone an’ tape machine. what d’ you think a the communist party? what communist party? he rattles off names an’ numbers. he can’t answer my question. he tries harder. i say “you don’t have t’ answer my question” he gets all squishy. i say there’s no answer t’ my question any more ‘n there’s an answer t’ your question. ferris wheel runs in california park an’ the sky trembles. turns red. above hiccups an’ pointed fingers. i tell reporter lady that yes i’m monstrously against the house unamerican activities committee an’ also the cia an’ i beg her please not t’ ask me why for it would take too long t’ tell she asks me about humanity an’ i say i’m not sure what that word means. she wants me t’ say what she wants me t’ say. she wants me t’ say what she can understand. a loose-tempered fat man in borrowed stomach slams wife in the face an’ rushes off t’ civil rights meeting. while some strange girl chases me up smoky mountain tryin’ t’ find out what sign i am. i take allen ginsberg t’ meet fantastic great beautiful artist an’ no trespassin’ boards block up all there is t’ see. eviction. infection gangrene an’ atom bombs. both ends exist only because there is someone who wants profit. boy loses eyesight. becomes airplane pilot. people pound their
chests an’ other people’s chests an’ interpret bibles t’ suit their own means. respect is just a misinterpreted word an’ if Jesus Christ himself came down through these streets, Christianity would start all over again. standin’ on the stage of all ground. insects play in their own world. snakes slide through the weeds. ants come an’ go through the grass. turtles an’ lizards make their way through the sand. everything crawls. everything . . . an’ everything still crawls __________ jack o’diamonds jack o’diamonds one-eyed knave on the move hits the street sneaks. leaps between pillars of chips springs on them like samson thumps thumps strikes is on the prowl you’ll only lose shouldn’t stay jack o’diamonds is a hard card t’ play jack o’diamonds wrecked my hand left me here t’ stand little tin men play their drums now upside my head in the midst of cheers flowers four queens
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with pawed out hearts make believe they’re still good but i should drop fold an’ dean martin should apologize t’ the rolling stones ho hum weird tablestakes young babies horseback ride their fathers’ necks two dudes in hopped-up ford for the tenth time have rolled through town it’s your turn baby t’ cut the deck on you’re goin’ under stayed too long chinese gong down the way says jack o’diamonds (a high card) jack o’diamonds (but ain’t high enough) jack o’diamonds is a hard card t’ play jack o’diamonds used t’ laugh at me now wants t’ collect from me used t’ be ashamed of me now wants t’ walk ‘long side of me jack o’diamonds one-armed prince wears but a single glove as he shoves never loves the moon’s too bright as he’s fixed mirrors ‘round the room at night it’s hard t’ think
there’s probably somethin’ in my drink should pour it out inside the sink would throw it in his face but it’d do no good give no gain just leave a stain jack o’diamonds an’ all his crap needs some acid in his lap what hour now it feels late somehow my hounddog bays need more ashtrays i can’t even remember the early days please don’t stay gather your bells an’ go jack o’diamonds (can open for riches) jack o’diamonds (but then it switches) a colorful picture but beats only the ten jack o’diamonds is a hard card t’ play jack o’diamonds stays indoors wants me t’ fight his wars jack o’diamonds is a hard card t’ play never certain. in the middle commentin’ on the songs of birds chucklin’ at screamin’ mothers jack o’diamonds drains fish brains raffles what’s left over across the table t’ little boy card sharks who just sat down
t’ get off their feet bad luck run’s all in fun it’s your choice. your voice you choose you lose run for cover hallaluyah you choose t’ lose take yourself disappear jack o’diamonds (a king’s death) jack o’diamonds (at the ace’s breath) jack o’diamonds is a hard card t’ play __________ run go get out of here quick leave joshua split go fit your battle do your thing i lost my glasses can’t see jericho the wind is tyin’ knots in my hair nothin’ seems t’ be straight out there no i shan’t go with you i can’t go with you on the brooklyn bridge he was cockeyed an’ stood on the edge there was a priest talkin’ to him i was shiftin’ myself around so i could see from all sides
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in an’ out of stretched necks an’ things cops held people back the lady in back of me burst into my groin “sick sick some are so sick” like a circus trapeze act “oh i hope he don’t do it” he was on the other side of the railin’ both eyes fiery wide wet with sweat the mouth of a shark rolled up soiled sleeves his arms were thick an’ tattooed an’ he wore a silver watch i could tell at a glance he was uselessly lonely i couldn’t stay an’ look at him i couldn’t stay an’ look at him because i suddenly realized that deep in my heart i really wanted t’ see him jump (a mob. each member knowin’ that they all know an’ see the same thing they have the same thing in common. can stare at each other in total blankness they do not have t’ speak an’ not feel guilty about havin’ nothing t’ say. everyday boredom soaked by the temporary happiness of that their search is finally over for findin’ a way t’ communicate a leech cookout giant cop out. all mobs i would think. an’ i was in it an’ caught by the excitement of it) an’ i walked away i wanted t’ see him jump so bad that i had t’ walk away an’ hide uptown uptown orchard street through all those people on
orchard street pants legs in my face “comere! comere!” i don’t need no clothes an’ cross the street skull caps climb by themselves out of manholes an’ shoeboxes ride the cracks of the sidewalk fishermen— i’ve suddenly been turned into a fish but does anybody wanna be a fisherman any more ‘n i don’t wanna be a fish (swingin’ wanda’s down in new orleans rumbles across brick written swear word vulgar wall in new york city) no they can’t make it off the banks of their river i am in their river (i wonder if he jumped i really wonder if he jumped) i turn corner t’ get off river an’ get off river still goin’ up i about face an’ discover that i’m on another river (this time. king rex blesses me with plastic beads an’ toot toot whistles paper rings an’ things.
royal street. bourbon street st. claude an’ esplanade pass an’ pull everything out of shape joe b. stuart white southern poet holds me up we charge through casa blazin’ jukebox gumbo overflowin’ get kicked out of colored bar streets jammed hypnotic stars explode in louisiana murder night everything’s wedged arm in arm stoned galore must see you in mobile then down governor nichel an’ gone) ok i can get off this river too on bleeker street i meet many friends who look back at me as if they know something i don’t know rocco an’ his brothers say that some people are worse hung up than me i don’t wanna hear it a basketball drops through the hoop an’ i recall that the living theater’s been busted (has the guy jumped yet?) intellectual spiders weave down sixth avenue with colt forty-fives stickin’ out of their
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belly buttons an’ for the first time in my life i’m proud that i haven’t read into any masterpiece books (an’ why did i wanna see that poor soul so dead?)
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first of all two people get together an’ they want their doors enlarged. second of all, more people see what’s happenin’ an’ come t’ help with the door enlargement. the ones that arrive however have nothin’ more than “let’s get these doors enlarged” t’ say t’ the ones who were there in the first place. it follows then that the whole thing revolves around nothing but this door enlargement idea. third of all, there’s a group now existin’ an’ the only thing that keeps them friends is that they all want the doors enlarged. obviously, the doors’re then enlarged fourth of all, after this enlargement the group has t’ find something else t’ keep them together or else the door enlargement will prove t’ be embarrassing on fourteenth street i meet someone who i know in front wants t’ put me uptight wants me t’ be on his level
in all honesty he wants t’ drag me down there i realize gravity is my only enemy loneliness has clutched hands an’ squeezes you into wrongin’ others everybody has t’ do things keep themselves occupied the workin’ ones have their minds on the weekends victims of the system pack movie theaters an’ who an’ of what sadistic company is he from that has the right t’ condemn others as trivial whose fault an’ who really is t’ blame for one man carryin’ a gun it is impossible that it’s him slaves are of no special color an’ the links of chains fall into no special order how good an actor do you have to be and play God (in greece, a little old lady a worker lady looks at me rubs her chin an’ by sign language asks how come i’m so unshaven “the sea is very beautiful here” i reply pointin’ t’ my chin. an’ she believes me needs no other answer
i strum the guitar she dances laughs her bandana flies i too realize that she will die here one the side of this sea her death is certain here my death is unknown an’ i come t’ think that i love her) i talk t’ people every day involved in some scene good an’ evil are but words invented by those that are trapped in scenes on what grounds are the grounds for judgment an i think also that there is not one thing anyplace anywhere that makes any sense. there are only tears an’ there is only sorrow there are no problems i have seen what i’ve loved slip away an’ vanish. i still love what i’ve lost but t’ run an’ try t’ catch it’d be very greedy for the rest of my life i will never chase a livin’ soul into the prison grasp of my own self-love i can’t believe that i have t’ hate anybody an’ when i do
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it will only be out of fear an’ i’ll know it i know no answers an’ no truth for absolutely no soul alive i will listen t’ no one who tells me morals there are no morals an’ i dream a lot
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so go joshua go fit your battle i have t’ go t’ the woods for a while i hope you understand but if you don’t it doesn’t matter i will be with you nex’ time around don’t think about me i’ll be ok just go ahead out there right out there do what you say you’re gonna do an’ who knows someday someone might even write a song about you __________ i used t’ hate enzo i used t’ hate him so much that i could’ve killed him he was rotten an’ ruthless an’ after what he could get i was sure of that my beloved one met him
in a far-off land an’ she stayed longer there because of him i croaked with exhaustion that he was actually makin’ her happy i never knew him sometimes i would see him on my ceilin’ i could’ve shot him the rovin’ phony the romantic idiot i know about guys for i myself am a guy poison swings its pendulums with a seasick sensation an’ i used t’ want t’ trample on him i used t’ want t’ massacre him i used t’ want t’ murder him i wanted t’ be like him so much that i ached i used t’ hate enzo __________ michelangelo would’ve wept if he saw but once where charlie slept (whoa, charlie, i’m afraid you’ve stepped beyond the borders of being kept) what price what price what price disgrace for sleepin’ on a cherub’s face? __________ an amazon chick with an amazin’ pancho villa face thumb out on highway stands in the boilin’ sun countin’ cars go by zoom catch that u-turn
watch truck yes i knew zapata well some of my friends my very best have even looked like the japanese at certain times i myself think they’re grand . . . make great radios do you ever see liz taylor down there pack is heavy there is ink runnin’ down its dusty straps amarillo ain’t far am going there too won’t need floor scrubbed voice dubbed or anything won’t need anything a place fumbles in the sky must make it t’ trinidad tonight a flyin’ saucer texan covered in cuff links ate his steak for breakfast an’ now his car radiator has blown up down the road back here, a sixty-three mercury convertible crashes into girl an’ ten birds just crossed the colorado border __________ johnny (little johnny) with his father’s hammer nailed five flies
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t’ the kitchen window trapped baby bumblebees in orange juice bottles rib whipped his younger brother an’ stuck his sister’s hand in the garbage disposal pleasin’ johnny dad’s football star named all the girls that did it he did an’ never knew a one that didn’t bruiser johnny sore loser johnny bad in math but his parents fixed it got too drunk in bars an’ his parents fixed that too lovin’ johnny crew-cut johnny well molded clean lived in something his parents could be proud of no matter what the cost to him a structure of a manly duckling but his parents couldn’t buy him into the college where he wanted t’ go genius johnny poutin’ johnny punchin’ johnny crashed his here son have a car good boy cadillac into a couldn’t care less
railroad bridge his parents supported him still they bought new hankies an’ johnny got lots of flowers an’ so as spoked prongs pierce from perilous heights plungin’ through soft pillows, there IS a sound that rings no praise no praise but you must be aware of poor johnny t’ hear it __________ you tell me about politics this that you speak of rats. geese. a world of peace you stumble stammer pound your fist an’ i tell you there are no politics you swear tell me how much you care you cheat the lunch counter man out of a pack of cigarettes an’ i tell you there are no politics you tell me of goons’ graves. ginks an’ finks an’ of what you’ve read an’ how things should be an’ what you’d do if . . . an i say someone’s been tamperin’ with your head you jump raise your voice an’ gyrate yourself
t’ the tone of principles your arm is raised an’ i tell you there are no politics in the afternoon you run t’ keep appointments with false lovers an’ this leaves you drained by nightfall you ask me questions an’ i say that every question if it’s a truthful question can be answered by askin’ it you stomp get mad i say it’s got nothin’ t’ do with gertrude stein you turn your eyes t’ the radio an’ tell me what a wasteland exists in television you rant an’ rave of poverty your fingers crawl the walls the screen door leaves black marks across your nose your breath remains on window glass bullfight posters hang crooked above your head an’ the phone rings constantly you tell me how much i’ve changed as if that is all there is t’ say out of the side of your mouth while talkin’ on the wires in a completely different tone of voice than you had a minute ago when speakin’ t’ me about something else i say what’s this about changes? you say “let’s go get drunk” light a cigarette “an’ throw up on the world”
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you go t’ your closet mumblin’ about the phoniness of churches an’ spastic national leaders i say groovy but also holy hollowness too yes hollow holiness an’ that some of my best friends know people that go t’ church you blow up slam doors say “can’t no one say nothin’ t’ you” s say “what do You think?” your face laughs you say “oh yeeeeeaah?” i’m gonna break up i say an’ reach for your coat ‘neath piles of paper slogans i say your house is dirty you say you should talk your hallway stinks as we walk through it your stairs tilt drastically your railing’s rotted an’ there’s blood at the bottom of your steps you say t’ meet bricks with bricks i say t’ meet bricks with chalk you tell me monster floor plans an’ i tell you about a bookie shop in boston givin’ odds on the presidential race i’m not gonna bet for a while i say little children shoot craps in the alley garbage pot you say “nothin’s perfect” an’ i tell you again there are no politics __________
high treachery sails unveils its last wedding song bang sing the bells the low pauper’s prayer rice rags in blossom blow in a fleet ribbons in the street white as a sheet (a Mexican cigarette) the people’ve been set t’ try t’ forget that their whole life’s a honeymoon over soon i’m not gettin’ caught by all this rot as i vanish down the road with a starving actress on each arm (for better or best in sickness an’ madness) i do take thee i’m already married so i’ll continue as one faithful done ah fair blondy ye lead me blindly I am in the gravel an’ down on the gamut for our anniversary you can make me nervous clink sings the tower clang sang the preacher inside of the altar outside of the theater mystery fails when treachery prevails the forgotten rosary nails itself t’ a cross of sand
an’ rich men stare t’ their private own-ed murals all is lost Cinderella all is lost
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Subterranean Homesick Blues She Belongs To Me Maggie’s Farm Love Minus Zero/No Limit Outlaw Blues On The Road Again
Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream Mr. Tambourine Man Gates Of Eden It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
Musicians: Al Gorgoni - guitar; Bobby Gregg - drums; Paul Griffin piano; Bruce Langhorne - guitar; Will Lee - bass; Joseph Macho, Jr. bass; Frank Owens - piano; Kenneth Rankin – guitar.
One of the most interesting Dylan albums, Bringing It All Back Home is in a sense two records. One side of the original 1965 LP release featured Dylan alone with his guitar, performing intensely poetic songs full of hermetic and at times surreal imagery, lines almost tripping over one another in their rush to be heard. “Mr. Tambourine Man,” became one of Dylan’s most enduringly popular songs; it was to the nascent drug and consciousness-expansion culture what “Blowin’ In The Wind” had been to the politically engaged folk culture of a few years before. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” with its rhythmically spoken lyrics, including the epochal “even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked,” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” both stand among the best songs Dylan has written. The other side of the record was something else again – Dylan performing songs, most of them blues-based and full of barbed, scathing humor, accompanied by an electric rock and roll band. “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” the picaresque “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” and “Maggie’s Farm” cohabit with the tender and almost mystical love song-poems “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” and “She Belongs to Me.” This record once again changed every young songwriter’s sense of what was possible and desirable in songwriting, and it laid the groundwork for Highway 61 Revisited, which became one of the most influential albums of all time.
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Bringing It All Back Home Produced by Tom Wilson
Released on March 22, 1965
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME original liner notes
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i’m standing there watching the parade/ feeling combination of sleepy john estes. jayne mansfield. humphry bogart/mortimer snerd. murph the surf and so forth/ erotic hitchhiker wearing japanese blanket. gets my attention by asking didn’t he see me at this hootenanny down in puerto vallarta, mexico/i say no you must be mistaken. i happen to be one of the Supremes/then he rips off his blanket an’ suddenly becomes a middle-aged druggist. up for district attorney. he starts scream- ing at me you’re the one. you’re the one that’s been causing all them riots over in vietnam. immediately turns t’ a bunch of people an’ says if elected, he’ll have me electrocuted publicly on the next fourth of july. i look around an’ all these people he’s talking to are carrying blowtorches/ needless t’ say, i split fast go back t’ the nice quiet country. am standing there writing WHAAT? on my favorite wall when who should pass by in a jet plane but my recording engineer “i’m here t’ pick up you and your lastest works of art. do you need any help with anything?’’ (pause) my songs’re written with the kettledrum in mind/a touch of any anxious color. un- mentionable. obvious. an’ people perhaps like a soft brazilian singer . . . i have given up at making any attempt at perfection/ the fact that the white house is filled with leaders that’ve never been t’ the apollo theater amazes me. why allen ginsberg was not chosen t’ read poetry at the inauguration boggles my mind/if someone thinks norman mailer is more important than hank williams that’s fine. i have no arguments an’ i never drink milk. i would rather model har- monica holders than discuss aztec
anthropology/ english literature. or history of the united nations. i accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. i know there’re some people terrified of the bomb. but there are other people terrified t’ be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. experience teaches that silence terrifies people the most . . . i am convinced that all souls have some superior t’ deal with/like the school system, an invisible circle of which no one can think without consulting someone/in the face of this, responsibility/security, success mean absolutely nothing. . . i would not want t’ be bach. mozart. tolstoy. joe hill. gertrude stein or james dean/they are all dead. the Great books’ve been written. the Great sayings have all been said/I am about t’ sketch You a picture of what goes on around here some- times. though I don’t understand too well myself what’s really happening. i do know that we’re all gonna die someday an’ that no death has ever stopped the world. my poems are written in a rhythm of unpoetic distortion/ divided by pierced ears. false eyelashes/ sub- tracted by people constantly torturing each other. with a melodic purring line of descriptive hollowness—seen at times through dark sunglasses an’ other forms of psychic explosion. a song is anything that can walk by itself/i am called a songwriter. a poem is a naked person . . . some people say that i am a poet (end of pause) an’ so i answer my recording engineer “yes. well i could use some help in getting this wall in the plane” — Bob Dylan
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Like A Rolling Stone (Produced by Tom Wilson) Tombstone Blues It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry From A Buick 6
Ballad Of A Thin Man Queen Jane Approximately Highway 61 Revisited Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues Desolation Row
Musicians: Mike Bloomfield - guitar; Harvey (Goldstein) Brooks - bass; Al Gorgoni - guitar; Bobby Gregg drums; Paul Griffin - piano; Al Kooper - organ; Joseph Macho, Jr. bass; Frank Owens - piano; Russ Savakus - bass.
Released one month after Dylan’s legendary July 1965 appearance with the electric Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival, and only five months after Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited is universally regarded as one of Dylan’s greatest and most influential records. The voice that Dylan had been growing since Another Side of Bob Dylan was now an instrument of irony, bitterness, gallows humor, mockery, disillusionment, and sarcasm in the service of astonishingly vivid and disturbing images capable of meeting the increasingly strange and livid times head-on. The album title refers to the road that runs from Dylan’s native Minnesota down through Memphis, the Mississippi Delta, and New Orleans, and so it places us in a vein running straight through the middle of an America that seemed to be spiraling out of control. Backed by a take-no-prisoners electric band, Dylan’s performances of the title song, “Desolation Row,” “Tombstone Blues,” “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” the venomous “Ballad of A Thin Man,” and his unprecedented 7-minute hit single “Like A Rolling Stone” sat at the center of the 1960s, capturing, and maybe adding to, the accelerating craziness of American culture in that time – the mounting uproar over the nation’s Vietnam involvement, the exhilaration, distortion, and secret humor of drugs, the ballooning sense that what had been called the truth was disguising something sinister. Amazingly, Highway 61 Revisited has lost little of its presence, its power to shake up the listener, in the ensuing decades. A classic – nothing less.
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Highway 61 Revisited
Produced by Bob Johnston “Like A Rolling Stone” produced by Tom Wilson Released on August 30, 1965
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED original liner notes
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On the slow train time does not interfere & at the Arabian crossing waits White Heap, the man from the newspaper & behind him the hundred Inevitables made of solid rock & stone – the Cream Judge & the Clown – the doll house where Savage Rose & Fixable live simply in their wild animal luxury…. Autumn, with two zeros above her nose arguing over the sun being dark or Bach is as famous as its commotion & that she herself – not Orpheus – is the logical poet “I am the logical poet!” she screams “Spring? Spring is nly the beginning!” she attempts to make Cream Judge jealous by telling him of down-to-earth people & while the universe is erupting, she points to the slow train & prays for rain and for time to interfere – she is not extremely fat but rather progressively unhappy…. The hundred Inevitables hide their predictions & go to bars & drink & get drunk in their very special conscious way & when tom dooley, the kind of person you think you’ve seen before, comes strolling in with White Heap, the hundred Inevitables all say “who’s that man who looks so white?” & the bartender, a good boy & one who keeps a buffalo in his mind, says “I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ve seen the other fellow someplace” & when Paul Sargent, a plainclothes man from 4th street, comes in at three in the morning & busts everybody for being incredible, nobody really gets angry – just a little illiterate most people get & Rome, one of the hundred Inevitables whispers “I told you so” to Madame John…. Savage Rose & Fixable are bravely blowing kisses to Jade Hexagram-Carnaby Street & to all the mysterious juveniles & the Cream Judge is writing a book on the true meaning of a pear – last year, he wrote one on famous dogs of the civil war & now he has false teeth & no children…. when the
Cream met Savage Rose & Fixable, he was introduced to them by none other than Lifelessness – Lifelessness is the Great Enemy & always wears a hip guard – he is very hipguard…. Lifelessness said when introducing everybody “go save the world” & “involvement! that’s the issue” & things like that & Savage Rose winked at Fixable & the Cream went off with his arm in a sling singing “summertime & the Livin is easy”…. the Clown appears – puts a gag over Autumn’s mouth & says “there are two kinds of people – simple people & normal people” this usually gets a big laugh from the sandpit & White Heap sneezes – passes out & rips open Autumn’s gag & says “What do you mean youre Autumn and without you there’d be no spring! you fool! without spring, there’d be no you! what do you think of that???.” then Savage Rose & Fixable come by & kick him in the brains & color him pink for being a phony philosopher – then the Clown comes by and screams “You phony philosopher!” & jumps on his head – Paul Sargent comes by again in an umpire’s suit & some college kid who’s read all about Nietzsche comes by & says “Nietzche never wore an umpire’s suit” & Paul says “You wanna buy some clothes, kid?” & then Rome & John come out of the bar & they’re going up to Harlem…. we are singing today of the WIPE-OUT GANG –the WIPE-OUT GANG buys, owns & operates the Insanity Factory – if you do not know where the Insanity Factory is located, you should hereby take two steps to the right, paint your teeth & go to sleep…. the songs on this specific record are not so much songs but rather exercises in tonal breath control…. the subject matter – tho meaningless as it is – has something to do with the beautiful strangers….the beautiful strangers, Vivaldi’s green jacket & the holy slow train
you are right john cohen – quazimodo was right – Mozart was right…. I cannot say the word eye anymore…. when I speak this word eye, it is as if I am speaking of somebody’s eye that I faintly remember….there is no eye – there is only a series of mouths – long live the mouths – your rooftop – if you don’t already know – has been demolished…. eye is plasma & you are right about that too – you are lucky – you don’t have to think about such things as eyes & rooftops & quazimodo. — Bob Dylan
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Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 Pledging My Time Visions Of Johanna One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) I Want You
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat Just Like A Woman Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine
Temporary Like Achilles Absolutely Sweet Marie Fourth Time Around Obviously 5 Believers Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
Musicians: Wayne Moss, Charlie McCoy, Kenneth Buttrey, Hargus Robbins, Jerry Kennedy, Joe South, Al Kooper, Bill Aikins, Henry Strzelecki, Jaime Robertson
Issued at the height of Dylan’s fame and just before the July 1966 motorcycle accident that brought his career to a halt, this double album is another of Dylan’s landmark recordings. Except for the opening track, “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” a hit single on which Dylan sings over a raucous brass band, with the famous refrain, “Everybody must get stoned,” Dylan had found yet another voice for himself, slightly husky and softer, and the songs he delivers in that voice steer for a place of deeply symbolic and sometimes hallucinatory poetry, not as angry or distanced as the songs on Highway 61 Revisited. Blonde on Blonde’s mixture of mystic love poems, blues, picaresque Americana and urban fantasy speaks out of the whirlwind of a time when everything was out of whack. Dylan had found a means of total expression that could miraculously stand up to all that chaos and cut it down to size. Songs like “I Want You,” “Visions of Johanna,” “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again,” “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” “Just Like A Woman,” “Leopard-Skin Pill-box Hat,” and the epical “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” which took up an entire album side on the original issue, were love songs, alternately funny, tender, and recriminatory, dark and giddily illuminated landscapes, a peak of creativity for the songwriter and performer alike.
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Blonde On Blonde Produced by Bob Johnston Released on May 16, 1966
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Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 Blowin’ In The Wind The Times They Are A-Changin’ It Ain’t Me, Babe Like A Rolling Stone
Mr. Tambourine Man Subterranean Homesick Blues I Want You Positively 4th Street Just Like A Woman
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Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
Produced by John Hammond, Bob Johnston, and Tom Wilson Released on March 27, 1967
John Wesley Harding As I Went Out One Morning I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine All Along The Watchtower The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest
Drifter’s Escape Dear Landlord I Am A Lonesome Hobo I Pity The Poor Immigrant The Wicked Messenger Down Along The Cove I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
Musicians: Charlie McCoy - bass; Kenny Buttrey - drums; Pete Drake steel guitar (on “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “Down Along The Cove”).
After a motorcycle crash in July 1966 brought his public appearances to a halt indefinitely, rumors ran wild – fans heard that he was paralyzed, or that he had gone crazy, or that he was actually dead. Dylan was, in fact, holed up in Woodstock, New York, using his recuperation time to step back from the extraordinary storm of touring, take some stock and think more deeply about what he was doing. The world seemed to be going crazier each month and everyone seemed to expect him to keep pace with it or, worse, lead the way. Perhaps he sensed a trap being prepared down that road, a sacrificial altar, and he had a young family that was precious to him. It was a lot to think about, and he took his time. When he did, finally, release an album, in 1967, it was nothing anyone could have predicted. John Wesley Harding was a quiet acoustic album, full of cryptic, symbolic songs about mortality and redemption, bravery and betrayal, regret and hope. The title track was based on the story of a real-life bank robber named John Wesley Hardin. “All Along The Watchtower” became one of Dylan’s perennials, but “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “The Ballad of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest,” “The Wicked Messenger,” and “Drifter’s Escape,” while less often performed, are enigmatic parables that occupy a unique place in Dylan’s body of work.
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John Wesley Harding
Produced by Bob Johnston Released on December 27, 1967
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
JOHN WESLEY HARDING original liner notes
There were three kings and a jolly three too. The first one had a broken nose, the second, a broken arm and the third was broke. “Faith is the key!” said the first king. “No, froth is the key!” said the second. “You’re both wrong,” said the third, “the key is Frank!”
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It was late in the evening and Frank was sweeping up, preparing the meat and dishing himself out when there came a knock upon the door. “Who is it?” he mused. “It’s us, Frank,” said the three kings in unison, “and we’d like to have a word with you!” Frank opened the door and the three kings crawled in. Terry Shute was in the midst of prying open a hairdresser when Frank’s wife came in and caught him. “They’re here!” she gasped. Terry dropped his drawer and rubbed the eye. “What do they appear to be like?” “One’s got a broken vessel and that’s the truth, the other two I’m not so sure about.” “Fine, thank you, that’ll be all.” “Good” she turned and puffed. Terry tightened his belt and in an afterthought, stated: “Wait!” “Yes?” “How many of them would you say there were?” Vera smiled, she tapped her toe three times. Terry watched her foot closely. “Three?” he asked, hesitating. Vera nodded. “Get up off my floor!” shouted Frank. The second king, who was first to rise, mumbled, “Where’s the better half, Frank?” Frank, who was in no mood for jokes, took it lightly, replied, “She’s in the back of the house, flaming it up with an arrogant man, now come on, out with it, what’s on our minds today?” Nobody answered.
Terry Shute then entered the room with a bang, looking the three kings over and fondling his mop. Getting down to the source of things, he proudly boasted: “There is a creeping consumption in the land. It begins with these three fellas and it travels outward. Never in my life have I seen such a motley crew. They ask nothing and they receive nothing. Forgiveness is not in them. The wilderness is rotten all over their foreheads. They scorn the widow and abuse the child but I am afraid that they shall not prevail over the young man’s destiny, not even them!” Frank turned with a blast, “Get out of here, you ragged man! Come ye no more!” Terry left the room willingly. “What seems to be the problem?” Frank turned back to the three kings who were astonished. The first king cleared his throat. His shoes were too big and his crown was wet and lopsided but nevertheless, he began to speak in the most meaningful way, “Frank,” he began, “Mr. Dylan has come out with a new record. This record of course features none but his own songs and we understand that you’re the key.” “That’s right,” said Frank, “I am.” “Well then,” said the king in a bit of excitement, “could you please open it up for us?” Frank, who all this time had been reclining with his eyes closed, suddenly opened them both up as wide as a tiger. “And just how far would you like to go in?” he asked and the three kings all looked at each other. “Not too far but just far enough so’s we can say that we’ve been there,” said the first chief. “All right,” said Frank, “I’ll see what I can do,” and he commenced to doing it. First of all, he sat down and crossed his legs, then he sprung up, ripped off his shirt and began waving it in the air. A lightbulb fell
from one of his pockets and he stamped it out with his foot. Then he took a deep breath, moaned and punched his fist through the plate-glass window. Settling back in his chair, he pulled out a knife, “Far enough?” he asked. “Yeah, sure, Frank,” said the second king. The third king just shook his head and said he didn’t know. The first king remained silent. The door opened and Vera stepped in. “Terry Shute will be leaving us soon and he desires to know if you kings got any gifts you wanna lay on him.” Nobody answered. It was just before the break of day and the three kings were tumbling along the road. The first one’s nose had been mysteriously fixed, the second one’s arm had healed and the third one was rich. All three of them were blowing horns. “I’ve never been so happy in all my life!” sang the one with all the money. “Oh mighty thing!” said Vera to Frank, “Why didn’t you just tell them you were a moderate man and leave it at that instead of goosing yourself all over the room?” “Patience, Vera,” said Frank. Terry Shute, who was sitting over by the curtain cleaning an ax, climbed to his feet, walked over to Vera’s husband and placed his hand on his shoulder. “Yuh didn’t hurt yer hand, didja Frank?” Frank just sat there watching the workmen replace the window. “I don’t believe so,” he said.
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Girl From The North Country Nashville Skyline Rag To Be Alone With You I Threw It All Away Peggy Day
Lay, Lady, Lay One More Night Tell Me That It Isn’t True Country Pie Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You
Musicians: Robert Wilson - piano, organ; Hargus (Pig) Robbins - piano; Charlie Daniels - guitar, dobro; Norman Blake, Wayne Moss, Kelton Herston - guitars; Pete Drake steel guitar; Charlie McCoy - bass; Kenny Buttrey - drums.
The year 1969 delivered another surprise. Dylan brought a new, lighter vocal sound to the studio for sessions with some of Nashville’s finest, including Norman Blake and Charlie Daniels. He seemed almost ready to be reborn as a country star, singing straightforward love lyrics in new lilting tones. Of course, Dylan had always paid close attention to country music, from his very early days listening to the Monroe Brothers, Hank Williams and the Stanley Brothers. On Nashville Skyline the influence of a slightly slicker, more contemporary approach to country music gave Dylan an expanded audience, as well as a hit single in “Lay, Lady, Lay.” Dylan sings a duet with Johnny Cash on “Girl From The North Country,” and the album had Dylan relishing the role of Music Row writer for hire with songs like “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You,” “To Be Alone With You,” and the sly and sexy “Country Pie.”
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Nashville Skyline
Produced by Bob Johnston Released on April 9, 1969
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
NASHVILLE SKYLINE original liner notes “Of Bob Dylan”
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There are those who do not imitate, Who cannot imitate But then there are those who emulate At times, to expand further the light Of an original glow. Knowing that to imitate the living Is mockery And to imitate the dead Is robbery There are those Who are beings complete unto themselves Whole, undaunted,-a source As leaves of grass, as stars As mountains, alike, alike, alike, Yet unalike Each is complete and contained And as each unalike star shines Each ray of light is forever gone To leave way for a new ray And a new ray, as from a fountain Complete unto itself, full, flowing So are some souls like stars And their words, works and songs Like strong, quick flashes of light From a brilliant, erupting cone. So where are your mountains To match some men?
This man can rhyme the tick of time The edge of pain, the what of sane And comprehend the good in men, the bad in men Can feel the hate of fight, the love of right And the creep of blight at the speed of light The pain of dawn, the gone of gone The end of friend, the end of end By math of trend What grip to hold what he is told How long to hold, how strong to hold How much to hold of what is told. And Know The yield of rend; the break of bend The scar of mend I’m proud to say that I know it, Here-in is a hell of a poet. And lots of other things And lots of other things. — Johnny Cash
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All The Tired Horses Alberta #1 I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know Days Of 49 Early Mornin’ Rain In Search Of Little Sadie Let It Be Me Little Sadie
Woogie Boogie Belle Isle Living The Blues Like A Rolling Stone Copper Kettle Gotta Travel On Blue Moon The Boxer
The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo) Take Me As I Am Take A Message To Mary It Hurts Me Too Minstrel Boy She Belongs To Me Wigwam Alberta #2
Self Portrait seems, at first glance, to be anything but what its title claims. It is a collection of odds and ends, songs mostly written by others, some recorded live, some in the studio, which Dylan later claimed to have been an effort to dismantle his fans’ expectations. His light, lilting Nashville Skyline voice croons tunes no one would have associated with him at the time – “Blue Moon,” “Early Mornin’ Rain,” “Copper Kettle,” and “The Boxer,” along with very unusual reworkings of “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “She Belongs To Me,” almost as if to say, “Go away – stop expecting so much of me.” This may in fact have been some of his motivation for releasing the album, but it is also true that Dylan’s taste in music is famously eclectic – later he would perform and record old pop songs like “When Did You Leave Heaven,” George Gershwin’s “Soon,” and even the old Dean Martin hit “Return to Me” without a hint of irony. In any case, this two-LP set was slammed heavily by the rock critical establishment at the time, although it sold very well to a public that was hungry for any new Dylan at all.
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Self Portrait
Produced by Bob Johnston Released on June 8, 1970
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If Not For You Day Of The Locusts Time Passes Slowly Went To See The Gypsy Winterlude If Dogs Run Free
New Morning Sign On The Window One More Weekend The Man In Me Three Angels Father Of Night
Musicians: Bob Dylan - acoustic guitar, electric guitar, organ, piano; David Bromberg - electric guitar, Dobro; Harvey Brooks –electric bass; Ron Cornelius - electric guitar; Charlie Daniels - electric bass; Buzzy Feiten - electric guitar; Al Kooper - organ, piano, electric guitar, french horn; Russ Kunkel drums; Billy Mundi - drums; Hilda Harris, Albertine Robinson, Maeretha Stewart – background vocals.
New Morning grew partly out of an exploration of the possibility of Dylan’s writing music for a play by the great poet Archibald MacLeish. Dylan writes at some length of his meetings and discussions with MacLeish in his memoir Chronicles, Volume One. The project never ended up working out, although a few of the songs survived, and the album is filled out with love songs, pop songs, pastorales like “Winterlude” (a waltz) as well as the funny, deadpan “If Dogs Run Free,” all of which are about as far from the tone of his peak 1960s work as they could possibly have been. Some of the critics who had ripped into Self Portrait earlier that same year (1970) raved about this effort, perhaps feeling that anything was an improvement over what they regarded as a debacle. But despite some strong and durable songs, this is not one of Dylan’s landmark discs. According to Chronicles he was working hard to dismantle a public image that had become worse than a trap for him and his family. “Time passes slowly up here in the mountains,” he sings. “We sit beside bridges and walk beside fountains…. Time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream.” The dream, or amnesia as he would later refer to it, would not last all that much longer.
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New Morning
Produced by Bob Johnston October 21, 1970
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Watching The River Flow Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right Lay, Lady, Lay Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight All I Really Want To Do My Back Pages
Maggie’s Farm Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You She Belongs To Me All Along The Watchtower The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo) Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
If Not For You It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue Tomorrow Is A Long Time When I Paint My Masterpiece I Shall Be Released You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere Down In The Flood
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Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 Produced by John Hammond, Bob Johnston, Tom Wilson, and Leon Russell November 17, 1971
Main Title Theme (Billy) Cantina Theme (Workin’ For The Law) Billy 1 Bunkhouse Theme River Theme
Turkey Chase Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door Final Theme Billy 4 Billy 7
In November 1972 Dylan accepted an invitation to travel to Mexico to write music for the Sam Peckinpah western Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, and, as it turned out, to appear in it as well, as the enigmatic character Alias, alongside actors Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, and Jason Robards. The score produced a truly fine song in “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” still one of Dylan’s most popular, and also three fascinatingly different takes on a Dylan ballad about Billy the Kid. “Billy 1,” “Billy 4,” and “Billy 7” are sung in completely different voices (yet all unmistakably and characteristically Dylan) and evoke very different moods as well as containing different verses about the doomed, lone, romantic figure at the heart of the story. The rest of the album consists of instrumentals meant to be heard under various scenes in the movie.
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Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid Produced by Gordon Carroll July 13, 1973
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Lily Of The West Can’t Help Falling In Love Sarah Jane The Ballad Of Ira Hayes Mr. Bojangles
Mary Ann Big Yellow Taxi A Fool Such As I Spanish Is The Loving Tongue
A disc scraped together in 1973 from more odds and ends of the previous couple years, in the compilation of which Dylan apparently had no hand. The disc was released inexplicably by CBS records in what must be assumed as an act of vengeance in response to Dylan’s defection to Geffen records. CBS held the rights to dozens of unreleased Dylan songs but chose these as the first tracks to release after Dylan had left the label. The common view is that this is near, or at, the bottom of any ranking of Dylan albums, and it may be, but it has its moments along the way as Dylan does other people’s songs, in a sort of addendum to Self Portrait. The main problem is the presence of intrusive background singers, who really cheese up the proceedings throughout. If you can tune them out, Dylan’s version of “Can’t Help Falling In Love” is a fine performance, as is his energetic romp through “Sara Jane,” in which he sounds as if he is having a blast, despite the softheaded lyrics. He can’t quite bring Peter LaFarge’s recitative “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” to life, nor “Mr. Bojangles.” He has fun with Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and turns Hank Snow’s “A Fool Such As I” into an archly comic spoken rap over a boogaloo beat. He was playing it for laughs; you’ll laugh too.
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Dylan
Produced by Bob Johnston November 16, 1973
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On A Night Like This Going, Going, Gone Tough Mama Hazel Something There Is About You
Forever Young Forever Young Dirge You Angel You Never Say Goodbye Wedding Song
For 1974’s Planet Waves, Dylan reunited in the studio in November 1973 with his 1966 road band, now with Levon Helm back in the drum seat and known simply as The Band. They were gearing up for a mega-tour in a couple of months. Perhaps because of this, Planet Waves feels like a transitional album, as if Dylan is trying to get himself back into focus after the preceding couple of years of life in the country. One of his most moving songs, for instance, “Forever Young,” is presented in two different versions with completely different feelings, different meanings. “On A Night Like This” is a bouncing invitation song, full of high spirits and anticipation, but songs like “Dirge,” “Going, Going, Gone,” and “Wedding Song” seem to be straining at the leash, cohabiting uneasily with more or less straight-ahead love songs like “Never Say Goodbye” and “You Angel You.” Dylan no longer sounded as satisfied with life as he did on New Morning; even “Forever Young” seems to be written in view of all the storms to come, a song of hope against hope, a prayer for faith and endurance.
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Planet Waves January, 17 1974
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Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine Lay, Lady, Lay Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door It Ain’t Me, Babe Ballad Of A Thin Man Up On Cripple Creek
I Shall Be Released Endless Highway The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down Stage Fright Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right Just Like A Woman
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) The Shape I’m In When You Awake The Weight All Along The Watchtower Highway 61 Revisited Like A Rolling Stone Blowin’ In The Wind
Recorded in January and February of 1974 during Dylan’s North American tour with The Band, Before The Flood is, like Planet Waves, a document of a transitional period in Dylan’s life and art. In later years Dylan seems to have disowned the music made on, and the motives for, the tour, saying that it was as if he was “playing” himself and the Band was playing the Band. At many points Dylan seem to be hurling himself at his own familiar songs (there is no new Dylan repertoire on the album, not even anything from Planet Waves) as if against the walls of a prison cell. The result is exciting at many points, if not particularly reflective or subtle. The original double album also included several tracks by The Band, who had become a major rock attraction in their own right, in the years after they had backed Dylan on the road in 1966.
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Before The Flood June 20, 1974
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Tangled Up In Blue Simple Twist Of Fate You’re A Big Girl Now Idiot Wind You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
Meet Me In The Morning Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts If You See Her, Say Hello Shelter From The Storm Buckets Of Rain
Musicians: Greg Inhofer - keyboards; Chris Weber, guitar; Kevin Odegard guitar; Bill Peterson - bass; Bill Berg - drums; Tony Brown - bass; Paul Griffin - organ; Eric Weissberg guitar; Charles Brown III - guitar; Barry Kornfeld - guitar; Thomas McFaul - keyboards; Tony Richard Crooks – drums.
And then came 1975’s Blood On The Tracks, recorded late in 1974, one of Dylan’s greatest albums, born, at least in part, of extreme personal turmoil in his life at home and partly out of a creative rebirth Dylan experienced studying painting with teacher Norman Raeben. In it, Dylan was able to muster all the intensity, the imagistic compression, the pain and tenderness and bitterness of his best 1960s work, but with an added note of forgiveness, a deepening openness to sadness and regret and hope and direct utterance that has kept this album one of his most loved. It contains the overwhelmingly powerful “Idiot Wind,” a long letter full of recrimination and sadness and love to an estranged beloved, and the picaresque “Tangled Up In Blue,” in which Dylan manages to give the sense of a sweeping narrative through brilliant, fragmentary images juxtaposed incompact verses. The other songs – “Shelter From The Storm,” “Simple Twist Of Fate” “If You See Her, Say Hello” and the rest – have a vulnerability and honesty of expression and feeling linked to a poetic talent that is once again at the peak of its form. The result is a lyric masterpiece for the ages.
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Blood On The Tracks January 20, 1975
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BLOOD ON THE TRACKS original liner notes
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In the end, the plague touched us all. It was not confined to the Oran of Camus. No. It turned up again in America, breeding in-a-compost of greed and uselessness and murder, in those places where statesmen and generals stash the bodies of the forever young. The plague ran in the blood of men in sharkskin suits, who ran for President promising life and delivering death. The infected young men machine-gunned babies in Asian ditches; they marshaled metal death through the mighty clouds, up above God’s green earth, released it in silent streams, and moved on, while the hospitals exploded and green fields were churned to mud. And here at home, something died. The bacillus moved among us, slaying that old America where the immigrants lit a million dreams in the shadows of the bridges, killing the great brawling country of barnstormers and wobblies and home-run hitters, the place of Betty Grable and Carl Furillo and heavyweight champions of the world. And through the fog of the plague, most art withered into journalism. Painters left the easel to scrawl their innocence on walls and manifestos. Symphonies died on crowded roads. Novels served as furnished rooms for ideology. And as the evidence piled up, as the rock was pushed back to reveal the worms, many retreated into that past that never was, the place of balcony dreams in Loew’s Met, fair women and honorable men, where we browned ourselves in the Creamsicle summers, only faintly hearing the young men march to the troopships, while Jo Stafford gladly promised her fidelity. Poor America. Tossed on a pilgrim tide. Land where the poets died. Except Dylan.
He had remained, in front of us, or writing from the north country, and remained true. He was not the only one, of course; he is not the only one now. But of all our poets, Dylan is the one who has most clearly taken the roiled sea and put it in a glass. Early on, he warned us, he gave many of us voice, he told us about the hard rain that was gong to fall, and how it would carry plague. In the teargas in 1968 Chicago, they hurled Dylan at the walls of the great hotels, where the infected drew the blinds, and their butlers ordered up the bayonets. Most of them are gone now. Dylan remains. So forget the clenched young scholars who analyze his rhymes into dust. Remember that he gave us voice. When our innocence died forever, Bob Dylan made that moment into art. The wonder is that he survived. That is no small thing. We live in the smoky landscape now, as the exhausted troops seek the roads home. The signposts have been smashed; the maps are blurred. There is no politician anywhere who can move anyone to hope; the plague recedes, but it is not dead, and the statesmen are as irrelevant as the tarnished statues in the public parks. We live with a callous on the heart. Only the artists can remove it. Only the artists can help the poor land again to feel. And here is Dylan, bringing feelings back home. In this album, he is as personal and as universal as Yeats or Blake; speaking for himself, risking that dangerous opening of the veins, he speaks for us all. The words, the music, the tone of voice speak of regret, melancholy, a sense of inevitable farewell, mixed with sly humor, some rage, and a sense of simple joy. They are the poems of a survivor. The warning voice of the innocent boy is no longer here,
because Dylan has chosen not to remain a boy. It is not his voice that has grown richer, stronger, more certain; it is Dylan himself. And his poetry, his troubadour’s traveling art, seems to me to be more meaningful than ever. I thought, listening to these songs, of the words of Yeats, walker of the roads of Ireland: “We make out of the quarrel with others rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” Dylan is now looking at the quarrel of the self. The crowds have moved back off the stage of history; we are left with the solitary human, a single hair on the skin of the earth. Dylan speaks now for that single hair. If you see her, Say hello. She might be in Tangiers…* So begins one of these poems, as light as a slide on ice, and as dangerous. Dylan doesn’t fall in. Instead, he tells us the essentials; a woman once loved, gone off, vanished into the wild places of the earth, still loved. If you’re makin’ love to her, Kiss her for the kid. Who always has respected her, for doin’ what she did…* It is a simple love song, of course, which is the proper territory of poets, but is abut love filled with honor, and a kind of dignity, the generosity that so few people can summon when another has become a parenthesis in a life. That song, and some of the other love poems in this collection, seem to me absolutely right, in this moment at the end of wards, as all of us, old, young, middle-aged, men and women, are searching for some simple things to believe in. Dylan here tips his had to Rimbaud and Verlaine, knowing all about the seasons in hell, but
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he insists on his right to speak of love, that human emotion that still exists, in Faulkner’s phrase, in spite of, not because. And yes, there is humor here too, a small grin pasted over the hurt, delivered almost casually, as if the poet could control the chaos of feeling with a few simply chosen words: Life is sad, Life is a bust. All ya can do, Is do what you must. You do what you must do, And ya do it well. I’ll do it for you, Ah, honey baby, can’t ya tell? ** A simple song. Not Dante’s Inferno, and not intended to be. But a song which conjures up the American road, all the busted dreams of open places, boxcars, the Big Dipper pricking the velvet night. And it made me thing of Ginsberg and Corso and Ferlinghetti, and most of all, Kerouac, racing Deam Moriarty across the country in the Fifties, embracing wind and night, passing Huck Finn on the riverbanks, bouncing against the Coast, and heading back again, with Kerouac dreaming his songs of the railroad earth. Music drove them; they always knew they were near New York when they picked up Symphony Sid on the radio. In San Francisco they declared a Renaissance and read poetry to jazz, trying to make Mallarme’s dream flourish in the soil of America. They failed, as artists generally do, but in some ways Dylan has kept their promise. Now he has moved past them, driving harder into self. Listen to “Idiot Wind.” It is a hard, coldblooded poem about the survivor’s anger, as personal as anything ever committed to a record. And yet it can also stand as the anthem for all who feel invaded, handled, bottled, packaged’ all who spent themselves in combat with the plague; all who ever walked into the knives of humiliation or celebrates fad and fashion, glorifies the dismal
glitter of celebrity. Its products live on the covers of magazines, in all of television, in the poisoned air and dead grey lakes. But most of all, it blows through the human heart. Dylan knows that such a wind is the deadliest enemy of art. And when the artists die, we all die with them. Or listen to the long narrative poem called “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.” It should not be reduced to notes, or taken out of context; it should be experienced in full. The compression of story is masterful, but its real wonder is in the spaces, in what the artists left out of his painting. To me, that has always been the key to Dylan’s art. To state things plainly is the function of journalism; but Dylan sings a more fugitive song: allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and ellipses, and by leaving things out, he allows us the grand privilege of creating along with him. His song becomes our song because we live in those spaces. If we listen, if we work at it, we fill up the mystery, we expand and inhabit the work of art. It is the most democratic form of creation. Totalitarian art tells us what to fee. Dylan’s art feels, and invites us to join him. That quality is in all the work in this collection, the long, major works, the casual drawings and etchings. There are some who attack Dylan because he will not rewrite “Like A Rolling Stone” or “Gates Of Eden.” They are fools, because they are cheating themselves of a shot at wonder. Every artist owns a vision of the world, and he shouts his protest when he sees evil mangling that vision. But he must also tell us the vision. Now we are getting Dylan’s vision, rich and loamy, against which the world moved so darkly. To enter that envisioned world, is like plunging deep into a mountain pool, where the rocks are clear and smooth at the bottom. So forget the Dylan whose image was eaten at by the mongers of the idiot wind. Don’t mistake him for Isaiah, or a magazine cover, or a leader of guitar armies. He is only a troubadour, blood brother of Villon, a son of Provence, and he has survived the
plague. Look: he has just walked into the courtyard, padding across the flagstones, strumming a guitar. The words are about “flowers on the hillside bloomin’ crazy / Crickets talkin’ back and forth in rhyme…” A girl, red-haired and melancholy, begins to smile. Listen; the poet sings to all of us: But I’ll see you in the sky above, In the tall grass, In the ones I love. You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go.*** — Pete Hamill. New York. 1974
* From “If You See Her, Say Hello,” © 1974 Rams Horn Music. Used By Permission. All rights reserved. ** From “Buckets of Rain,” © 1974 Rams Horn Music. Used By Permission. All rights reserved. *** From “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” © 1974 Rams Horn Music. Used By Permission. All rights reserved.
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Odds And Ends Orange Juice Blues (Blues For Breakfast) Million Dollar Bash Yazoo Street Scandal Goin’ To Acapulco Katie’s Been Gone Lo And Behold! Bessie Smith
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The Basement Tapes July 1, 1975
Clothes Line Apple Suckling Tree Please, Mrs. Henry Tears Of Rage Too Much Of Nothing Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread Ain’t No More Cane Down In The Flood
Ruben Remus Tiny Montgomery You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere Don’t Ya Tell Henry Nothing Was Delivered Open The Door, Homer Long-Distance Operator This Wheel’s On Fire
In the summer and fall of 1967, Bob Dylan took time off, recuperating from his motorcycle accident and taking stock of his life as well. Although he would not tour again for eight years, music was still very much on his mind. Dylan, while living in the Woodstock, New York area, regularly got together for informal sessions with the members of his 1966 backing group, who would come to be known as The Band. The repertoire they played, and played with, at those sessions was eclectic to say the least—traditional folk songs and doo-wop tunes, bluegrass and country and hard blues. Along with these were a series of original songs that used the conventions and subject matter of the traditional material kaleidoscopically, mixing and matching idioms, switching from high drama to comedy to the downright absurd. Among this extraordinary flowering of material could be found nonsense ballads, giddy humor, dead-pan doubletalk, and some genuinely beautiful songs of love and grief. The musicians left a tape recorder running much of the time, luckily for everyone. The tapes, originally circulated by his music publishing company, fell into the hands of collectors and were widely circulated and bootlegged. In 1975, Columbia Records officially assembled twenty-four of the performances on a two-disc set known as The Basement Tapes. Some of the songs went on to have a life of their own – “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” especially – and comic gems like “Yea, Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread,” “Please, Mrs. Henry” “Million Dollar Bash,” “Tiny Montgomery,” and “Lo And Behold,” along with the beautiful “Tears of Rage,” hold a unique and precious place in Dylan’s work.
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
THE BASEMENT TAPES original liner notes
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Some years back, The Band cut a song called “The Rumor.” It’s a tune that could well describe the music now collected here. “The Basement Tapes” are a bit like the phantom 1956 session that brought Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash together for the first and last time. In spite of the bootlegs and cover versions, “The Basement Tapes” have always been more of a rumor than anything else. Some facts, then. The twenty-four songs on these two discs are drawn from sessions that took place between June and October, 1967, in the basement of Big Pink, a house rented by some members of The Band, up in West Saugerties, New York. Bob Dylan sings lead on sixteen numbers; one of them, “Goin’ To Acapulco,” has never been bootlegged—for that matter, it has never even been rumored. Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Robbie Robertson take the lead on eight others, none of which has ever surfaced either. There’s a lot of back-up singing all around. The instrumental line up is: Rick Danko, bass (mandolin on “Ain’t No More Cane”); Garth Hudson, organ (sax on “Orange Juice Blues (Blues For Breakfast),” accordion on “Ain’t No More Cane”); Richard Manuel, piano (drums on “Odds And Ends,” “Yazoo Street Scandal,” “Ain’t No More Cane” and “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” harp on “Long Distance Operator”: Robbie Robertson, lead guitar (drums on “Apple Suckling Tree,” “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and “This Wheel’s On Fire,” acoustic guitar on “Ain’t No More Cane”); Bob Dylan, acoustic guitar (piano on “Apple Suckling Tree”). Levon Helm, who had left The Band when, as The Hawks, they were backing Dylan on stage in 1965, had yet to rejoin his group when most of the material with Dylan was recorded; he was back, on drums (mandolin on “Yazoo Street Scandal” and “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” bass on “Ain’t
No More Cane”), for the tunes by The Band. Cut live on a home tape recorder, with from one to three mikes, all of the tracks have been remastered; highlights have been brought out, tones sharpened, tape hiss removed, and so on. The sound is clear, immediate, and direct; as intimate as living room and as slick as a barbed wire fence. As for the quality of feeling in the music—well, that has never been in doubt. “...with a certain kind of blues music, you can sit down and play it...you may have to lean forward a little.” — Bob Dylan, 1966 In 1965 and 1966 Bob Dylan and The Hawks played their way across the country and then around the world; those rough tours pushed Bob Dylan’s music, and The Band’s, to a certain limit, and they had made stand-up, no-quarter-given-andno quarter-asked music if there ever was such a thing. In the summer of 1967 Dylan and The Band were after something else. Neither “John Wesley Harding,” made later that year, nor “Music From Big Pink” (for which all of The Band’s numbers here were at one time intended), sound much like “The Basement Tapes,” but there are two elements the three sessions do share; a feeling of age, a kind of classicism; and an absolute commitment by the singers and musicians to their material. Beneath the easy rolling surface of The Basement Tapes, there is some serious business going on. What was taking shape, as Dylan and The Band fiddled with the tunes, was less a style than a spirit—a spirit that had to do with a delight in friendship and invention. As you first listen to the music they made, you’ll be hard put to pin it down, and likely not too
interested in doing so, What matters is Rick Danko’s loping bass on “Yazoo Street Scandal”; Garth Hudson’s omnipresent merry-go-round organ playing (and never more evocative than it is on “Apple Suckling Tree”); the slow, uncoiling menace of “This Wheel’s On Fire”; Bob Dylan’s singing, as sly as Jerry Lee Lewis, and as knowing as the old man of the mountains. There’s the kind of love song only Richard Manuel can pull off, the irresistibly pretty “Katie’s Been Gone”; there is the unassuming passion of The Band’s magnificent “Ain’t No More Cane,” an old chain gang song that ought to be a revelation to anyone who has ever cared about The Band’s music, because this performance seems to capture the essence of what they have always meant to be. There’s the lovely idea of “Bessie Smith,” written and sung by Robbie and Rick as the plaint of one of Bessie’s lovers, who can’t figure out if he’s lost his heart to the woman herself or the way she sings. There is Levon Helm’s patented mixture of carnal bewilderment and helpless delight in “Don’t Ya Tell Henry” (and the solos he and Robbie stomp out on that tune)—and the tale he tells in “Yazoo Street Scandal,” a comic horror story wherein the singer is introduced, by his girlfriend, to the local Dark Lady, who promptly seduces him, and then scares him half to death. “The Basement Tapes,” more than any other music that has been heard from Bob Dylan and The Band, sound like the music of a partnership. As Dylan and The Band trade vocals across these discs, as they trade nuances and phrases within the songs, you can feel the warmth and the comradeship that must have been liberating for all six men. Language, for one thing, is completely unfettered. A good number of the songs seem as cryptic, or as
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nonsensical, as a misnumbered crossword puzzlethat is, if you listen only for words, and not for what the singing and the music say—but the open spirit of the songs is as straightforward as their unmatched vitality and spunk. One hears a pure, naked emotion in some of Dylan’s writing and singing—in “Tears Of Rage,” especially—that can’t he found anywhere else, and I think it is the musical sympathy Dylan and The Band shared in these sessions that gives “Tears Of Rage,” and other numbers, their remarkable depth and power. There are rhythms in the music that literally sing with compliments tossed from one musician to another—listen to “Lo And Behold!,” “Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood),” “Ain’t No More Cane.” And there is another kind of openness, a flair for ribaldry that’s as much a matter of Levon’s mandolin as his, or Dylan’s, singing—a spirit that shoots a good smile straight across this album. More than a little crazy, at times flatly bizarre (take “Million Dollar Bash,” “Yazoo Street Scandal,” “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” “Lo And Behold!”), moving easily form the confessional to the bawdy house, roaring with humor and good times, this music sounds to me at once like a testing and a discovery —of musical affinity, of nerve, of some very pointed themes; put up or shut up, obligation, escape, homecoming, owning up, the settling of accounts past due. It sounds as well like a testing and a discovery of memory and roots. “The Basement Tapes” are a kaleidoscope like nothing I know, complete and no more dated than the weather, but they seem to leap out of a kaleidoscope of American music no less immediate for its venerability. Just below the surface of songs like “Lo And Behold!” or “Million Dollar Bash” are the strange adventures and poker-faced insanities chronicled in such standards as “Froggy Went A-Courtin’” “E-ri-e,” Henry Thomas’s “Fishing Blues,” “Cock Robin,” or “Five Nights Drunk”; the ghost of Rabbit Brown’s sardonic “James Alley
Blues” might lie just behind “Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood)” (“Sometimes I Think That You’re Too Sweet To Die,” Brown sang in 1927, “And Another Time I Think You Oughta Be Buried Alive”) “The Basement Tapes” summon sea chanteys; drinking songs, tall tales, and early rock and roll. Along side of such things—and often intertwined with them—is something very different. “Obviously, death is not very universally accepted. I mean, you’d think that the traditional music people could gather from their songs that mystery is a fact, a traditional fact.” — Bob Dylan, 1966 I think one can hear what Bob Dylan was talking about in the music of “The Basement Tapes,” in “Goin’ To Acapulco,” “Tears Of Rage,” “Too Much Of Nothing,” and “This Wheel’s On Fire”—one can hardly avoid hearing it. It is a plain-talk mystery; it has nothing to do with mumbo-jumbo, charms or spells. The “acceptance of death” that Dylan found in “traditional music”—the ancient ballads of mountain music—is simply a singer’s insistence on mystery as inseparable from any honest understanding of what life is all about; it is the quiet terror of a man seeking salvation who stares into a void that stares back. It is the awesome, impenetrable fatalism that drives the timeless ballads first recorded in the twenties; songs like Buell Kazee’s “East Virginia,” Clarence Ashley’s “Coo Coo Bird,” Dock Boggs’ “Country Blues”—or a song called “I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground,” put down by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in 1928. “I wish I was a mole in the ground—like a mole in the ground I would root that mountain down—And I wish I was a mole in the ground.” Now, what the singer wants is obvious, and almost impossible to really comprehend. He wants to be delivered from his like, and to be changed into a creature insignificant and despised; like a mole in
the ground, he wants to see nothing and to be seen by no one; he wants to destroy the world, and to survive it. Dylan and The Band came to terms with feeling— came to terms with the void that looks back—in the summer of 1967; in the most powerful and unsettling songs on “The Basement Tapes,” they put an old, old sense of mystery across with an intensity that has not been heard in a long time. You can find it in Dylan’s singing and in his lyrics on “This Wheel’s On Fire”—and in every note Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm and Rick Danko play. And it is in this way most of all that “The Basement Tapes” are a testing and a discovery of roots and memory; it might be why “The Basement Tapes” are, if anything, more compelling today than when they were first made, no more likely to fade than Elvis Presley’s “Mystery Train” or Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vain.” The spirit of a song like “I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground” matters here not as an “influence,” and not as a “source.” It is simply that one side of “The Basement Tapes” casts the shadow of such things and in turn, is shadowed by them. — Greil Marcus
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Hurricane Isis Mozambique One More Cup Of Coffee Oh, Sister
Joey Romance In Durango Black Diamond Bay Sara
Musicians: Bob Dylan - rhythm guitar, harmonica, piano on “Isis”; Emmylou Harris - background vocals; Rob Stoner - bass, background vocals; Scarlet Rivera violin; Howard Wyeth - drums; Vincent Bell - bellzouki; Dom Cortese - accordion; Ronee Blakley background vocals “Hurricane”; Luther - congas “Hurricane.”
The follow-up album to Blood On The Tracks was released between the first leg of Dylan’s epic Rolling Thunder Tour in late 1975 and the second in the spring of 1976. Desire was his biggest hit to date. Featuring violinist Scarlett Rivera, a Dylan discovery, Desire leads off with Dylan’s blazing narrative ballad “Hurricane,” which tells the story of boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter’s arrest, trial and imprisonment, a song full of anger, rage and sarcasm that many hailed as a return to his “protest” work of the previous decade. Several of the Desire tracks, including “Isis” and “Romance In Durango,” were co-written with playwright Jacques Levy, and have a quasi-surreal narrative spin to them. Dylan’s Hebraic melisma on “One More Cup of Coffee” is another high point, as is “Sara,” a devastatingly direct and open love letter to his wife. An album full of tumult, energy, and confusion, pain and fire and sudden transcendence, one of Dylan’s most interesting.
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Desire
Produced by Don DeVito January 5, 1976
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DESIRE original liner notes SONGS OF REDEMPTION
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Hurricane, the only innocent Hurricane, protest song: Pro (in favor) * Attest (testify for) the character case of Boxer Mr. Carter framed on bum rap Passaic Country N.J. whom Dylan minstrel visited in jail. Doctor Poet W.C. Williams dying nearby said “A new world is only a new mind,” & spent life redeeming pure North Jersey language so later poets could sing “tough iron metal” talk rhymes “They want to put his ass in stir They want to pin this triple mur der on him … He coulda been the champion of the wooorld – “ & end plain as day “… Shame! To live in a land where Justice is a game!” so every Paterson kid will know News furthermore that “Rubin sits like Buddha in a 10 foot cell.” Big daily Announcement. Song’ll hit streets Supreme Courts’ll have coughed & weeped. Rubin Carter spring pray God if there’s One in America – familiar harmonica pieces ears that just hard about “criminals in their coats & their ties..” Old Bards & Minsrels rhymed their years news on pilgrimage road – Visitations town to town singing Kings shepherds’ cowboys’ & lawyers’ secrets – Good Citizen Minstrel truth’s instantaneously heard. Big Sound in conscious generations. Local newsboy-prophet song echoes old youthful idealistic William ZanZinger poem. amplified alive. 1975. Dead protest? Woody
Guthrie lineage road bards’ll still make us weep where there’s suffereing to be sung. Dylan’s Redemption Songs! If he can do it we can do it. America can do it, “It’s all right Ma I can make it,” Yes! with tough gold metal compassion, he’s giving away Gold again – but remember, good Anarchists, “To live outside the Law you must be honest.” Drunken aggressive beer bottles’ll never redeem anybody – But clear conscious song can, every syllable pronounced, every consonant sneered out with lips risen over teeth to pronounce them exactly to a Tin microphone, snarled out NOT for bummer ego put-down but instead for egoless enunciation of exact phrasings so everyone can hear intelligence – which is only your own heart Dear. Isis here recorded, the singer later developed onstage sung for weeks whiteface, big grey hat stuck with November leaves & flowers – no instrument in hand, think Chaplinesque body dancing to syllables sustained by Rolling Thunder band rhythm following Dylan’s spontaneous ritards & talk-like mouthings for clarity. “It’s only natchural.” So you can hear it! With two-part dialogue! Big discovery, these songs are the culmination of Peotry-music as dreamt of in the ‘50s & early ‘60s – poets reciting-chanting with instruments and bongos – Steady rhythm behind the elastic language, poet alone at microphone reciting-singing surreal-history love text ending in giant “YEAH!” when minstrel gives his heart away & says he wants to stay. Dylan will stay here with us! “you may not see me tomorrow.” So he now lets loose his long-vowel yowls & yawps over smalltowns’ antennaed rooftops. To Isis Moon Lady Language Creator Birth Goddess. Mother of
Ra. Saraswati & Kali-Ma too. Hecate, Ea, Astarte, Sophia & Aphrodite. Divine Mother. Oh Sister, who’s he talking about? Eternal sister? Good citizen sisters, he’s still tender friend – lost alone loved like a thin terrified guru by every seeker in America who’s heard that long-vowelled voice in heroic ecstacy, “How does it feel?” And now come down from that Mountain of Sound, singing like a Biblical mortal “Oh sister am I not a brother to you And one deserving of all affection? And is our purpose not the same on this Earth To love and follow his direction? …. We grew up together from the cradle to The grave …. Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore, You may not see me tomorrow.” Follows the first City Narrative, solid facts beating foreward with drums & violins – like a jagged short story, ballad sung by hero making hero of unlikely sensitive gangster Gallo, hard iron metal Villonesque stoicism & sympathy, with long lamenting refrain over name anonymous in 25 years Joey, with dialogue movie panoramic cold suns over Brooklyn – and your inside news the papers didn’t interpret for the murdered outlaw. Black Diamond Bay’s also a short novel in verse, oldfashioned Dylan surrealist mind-jump inventions line by line, except D. says he’s reading Joseph Conrad storyteller, so hear continuous succession of Panama Hat Necktie details, exploding boilers & characters disappering in tornadosSuddenly a big dissolve & you’re sitting with
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minstrel Dylan in L.A. household watching the same poem Cronkited on TV news: bard sings the awful movie where everybody loses & what can you say? My father age 80 also bowed his head & said. “What can you do?” under his breath. Interesting, this long real-life spy hallucination tale opening the mind-suddenly put back into the Samsara tube with a cynic lament, its hopeless— ness-the condition of World on its own bummer, not ours or Dylan’s- we’re only 25% responsible the Crazy Wisdom Lama says. By the time Dylan’d made the great disillusioned national rhyme Idiot Wind “...Blowing like a circle round your skull From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol...” he must’ve been ready for another great surge of unafraid prophetic feeling—odd weeks seeking community he’d gone back to Other End Bleeker Street music house & jammed & drunk with ancient friend song improvisor Bob Neuwirth & also anonymous genius street studio guitarists drummers violin prodigies Rob Stoner, Howie Wyeth & Botticelli-faced little David Mansfield from New Jersey—stopped his red car in East Village for ravehaired Scarlet Rivera walking with her violin case—giant adolescent T-Bone Burnett materialized from Texas, Steven Soles from Blues New York—Half-month was spent solitary on Long Island with theatrist Jacques Levy working on song facts phrases & rhymes, sharing information seriousness—Lots of hight rhythmic art, like the fast Mexican 11 syllables beginning Durango “Hot Chili Peppers in the blistering sun” masterpieces emerged—Song become conscious poetry, the best you can say in total rhythm, allowing for your speech to fall like your
mother’s radiotalk, allowing for the singer to open his whole body for Inspiration to breathe out a long mad vowel to nail down the word into everyone’s heart That’s where you get the funny syncopation—waiting to pronounce the line just right as the music marches by, free, hopeless, jumping in and out the fatal chords, “We may not make it through the night.” “But he’s still like an electric bullet,” the Buddhist boy said, where’s the great slowdown tenderness where everyone knows where Dylan’s at under his minstrel Hat? Two songs his own heart life sings alone, total. One More Cup of Coffee for the Road—voice lifts in Hebraic cantillation never heard before in U.S. song, ancient blood singing—a new age, a new Dylan again redeemed, at ease—A little bit like America now, not paranoid any more, it’s the real Seventies—(every generation-decade flowers in the middle, Poetry Renaissance 1955, Peace Vietnam Berkeley 1965) - for now the congregation of poets sings across the land with new old soul-joy, shit burned out, ego recognized & allow’d its place, pleasure-lust put aside with suicidal pain, heart stilled & singing clear, cantillating like synagogue cantor, “’fore I go down to the Valley below.” How far has he gone? All the way from scared solitude inner prophetics—building on that mindhonesty strangeness—to openhearted personal historical confession. As Coffee for Road’s Semitic mode, Sara, is profound ancient tune revealing family paradigm—telling Wife & World the last secrets of solitary weeping art: “Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel Writing Sad Eyes Lady of the Lowland for you” Who woulda thought he’d say it, so everybody’d finally know him, same soul crying vulnerable
caught in a body we all are? —enough Person revealed to make Whitman’s whole nation weep. And behind it all the vast lone space of No God, or God, mindful conscious compassion, lifetime awareness, we’re here in America at last, redeemed. O Generation keep on working! ______________ Allen Ginsberg Co-Director Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute Boulder, Colorado 10 November 1975.
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Maggie’s Farm One Too Many Mornings Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again Oh, Sister
Lay, Lady, Lay Shelter From The Storm You’re A Big Girl Now I Threw It All Away Idiot Wind
Musicians: Mick Ronson, T Bone Burnett, Steven Soles, David Mansfield - guitars; Rob Stoner bass; Howard Wyeth, Gary Burke drums; Scarlet Rivera - strings; Howard Wyeth, T Bone Burnett piano; Steven Soles, Rob Stoner – background vocals.
The Rolling Thunder Tour, with its Cast Of Thousands, was a logistical mountain to move week in and week out, and it plainly put strains on Dylan’s personal life as well. Somewhere in between the buoyant circus of the first leg of the tour (captured gloriously in The Bootleg Series Volume 5 ) and the stark and even shocking desperado bitterness and venom of the May 1976 performances captured on Hard Rain, things changed character. Throughout these nine performances Dylan sings like a man shaking his fist at the heavens. “Shelter From The Storm” and especially “Idiot Wind” are almost demonic in their intensity. Not long after these performances, the Rolling Thunder tour stopped rolling. This snapshot of the tour’s waning days is a burning, exhilarating, painful, exhausting and extremely powerful document.
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Hard Rain
Produced by Don DeVito and Bob Dylan September 1, 1976
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Changing Of The Guards New Pony No Time To Think Baby, Stop Crying Is Your Love In Vain?
Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power) True Love Tends To Forget We Better Talk This Over Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)
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BOB DYLAN ST R E E T - L E G A L
Street-Legal
Produced by Don DeVito June 15, 1978
Musicians: Bob Dylan - electric rhythm guitar & lead vocals; Ian Wallace drums; Jerry Scheff - bass; Billy Cross – lead guitar; Alan Pasqua keyboards; Bobbye Hall - percussion; Steve Douglas - tenor and soprano saxophone ; Steven Soles - rhythm guitar (background vocals); David Mansfield - violin & mandolin; Carolyn Dennis, Jo Ann Harris, Helena Springs – background vocals; Steve Madaio trumpet (is your love in vain?).
One of Dylan’s most underrated albums, 1978’s Street-Legal plunges deep into a pool of intense and hermetic language. A harbinger of things to come, the first track, “Changing Of The Guards,” is a shifting procession of mythological references, tarot references, intense visual imagery and scraps of dialogue, full of struggle and light and darkness. Most of the album seems to be about anguish and loss of direction, even dead ends, as in the fine “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)” and “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat),” fueled by lust, regret, more lust, longing, and more regret. The titles alone – “No Time To Think,” “Is Your Love In Vain?” “We Better Talk This Over” – telegraph the pulse of anxiety that underlies the entire album. In retrospect it is possible to hear in much of Street-Legal evidence of the confusion and longing that might precipitate the kind of religious conversion that Dylan experienced not long afterward. The album was certainly the most slickly produced Dylan record up to that point; some critics greeted it with a degree of suspicion because the backup band included horns, background singers and keyboards. Whether or not a dead end was in fact being hinted at in the music, Dylan was reaching one, along with a breakthrough into a new arena of spiritual and creative possibility.
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Mr. Tambourine Man Shelter From The Storm Love Minus Zero/No Limit Ballad Of A Thin Man Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right Maggie’s Farm One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)
Like A Rolling Stone I Shall Be Released Is Your Love In Vain? Going, Going, Gone Blowin’ In The Wind Just Like A Woman Oh, Sister Simple Twist Of Fate
All Along The Watchtower I Want You All I Really Want To Do Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) Forever Young The Times They Are A-Changin’
This 2-disc live album, recorded in Tokyo in early 1978, finds Dylan backed with a band similar to that on Street-Legal, performing a kind of career retrospective, including at least one song from every studio album he had recorded up to that point, with the exception of Bob Dylan. Most of the tracks find superb Dylan vocals encrusted with arranged touches from saxophone, flute, and keyboards, as well as prominently featured background singers. It’s not a usual setting for Dylan’s music and the approach works with varying degrees of success. When it works it delivers new insights such as on the powerful re-imagining of “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and a fine reading of “Forever Young.” Dylan sounds relaxed and happy most of the time; he makes disarming remarks before some tunes, and takes some liberties with lyrics here and there, notably on “Simple Twist Of Fate.” Not one of Dylan’s very best records, perhaps, but one that has gained stature with passing time.
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Bob Dylan At Budokan Produced by Don DeVito April 23, 1978
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Gotta Serve Somebody Precious Angel I Believe In You Slow Train Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking
Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others) When You Gonna Wake Up? Man Gave Names To All The Animals When He Returns
Musicians: Bob Dylan – guitar, vocals; Barry Beckett - keyboards; Pick Withers - drums; Tim Drummond - bass; Mark Knopfler - guitar; Muscle Shoals Horns - horns; Carolyn Dennis, Helena Springs, Revina Havis – background vocals; Barry Beckett, Mickey Buckins - percussion.
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SLOW TRAIN COMING bob dylan
Slow Train Coming
Produced by Jerry Wexler & Barry Beckett August 20, 1979
In the fall of 1978, a fan threw a small silver cross onto the stage at a performance in San Diego on a night when Dylan was, by his own admission, at a low ebb in his life. Just after this, he clearly had a profound spiritual experience that resulted in a conversion to Christianity. Dylan began Bible study with a small group in California, and in May 1979 he entered the studio to record an album that shook up the pop music world, and his fans, Slow Train Coming. The album’s opening track lays it out clearly: “It might be the Devil, or it might be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody,” and the rest of the disc goes on to illuminate aspects of that choice in tones alternately devotional and evangelical. The music world was sharply divided at the time over the new turn Dylan had taken, as they had been several times in the past; audiences often heckled him at his live shows, as they had when he began appearing with an electric band in the previous decade. But Dylan showed his characteristic integrity by doing what he felt called to do, and songs like “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “I Believe In You” and “When He Returns” rank with his best work.
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A Satisfied Mind Saved Covenant Woman What Can I Do For You? Solid Rock
Pressing On In The Garden Saving Grace Are You Ready
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Musicians: Bob Dylan – guitars, vocals, harmonica; Tim Drummond – bass; Jim Keltner – drums; Fred Tackett – guitar; Spooner Oldham – keyboards; Terry Young – keyboards & vocals; Clydie King, Regina Havis, Mona Lisa Young – vocals.
Anyone hoping that Dylan’s Christian preoccupation was just a phase or a momentary blip on the screen would have been very disappointed by this 1980 follow-up album. Saved is, if anything, an even stronger evangelical statement, less introspective than Slow Train Coming, with tracks like “Solid Rock,” “Pressing On” and the title song bearing witness to Dylan’s belief in Biblical prophecy. It is in its way one of Dylan’s least personal albums; perhaps after all the years of wrestling with his own persona, or with people’s perceptions of it, with his own sense of possibility and right and wrong, he was glad to point listeners to a Higher Authority. In a 1980 interview, he was quoted as saying, “I’m becoming less and less defined as Christ becomes more and more defined.” Throughout Saved, from his reading of the old gospel standard “A Satisfied Mind” (“it’s so hard to find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind”) to his own “Are You Ready” (“have I surrendered to the will of God, or am I still acting like the boss?”), one can feel a constant struggle with the sin of pride. Not perhaps one of the top Dylan albums, but one with an absolutely uncompromising vision.
Saved
Produced by Jerry Wexler & Barry Beckett June 19, 1980
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Shot Of Love Heart Of Mine Property Of Jesus Lenny Bruce Watered-Down Love
The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar Dead Man, Dead Man In The Summertime Trouble Every Grain Of Sand
Musicians: Bob Dylan – guitars, vocals, piano, harmonica, percussion; Jim Keltner – drums; Tim Drummond – bass; Fred Tackett – guitar; Clydie King, Regina McCrary, Carolyn Dennis, Madelyn Quebec – backing vocals. (With) Steve Ripley – guitar; Carl Pickhardt – piano; Benmont Tench – keyboards; Steve Douglas – saxophone; Danny Kortchmar – electric guitar.
After the hellfire and brimstone of Saved, 1981’s Shot of Love seems a little on the unfocused side, although many found it easier to listen to than the previous record. Some of the railing-prophet energy seems to have burned off, and the beauty and humility and meditative quality of the devotional “Every Grain of Sand” could be said to reflect a more mellowed relation to his newfound faith. A number of the other songs on the album could be read ambiguously, serving either as songs of religious faith or as songs of earthly love, although the message in “Property Of Jesus” and “Dead Man, Dead Man” is unambiguous enough. His “Lenny Bruce,” a song of praise for the great comedian who “fought a war on a battlefield where every victory hurts,” is very affecting. When the album was originally issued it did not contain “The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar”; a millennial song with scorching lyrics and imagery that bounces back and forth between Middle East armageddon and a frustrated love affair. It was added to the CD release after making its first appearance on the 1985 collection Biograph.
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Shot Of Love
Produced by Chuck Plotkin and Bob Dylan (except for “Shot of Love,” produced by Bumps Blackwell, Chuck Plotkin and Bob Dylan) August 12, 1981
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Jokerman Sweetheart Like You Neighborhood Bully License To Kill
Man Of Peace Union Sundown I And I Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight
Musicians: Bob Dylan – guitar, harmonica, keyboards; Sly Dunbar – drums, percussion; Robbie Shakespeare – bass; Mick Taylor – guitar; Mark Knopfler – guitar; Alan Clark – keyboards.
In 1983, Dylan hit a streak of extraordinary inspiration again, and some of its fruits can be found on Infidels. During this time Dylan was writing and performing with all the fire and spiritual depth of his Christian work, but with a less deliberately or directly evangelical element. Instead he produced a number of songs that had the feeling of prophecy inflected by inner struggle. The album’s strongest track must certainly be “Jokerman,” a cryptic, densely symbolic exploration into the ambiguity of salvation, the close relation between pride and the impulse to save, the temptations of idolatry, and the difficulty of trusting even the believing self, a theme explored in more direct terms on “Man Of Peace.” “Sweetheart Like You” is a subtle and brilliant love song, worthy of Blood on the Tracks. Oddly, some of the very best things recorded at the Infidels session were left off the album; a couple of these, “Blind Willie McTell” and the scorching “Foot of Pride,” show up on The Bootleg Series Volume 1-3.
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Infidels
Produced by Bob Dylan For “Wreck of the Old 97 Productions” and Mark Knopfler for Chariscourt, LTD. October 27, 1983
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Highway 61 Revisited Maggie’s Farm I And I License To Kill It Ain’t Me, Babe
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Tangled Up In Blue Masters Of War Ballad Of A Thin Man Girl From The North Country Tombstone Blues
Musicians: Bob Dylan – guitar, harmonica, vocals; Greg Sutton – bass; Colin Allen – drums; Ian McLagen – keyboards; Mick Taylor – guitar; Carlos Santanna – additional guitar on “Tombstone Blues.”
Dylan’s European tour of 1984 is documented in this interesting set drawn from July concerts in England and Ireland, a mixture of solo and band performances most notable for a solo version of “Tangled Up In Blue” with markedly different lyrics than those found on Blood On The Tracks. A pulsating “Highway 61 Revisited” kicks things off and the leader’s vocals are strong rhythmically and musically. However, on some songs he does not always sound absolutely in sync with the lyrics, as on “It Ain’t Me Babe,” where there seems to be a disconnect between his delivery and the song’s meaning, although he plainly enjoys hearing the audience sing along on the refrain (even dropping out so they can sing it alone one time). “I And I” and “License To Kill,” from the recent Infidels, get a couple of the set’s best readings, and Carlos Santana joins the band on guitar for a rocking version of “Tombstone Blues.” Nothing new here in terms of repertoire, just a record of a hard-working “song and dance man,” as he once called himself, serving up the goods on the road, as he had been doing for over two decades at that point.
Real Live
Produced by Glyn Johns November 29, 1984
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Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love) Seeing The Real You At Last I’ll Remember You Clean-Cut Kid Never Gonna Be The Same Again
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Trust Yourself Emotionally Yours When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky Something’s Burning, Baby Dark Eyes
Musicians: Bob Dylan – guitar, keyboards, vocals; Mick Taylor, Ted Perlman, Mike Campbell, Ron Wood, Syd McGuiness, Al Kooper, Stuart Kimball, Ira Ingber – guitars; Don Heffington, Sly Dunbar, Anton Fig, Jim Keltner – drums; Robbie Shakespeare, Bob Glaub, Howie Epstein, John Paris – bass; Alan Clark, Richard Scher, Vince Melamed – Synthesizer; Benmont Tench – keyboards; Bashiri Johnson – percussion; Chops, Urban Blight Horns - horns; David Watson – Sax; Carol Dennis, Queen Esther Marrow, Peggi Blu, Madelyn Quebec – vocals.
This 1985 album is certainly among the more underrated ones in Dylan’s catalog. Remixed by producer du jour, Arthur Baker, it has a slicker, more “produced” feel to it than any of his previous albums, with the possible exception of StreetLegal. It doesn’t seem to have gotten its due for being what it is, an album full of love songs, most of them with a high gloss to be sure. Standout tracks include the slashing “Seeing The Real You At Last,” which plays a game with lines from old movie dialogue, the fine poetry of “Tight Connection to My Heart” (an alternate version of this, titled “Someone’s Got A Hold Of My Heart,” may be heard on The Bootleg Series 1-3) and “Clean Cut Kid,” a scary song about an All-American boy who came back psychologically damaged from war. Some of the songs are flat-out pop tunes, like “Emotionally Yours,” “Never Gonna Be The Same Again,” and “I’ll Remember You,” and that may have something to do with why the set is undervalued. But they are good pop songs, and Dylan sings them well. “Dark Eyes,” a last-minute addition, is a quiet, haunting solo performance.
Empire Burlesque May 30, 1985
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Lay, Lady, Lay Baby, Let Me Follow You Down If Not For You I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight I’ll Keep It With Mine [1/4/65] The Times They Are A-Changin’ Blowin’ In The Wind Masters Of War The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
Percy’s Song [10/23/63] Mixed Up Confusion Tombstone Blues The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine Like A Rolling Stone Lay Down Your Weary Tune [10/24/63] Subterranean Homesick Blues
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) [Live 5/6/66] Visions Of Johanna [Live 5/26/66] Every Grain Of Sand Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) [July 1967] Mr. Tambourine Man Dear Landlord It Ain’t Me, Babe You Angel You Million Dollar Bash
To Ramona You’re A Big Girl Now [9/25/74] Abandoned Love [July 1975] Tangled Up In Blue It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue [Live 5/17/66] Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? Positively 4th Street Isis [Live 12/4/75]
Jet Pilot [October 1965] Caribbean Wind [4/7/81] Up To Me [9/25/74] Baby, I’m In The Mood For You [7/9/62] I Wanna Be Your Lover [October 1965] I Want You Heart Of Mine [Live August 1981] On A Night Like This Just Like A Woman
Romance In Durango [Live 12/4/75] Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power) Gotta Serve Somebody I Believe In You Time Passes Slowly I Shall Be Released Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door All Along The Watchtower Solid Rock Forever Young [June 1973]
The 1985 release of the 5-LP set Biograph set off a widespread media reevaluation of Dylan’s art and his place in American culture. It also brought Dylan’s music, in all its variety and scope, to a new generation of listeners. For better or for worse, it kicked off the record industry phenomenon of the boxed-set career retrospective. Brilliantly programmed, Biograph was a career retrospective, but it followed no particular chronological or thematic order. Instead it had a kind of free-associative quality that proved to be a perfect light in which to view all the facets of Dylan’s work. Mixing familiar tracks from Dylan’s albums with unheard live performances and studio outtakes, the set itself has its own allusive aesthetic, working by juxtaposition and leaps of intuition – resembling, to that extent, Dylan’s own aesthetic. Among Biograph’s many previously unissued treasures are the Blood On The Tracks outtake “Up To Me,” a stunning live 1966 solo version of “Visions of Johanna,” the poignant and beautiful “Percy’s Song,” full-tilt live versions of “Isis” and “Romance In Durango” from the Rolling Thunder Revue, the early unissued tracks “I’ll Keep It With Mine” and “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” the Shot Of Love outtake “Caribbean Wind,” the 1965 mini-epic “Jet Pilot”…. There are way too many highlights to list. All in all, Biograph is, in itself, a kind of masterpiece, and still the best all-around introduction to Dylan.
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Biograph
Produced by Jeff Rosen November 7, 1985
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
BIOGRAPH original liner notes
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The first glimpses of Bob Dylan come from friends and classmates in his hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota. Most of them had a frame of reference that didn’t stretch much farther than the small, gray midwestern mining town where they lived. Young Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman on May 24th, 1941 looked mighty different around Hibbing. The explosive film Blackboard Jungle had touched his life and so had the late-night rhythm and blues stations from Chicago. When most of the other kids in Hibbing were still riding bicycles, Dylan was thinking about leather jackets and motorcycles. He hounded the local record store for the newest singles from Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and others. Soon Dylan had formed his own bands, The Golden Chords, The Shadow Blasters, Elston Gunn & The Rock Boppers. When he took the stage for a high school talent show, fellow students were shocked at the slight kid who opened his mouth and came out wailing, with a fully realized Little Richard howl. He would not be long for Hibbing, Minnesota. “My family settled in Hibbing I think in about ’46 or ’47. My father had polio when I was very young. There was a big epidemic. He lost his job in Duluth and we moved to the Iron Range and moved in with my grandmother Florence and my grandfather who was still alive at the time. We slept in the living room of my grandma’s house for about a year or two, I slept on a roll-a-way bed, that’s all I remember. Two of my uncles, my father’s brothers, had gone to electrical school and by this time had gotten electrician licenses. They had moved from Duluth to up here where they operated out of a store called Micka Electric, wiring homes and things... my father never walked right again and suffered much pain his whole life. I never understood this until much later
but it must have been hard for him because before that he’d been a very active and physical type guy. Anyway, the brothers took him in as a partner, my uncle Paul and my uncle Maurice, and this is where he worked for the rest of his life. Later, they bought the store and started selling lamps, clocks, radios, anything electrical and then much later TV’s and furniture. They still did wiring though and that was their main thing. I worked on the truck sometimes but it was never meant for me. This was not a rich or poor town, everybody had pretty much the same thing and the very wealthy people didn’t live there, they were the ones that owned the mines and they lived thousands of miles away.” “I always wanted to be a guitar player and a singer,” Bob Dylan said recently on a break from sessions for a new album. “Since I was ten, eleven or twelve, it was all that interested me. That was the only thing that I did that meant anything really. Henrietta was the first rock ‘n’ roll record I heard. Before that I’d listen to Hank Williams a lot. Before that, Johnny Ray. He was the first singer whose voice and style, I guess, I totally fell in love with. There was just something about the way he sang When Your Sweetheart Sends A Letter... that just knocked me out. I loved his style, wanted to dress like him too, that was real early though. I ran into him in the elevator in Sydney, Australia late in ’78 and told him how he impressed me so when I was growing up... I still have a few of his records.” After high school graduation in 1959, Dylan traveled first to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. He enrolled in classes at the University of Minnesota but ended spending more time in the nearby Bohemian district known as Dinkytown, where he played in a coffee house, The Ten O’Clock Scholar. Dylan was taken in by the artistic community and it
was there that he first became acquainted in the rural folk music of artists like Big Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly, Roscoe Holcomb and the great Woody Guthrie. “By that time, I was singing stuff like Ruby Lee by The Sunny Mountain Boys, and Jack O’Diamonds by Odetta and somehow because of my earlier rock ‘n’ roll background was unconsciously crossing the two styles. This made me different from your regular folk singers, who were either folk song purists or concert-hall singers, who just happened to be singing folk songs. I’d played by myself with just a guitar and harmonica or as part of a duo with Spider John Koerner, who played mostly ballads and Josh White-type blues. He knew more songs than I did. Whoa Boys Can’t Ya Line ’M, John Hardy, Golden Vanity, I learned all those from him. We sounded great, not unlike the Delmore Brothers. I could always hear my voice sounding better as a harmony singer. In New York, I worked off and on with Mark Spoelstra and later with Jim Kweskin. Jim and I sounded pretty similar to Cisco and Woody.” “Minneapolis was the first big city I lived in, if you want to call it that,” remembered Dylan. “I came out of the wilderness and just naturally fell in with the beat scene, the Bohemian, BeBop crowd, it was all pretty much connected... St. Louis, Kansas City, you usually went from town to town and found the same setup in all these places, people comin’ and goin’, nobody with any place special to live. You always ran into people you knew from the last place. I had already decided that society, as it was, was pretty phony and I didn’t want to be part of that... also, there was a lot of unrest in the country. You could feel it, a lot of frustration, sort of like a calm before a hurricane, things were shaking up. Where I was at, people just passed through, really, carrying horns, guitars, suitcases, whatever, just like the
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stories you hear, free love, wine, poetry, nobody had any money anyway. There were a lot of poets and painters, drifters, scholarly types, experts at one thing or another who had dropped out of the regular nine-to-five life, there were a lot of house parties most of the time. They were usually in lofts or warehouses or something or sometimes in the park, in the alley, wherever there was space. It was always crowded, no place to stand or breathe. There were always a lot of poems recited—‘Into the room people come and go talking of Michelangelo, measuring their lives in coffee spoons’... ‘What I’d like to know is what do you think of your blue-eyed boy now, Mr. Death.’ T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings. It was sort of like that and it kind of woke me up... Suzie Rotolo, a girlfriend of mine in New York, later turned me on to all the French poets but for then it was Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso and Ferlinghetti— Gasoline, Coney Island of the Mind... oh man, it was wild—‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness’ that said more to me than any of the stuff I’d been raised on. On The Road, Dean Moriarty, this made perfect sense to me... anyway the whole scene was an unforgettable one, guys and girls some of whom reminded me of saints, some people had odd jobs—bus boy, bartender, exterminator, stuff like that but I don’t think working was on most people’s minds—just to make enough to eat, you know. Most of everybody, anyway, you had the feeling that they’d just been kicked out of something. It was outside, there was no formula, never was ‘main stream’ or ‘the thing to do’ in any sense. America was still very ‘straight’, ‘post-war’ and sort of into a gray-flannel suit thing. McCarthy, commies, puritanical, very claustrophobic and what ever was happening of any real value was happening away from that and sort of hidden from view and it would be years before the media would be able to recognize it and choke-hold it and reduce it to silliness. Anyway, I got in at the tail-end of that and it was magic... everyday was like Sunday, it’s like it
was waiting for me, it had just as big an impact on me as Elvis Presley. Pound, Camus, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, mostly expatriate Americans who were off in Paris and Tangiers. Burroughs, Nova Express, John Rechy, Gary Snyder, Ferlinghetti, Pictures From The Gone World, the newer poets and folk music, jazz, Monk, Coltrane, Sonny and Brownie, Big Bill Broonzy, Charlie Christian... it all left the rest of everything in the dust... I knew I had to get to New York though, I’d been dreaming about that for a long time.” Dylan mapped out his strategy. Then performing as a solo guitarist and singer, he was playing at a St. Paul local coffee house and pizza parlor called The Purple Onion. The Purple Onion was located next to the main highway heading out of town. It was owned by Bill Danialson, who took a liking to Dylan and occasionally allowed him to sleep in the back room. It was a particularly heavy winter in the Midwest and Dylan’s plan was to play at the club until the snow subsided enough for him to hitchhike East. It never happened. Recalled Dylan, “I just got up one morning and left. I’d spent so much time thinking about it I couldn’t think about it anymore. Snow or no snow, it was time for me to go. I made a lot of friends and I guess some enemies too, but I had to overlook it all. I’d learned as much as I could and used up all my options. It all got real old real fast. When I arrived in Minneapolis it had seemed like a big city or a big town. When I left it was like some rural outpost that you see once from a passing train. I stood on the highway during a blizzard snowstorm believing in the mercy of the world and headed East, didn’t have nothing but my guitar and suitcase. That was my whole world. The first ride I got, you know, was from some old guy in a jalopy, sort of a Bela Lugosi type, who carried me into Wisconsin. Of all the rides I’ve ever gotten it’s the only one that stands out in my mind. People hitchhiked a lot back then, they rode the bus or they stuck out their thumb and hitch-
hiked. It was real natural. I wouldn’t do that today. People aren’t as friendly and there’s too many drugs on the road.” It would be several months before Dylan actually arrived in New York. He stopped first in Madison, Wisconsin and fell in with the folk and blues community there. Then he moved on to Chicago, where he had some phone numbers to try and ended up staying there for a couple of months. Eventually Dylan got a ride to New York with a couple of college kids. “They needed two people to help drive to New York and that’s how I left. Me and a guy named Fred Underhill went with them. Fred was from Williamstown or somewhere and he knew New York.” Dylan and Underhill were dropped off on the New York side of the George Washington Bridge and immediately took a subway to Greenwich Village. It was the worst New York winter in 60 years and the snow was knee-deep. “Where I came from there was always plenty of snow so I was used to that,” said Dylan, “but going to New York was like going to the moon. You just didn’t get on a plane and go there, you know. New York! Ed Sullivan, the New York Yankees, Broadway, Harlem... you might as well have been talking about China. It was some place which not too many people had gone, and anybody who did go never came back.” The frail-looking Dylan was a voracious learner. Once in New York, he was at the center of all action. It was a chance to actually see and sometimes meet the artists he’d come to admire, including Woody Guthrie. Dylan listened to everybody and took it all in. “I was lucky to meet Lonnie Johnson at the same club I was working and I must say he greatly influenced me. You can hear it in that first record. I mean Corrina, Corrina... that’s pretty much Lonnie Johnson. I used to watch him every chance I got and sometimes he’d let me play with him. I think he and Tampa Red and of course Scrapper Blackwell, that’s my favorite style of guitar playing... the harmonica part, well, I’d always liked Wayne Raney and Jimmy
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Reed, Sonny Terry... Li’l Junior Parker, ‘told you baby, bam bam bam bam once upon a time bam bam bam bam I’d be yours bam bam bam bam (foot tap) li’1 girl you’d be mine... but that’s all right... I know you’d love some other man’... but I couldn’t get it in the rack like that or adjust the equipment to an amplified slow pace so I took to blowing out... actually Woody had done it... I had to do it that way to be heard on the street, you know above the noise... like an accordion... Victoria Spivey too, oh man I loved her... I learned so much from her I could never put into words.” Dylan soon developed a style that would synthesize many different folk influences. At the time, it was a bold move. Even the stodgiest standards sounded different Dylan’s way. Some purists didn’t appreciate the irreverence. “I could sing How High The Moon or If I Gave My Heart To You and it would come out like Mule Skinner Blues.” “There was just a clique, you know,” said Dylan. “Folk Music was a strict and rigid establishment. If you sang Southern Mountain Blues, you didn’t sing Southern Mountain Ballads and you didn’t sing City Blues. If you sang Texas cowboy songs, you didn’t play English ballads. It was really pathetic. You just didn’t. If you sang folk songs from the thirties, you didn’t do bluegrass tunes or Appalachian ballads. It was very strict. Everybody had their particular thing that they did. I didn’t much ever pay attention to that. If I liked a song, I would just learn it and sing it the only way I could play it. Part of it was a technical problem which I never had the time or the inclination for, if you want to call it a problem. But it didn’t go down well with tight thinking people. You know, I’d hear things like ‘I was in the Lincoln Brigade’ and ‘the kid is really bastardizing up that song.’ The other singers never seemed to mind, though. In fact, quite a few of them began to copy my attitude in guitar phrasing and such.” Performing first at Village clubs like The Gas Light, The Commons, Cafe Rienzi and later Gerde’s Folk City, Dylan had a quirky stage presence, equal
parts humor and intensity. He also took several jobs as a guitarist or harmonica player. One session was a record date with noted folk artist Carolyn Hester. Rehearsing for the Hester session at the home of a friend, Dylan first met the distinguished Columbia Records producer and talent scout John Hammond (Aretha Franklin, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and later Bruce Springsteen). Hammond kept young Dylan in mind. Dylan was soon to receive one of the most important reviews of his life, possibly the last one that meant as much. Noted New York Times folk critic Robert Shelton had raved about Dylan’s show at Gerde’s Folk City, in an unprecedented review, for Dylan was merely the opening act and not the main headliner (“... there is no doubt he is bursting at the seams with talent”). Nineteen-year-old Dylan read and re-read the review, showing it to friends and re-reading it again. By the next morning, Dylan was fresh and ready for his Hester session. The crinkled review was still in his hand. It was only the second time he’d worked in a major studio, the first being a short stint on harmonica for a Harry Belafonte record earlier that summer. Hammond signed Dylan that afternoon. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Dylan. “I left there and I remember walking out of the studio. I was like on a cloud. It was up on 7th Avenue and when I left I was happening to be walking by a record store. It was one of the most thrilling moments in my life. I couldn’t believe that I was staring at all the records in the window, Frankie Laine, Frank Sinatra, Patti Page, Mitch Miller, Tony Bennett and so on and soon I, myself, would be among them in the window. I guess I was pretty naive, you know. It was even before I made a record, just knowing I was going to make one and it was going to be in that window. I wanted to go in there dressed in the rags like I was and tell the owner, ‘You don’t know me now, but you will.’ It never occurred to me that it could have been otherwise. I didn’t know that just because you make
a record it has to be displayed in a window next to Frank Sinatra, let alone they have to carry it in the store. John Hammond recorded me soon after that.” Dylan’s first album was recorded in a matter of hours. The session was over when they ran out of tape and Hammond estimated the entire cost at $402. These were, indeed, the good old days. All the material was recorded live and it’s important to note that Dylan would maintain that spirit of studio spontaneity for the next twenty years. Most of the music included in this collection was recorded in two or three takes. “You didn’t get a lot of studio time then,” he said. “Six months to make a record... It wasn’t even conceivable. My early records, all the way up to the late seventies, were done in periods of hours. Days, maybe. Since the late sixties, maybe since Sgt. Pepper on, everybody started to spend more of their time in the studio, actually making songs up and building them in the studio. I’ve done a little bit of that but I’d rather have some kind of song before I get there. It just seems to work out better that way.” Much was made in subsequent years of the fact that Dylan had only one of his own compositions (Song to Woody) on that first album. “I just took in what I had,” he explained. “I tried a bunch of stuff and John Hammond would say, ‘Well, let’s use this one’ and I’d sing that one and he’d say, ‘Let’s use that one.’ I must have played a whole lot of songs. He kept what he kept, you know. He didn’t ask me what I wrote and what I didn’t write. I was only doing a few of my own songs back then, anyway. You didn’t really do too many of your own songs back then. And if you did... you’d just try to sneak them in. The first bunch of songs I wrote, I never would say I wrote them. It was just something you didn’t do.” The first album was released before Dylan’s 21st birthday, and it sold an unremarkable 5,000 copies. While the executives fretted over whether their “rising young star” was still a sound investment, Dylan was taking large steps in finding his songwriting
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voice. His live show strengthened and deepened as he added more of his own material. He was able to take an audience from laughter to thoughtful silence in a handful of sharply chosen words. Dylan’s second album featured Dylan compositions and it was a success. Along with the applause, remained the traditionalist doubters, as always. Blowin’ In The Wind, first published in Broadside Magazine in 1962, did much to silence the opposition. It was an indisputably strong song, simple and timeless from the first listening. It would become the fastest selling single in Warner Brothers history in the hands of Peter, Paul and Mary, and the first to bring a new social awareness to the pop charts. To this day it’s Dylan’s most covered composition, from Bobby Darin to Marlene Dietrich. When folk music found its largest audience, it was because of this song. The songs that followed during this period stung and inspired and often took their stories directly from newspaper or word-of-mouth accounts. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll was the actual story of a Baltimore maid mistakenly murdered by a drunken socialite. The socialite escaped with a sixmonth sentence. Dylan wrote of the brutal injustice with a masterful touch, never did it approach the heavy-handed. It was exactly this delicate quality that made Dylan’s social commentary so original and his imitators so obvious. “When I started writing those kinds of songs, there wasn’t anybody doing things like that,” said Dylan. “Woody Guthrie had done similar things but he hadn’t really done that type of song. Besides, I had learned from Woody Guthrie and knew and could sing anything he had done. But now the times had changed and things would be different. He contributed a lot to my style lyrically and dynamically but my musical background had been different, with rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues playing a big part earlier on. Actually attitude had
more to do with it than technical ability and that’s what the folk movement lacked. In other words, I played all the folk songs with a rock ‘n’ roll attitude. This is what made me different and allowed me to cut through all the mess and be heard. People with no definition of feeling and that sort of thing, and there were too many of them... I remember when protest song writing was big. Phil Ochs came to town, Tim Hardin was around, Patrick Sky, Buffy St. Marie, but there never was any such thing. It was like the term ‘Beatnik’ or ‘Hippie.’ These were terms made up by magazine people who are invisible who like to put a label on something to cheapen it. Then it can be controlled better by other people who are also invisible. Nobody ever said, ‘Well, here’s another protest song I’m going to sing’... Anyway, the guy who was best at that was Peter LaFarge. He was a champion rodeo cowboy and sometime back he’d also been a boxer. He had a lot of his bones broken. I think he’d also been shot up in Korea. Anyway, he wrote Ira Hayes, Iron Mountain, Johnny Half-Breed, White Girl and about a hundred other things. There was one about Custer, ‘the general, he don’t ride well anymore.’ We were pretty tight for a while. We had the same girlfriend. Actually, Peter is one of the great unsung heroes of the day. His style was just a little bit too erratic. But it wasn’t his fault, he was always hurting and having to overcome it. Johnny Cash recorded a bunch of his songs. When I think of a guitar poet or protest singer, I always think of Peter, but he was a love song writer too.” His work made a subtle, if pointed shift with Another Side of Bob Dylan. “Tom Wilson, the producer, titled it that,” noted Dylan. “I begged and pleaded with him not to do it. You know, I thought it was overstating the obvious. I knew I was going to have to take a lot of heat for a title like that and it was my feeling that it wasn’t a good idea coming after The Times They Are A-Changin’, it just wasn’t right. It seemed like a negation of the past
which in no way was true. I know that Tom didn’t mean it that way, but that’s what I figured that people would take it to mean, but Tom meant well and he had control, so he had it his way. I guess in the long run, he might have been right to do what he did. It doesn’t matter now.” Wilson recalled at the time, “I didn’t even particularly like folk music. I’d been recording Sun Ra and Coltrane and I thought folk music was for the dumb guys. This guy played like the dumb guys but then these words came out. I was flabbergasted. I said to Albert Grossman, who was there in the studio, I said, ‘if you put some background to this, you might have a white Ray Charles with a message.’ But it wasn’t until a year later that everyone agreed that we should put a band behind him. I had to find a band. But it was a very gradual process.” Wilson takes the credit for Dylan going electric. “It came from me.” The album, recorded in two nights, proved that Dylan was never simply a revolutionary or even a political singer in the conventional sense. These were songs about the politics of love. Throughout all the styles, periods and influences of his work, one of Dylan’s only constants has been the love song. At composing them there are few as talented. He’s approached the subject from all sides, from It Ain’t Me Babe and To Ramona to Lay Lady Lay and Sweetheart Like You. So strong was Dylan’s impact on the folk stages of America in the early sixties that when he chose to move back to his original high school roots in rock and roll, even to dress differently, there was an almost immediate uproar. For some time press conferences, articles and interviews were filled with pointed questions like, “Does it take a lot of trouble to get your hair like that?” “How do you feel about selling out?” and “How many folk singers are there now?” (Dylan’s chain-smoking replies were, “No, you just have to sleep on it for about twenty years,”
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“I don’t feel guilt,” and “136” respectively.) Asked about his music, he said, “It’s mathematical... I use words like most people use numbers. That’s about the best I can do.” The songs were, as he once said, about objection, obsession or rejection. They had also begun to cry out for instrumentation. While touring England, Dylan had met and heard the new wave of English pop bands, from The Beatles to The Animals, The Pretty Things, Manfred Mann, The Stones, The Who. By January, Dylan was recording his breakthrough Bringing It All Back Home album. Half the album would feature a hard-edged rock and blues backing, the other half form-bending solo acoustic music. The Byrds’ own electrified hit version of Mr. Tambourine Man, taken from a Dylan demo tape, had become a single. Dylan was reaching a level of popularity beyond even his own expectations. But there were still many folk purists in Dylan’s audience and all signs were pointing to a showdown. It would come in the summer of 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival. Never one for complacency, Dylan had shown up at the folk music capital of the world in a black leather jacket, plugged in his Fender electric and began the prestigious Sunday night showcase performance (the bill included Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary) with an earsplitting Maggie’s Farm. Dylan, fresh from having recorded Like A Rolling Stone, blasted through the set with a vengeance. The reaction, by most accounts, was somewhat less than generous. The purists booed. “I didn’t really know what was going to happen,” Dylan shrugged at a San Francisco press conference in December ’65. “They certainly booed, I’ll tell you that. You could hear it all over the place. I don’t know who they were... they’ve done it just about all over... I mean, they must be pretty rich to go some place and boo. I mean, I couldn’t afford it if I was in their shoes.” Typically, the controversy fueled one of Dylan’s most famous and fruitful periods. At this point he
was writing whole batches of songs in long, all-night sessions in coffee houses, homes of friends, on napkins and tablecloths. Dylan was firing on all cylinders. The prolific artist was even coming in with songs he’d written on the way to the studio. Within minutes they became records with only one criteria—feel. A story from Al Kooper’s fine book, Backstage Passes helps recall the atmosphere. Then-guitarist Kooper, an early Dylan fan, had wandered into the empty studio where a session was due to begin. He asked producer Tom Wilson for a spot in the band and Wilson advised Kooper to take a shot and simply be there, guitar in hand, when Dylan arrived. Dylan soon appeared with guitarist Michael Bloomfield in tow and Kooper was casually switched to organ. Kooper did not play organ, but the musician kept quiet and improvised when Dylan counted off his newest song, Like A Rolling Stone. After the take, Wilson objected to the organ-playing. Dylan asked that it be turned up. The next take, released five days later, bumped off The Beatles’ Help to become Dylan’s first number-one single. At almost six minutes, it was then the longest hit in history. Country artist Johnny Tillotson stopped Dylan in the street to tell him Like A Rolling Stone had gone to number one. Dylan was amazed. It was less than five years from the day he’d stared in the window of the record store on 7th Avenue and the weight of that fact didn’t escape him. Perhaps only Elvis Presley before him had been able to stir up public emotions and at the same time redefine popular music. Before Dylan, Chuck Berry had been one of the only popular artists to sing his own songs. After Dylan, singer-songwriters were no longer akin to ambidexterity—interesting, but not necessary. “I didn’t know it at the time but all the radio songs were written at Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building,” Dylan recalled. “They had stables of songwriters up there that provided songs for artists. I heard of it but not paid much attention. They were good songwriters but the world they knew and the
world I knew were totally different. Most of all the songs, though, being recorded came from there, I guess because most singers didn’t write their own. They didn’t even think about it. Anyway, Tin Pan Alley is gone. I put an end to it. People can record their own songs now. They’re almost expected to do it. The funny thing about it though is that I didn’t start out as a songwriter. I just drifted into it. Those other people had it down to a science.” Dylan’s concerts in the mid-sixties grew to be strange and mysterious affairs. With Mike Bloomfield off touring as part of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Dylan had settled on a new band featuring drummer Levon Helm and a stunning new blues-and-rock guitarist, Jamie (Robbie) Robertson. (Called Levon and The Hawks, the group would years later rename themselves and go on to their own success as The Band.) Dylan himself was exploring the inner limits of his songwriting ability and the outer limits of his stage presence. The result was an amazing series of performances in 1965 and 1966. Dylan on-stage and the tumultuous ’66 tour of the British Isles are well documented in this collection. Following wrestlers and carnivals into halls where rock had never been before (or since), every stop was another drama. Another show on the same tour was released in underground circles as The Royal Albert Hall Concert and it’s still a cherished recording. The show actually took place in Manchester but an amazing bit of audience-andartist dialogue (Audience member: “Judas!” Dylan “I don’t believe you... you’re a liar”) was taken from the Albert Hall concert days later. These concerts with Bob Dylan and The Band are now thought to be highlights in rock history but they too were booed at the time. Remembers Robbie Robertson today, “That tour was a very strange process. You can hear the violence, and the dynamics in the music. We’d go from town to town, from country to country and it was like a job. We set up, we played, they booed and
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threw things at us. Then we went to the next town, played, they booed, threw things and we left again. I remember thinking, ‘This is a strange way to make a buck.’ “I give tremendous credit to Bob in that everybody at the time said, ‘Get rid of these guys they’re terrible.’ They said it behind our backs, and they said it with the group standing right there. Dylan never did anything about it. He never once came to me and said, ‘Robbie, this is not working...’ The only reason tapes of those shows exist today is because we wanted to know, ‘Are we crazy?’ We’d go back to the hotel room, listen to a tape of the show and think, shit, that’s not bad. Why is everybody so upset?” (It’s an interesting footnote to music history that along an early English tour, Dylan would visit the home of John Lennon and the two would pen a song together. “I don’t remember what it was, though,” said Dylan. “We played some stuff into a tape recorder but I don’t know what happened to it. I can remember playing it and the recorder was on. I don’t remember anything about the song.”) Lennon would later comment on their relationship. “I’ve grown up enough to communicate with him... Both of us were always uptight, you know, and of course I wouldn’t know whether he was uptight because I was so uptight, and then when he wasn’t uptight, I was—all that bit. But we just sat it out because we just liked being together.” Back in the States, Dylan had reached household-name status. Not only was he an unlikely hit-singles artist, Bob Dylan was now a culture hero and a conversation piece. He was a genius. He was a sellout. He was a poet, he wasn’t a poet. He was straight. He had to be On Something. It’s conceivable that the artist himself never scheduled a moment to reflect on all the commotion. He continued writing and touring, even while recording Blonde on Blonde in Nashville. It has remained as one of the most artful albums in modern music, and one that came closest to Dylan’s truest musical intentions. He told
Ron Rosenbaum in a ’78 Playboy interview, “It’s that thin, that wild mercury sound. It’s metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up. That’s my sound. I haven’t been able to succeed in getting it all the time.” Those present for the Blonde on Blonde sessions remember it as an unlikely setting for greatness. Compared to the circus-quality of the live shows, this was a twilight zone of complacency. While struggling songwriter and then-janitor Kris Kristofferson cleaned the ashtrays, Dylan recorded with a band that was made up of traditional Nashville studio musicians and several New York favorites like Robertson and Kooper. “Blonde on Blonde was very different from what we were doing out on the road,” said Robertson. “This was a very controlled atmosphere. I remember the Nashville studio musicians playing a lot of card games. Dylan would finish a song, we would cut the song and then they’d go back to cards. They basically did their routine, and it sounded beautiful. Some songs pushed it somewhere else, like Obviously Five Believers where we had four screaming guitar solos.” “The sessions happened late at night,” recalled Kooper. “The afternoons were mostly for songwriting.” Dylan sometimes worked on his hotel piano, other times at a studio typewriter. Songs like Visions of Johanna (original title: Seems like a Freezeout) and Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands would make it to acetate stage and Dylan would often take the discs with him on the road to play for others. “How does this sound for you?” he would ask. “Have you ever heard anything like this before?” Usually they hadn’t. Dylan’s singing—once the quality Woody Guthrie liked best about him—had also gotten more expressive. Part rocker, part wounded romantic, part cynic and part believer, he had learned to make records now, and the rush was felt on radios all over the world. Like A Rolling Stone, Positively 4th Street and I Want You were classic singles as well as songs. John Lennon said in a Rolling Stone interview in
1970, “You don’t have to hear what Bob Dylan’s saying, you just have to hear the way he says it.” More than a few artists, from Bruce Springsteen to David Bowie, have been saddled with the phrase “the new Bob Dylan” at one time or another in their careers. But for Dylan himself, there weren’t many examples to look at. As his momentum doubled and re-doubled, the still somewhat frail Dylan charged forward. He amped and pushed himself to the limits of personal stamina. He worked constantly, rarely ate, rarely stopped. Like James Dean before him, Dylan left behind a wake of peers who stood in awe of his talent and in fear for his safety and health. Late in July 1966, their worst fears nearly came true. While joyriding in Woodstock, the back wheel locked on Dylan’s Triumph 500. He was thrown from the seat and drilled into the pavement, suffering a concussion, a number of facial cuts and several broken vertebrae in his neck. It could have been much worse. Amid macabre Deanish reports that he was either dead, paralyzed, cryogenically frozen or retired, Dylan quietly recuperated for several months. It was much-needed time to regroup but long after the wounds healed, he would still be working to regain his personal equilibrium. While Dylan laid low at his then-home in upstate New York, The Band was recording at the nearby basement-home studio they had dubbed Big Pink. Dylan was writing a wide range of new songs and the idea was to record them at a leisurely pace, possibly as demos for other artists. The sessions stretched through several months of the down-time, and over the period Dylan and The Band recorded a large group of songs that ran from the seminal I Shall Be Released to the jaunty story-telling of Million Dollar Bash, to a number of songs too bawdy to even record. There were new characters, new rhythms... and when what Robertson called “a tape of a tape of a tape of a dub of a tape” slipped out, the world soon had its first bootleg album. This, of course, didn’t much please the victims of the theft. Even
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though the mood of The Basement Tapes, as they were called, was forbidden and exciting, (Neil Young for years kept a mastertape copy and played it during the breaks in his own sessions often) the songs stayed on the shelf until 1975. “The bootleg records,” Dylan commented, “those are outrageous. I mean, they have stuff you do in a phone booth. Like, nobody’s around. If you’re just sitting and strumming in a motel, you don’t think anybody’s there, you know... it’s like the phone is tapped... and then it appears on a bootleg record. With a cover that’s got a picture of you that was taken from underneath your bed and it’s got a striptease type title and it costs $30. Amazing. Then you wonder why most artists feel so paranoid.” It would be a while before Dylan officially re-emerged on record with a quietly thoughtful Nashville album called John Wesley Harding. In his recuperation period, he had watched his own influence take Rock in an explosive new direction. Rock was more topical and meaningful, the form had been stretched and now studio techniques were changing too. The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Rolling Stones answered with Satanic Majesties and now the pop world was waiting on Dylan. Dylan was waiting on Dylan too. Did he feel confident about meeting the challenge? “Not really,” he smiled, “I didn’t know the studio like those guys did. They had obviously spent a lot of hours in the studio, figuring that stuff out and I hadn’t. And not only hadn’t I, but I didn’t really care to and I’d lost my (studio) contacts at that point. I’d been out of commission for awhile. All I had were these songs that I’d just sort of scribbled down.” “We recorded that album, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Lots of times people will get excited and they say, ‘this is great, this is fantastic.’ But usually they’re full of shit. They’re just trying to tell you something to make you feel good. People
have a way of telling you what they think you want to hear—anytime I don’t know something and I ask somebody, I usually know less about it after I ask than before. You’ve got to know or you don’t know and I really didn’t know about that album at all. So I figured the best thing to do would be to put it out as quickly as possible, call it John Wesley Harding because that was one song that I had no idea what it was about, why it was even on the album. I figured I’d call the album that, call attention to it, make it something special... the spelling on that album, I just thought that was the way he spelled his name. I asked Columbia to release it with no publicity and no hype because this was the season of hype. And my feeling was that if they put it out with no hype, there was enough interest in the album anyway, people would go out and get it. And if you hyped it, there was always that possibility it would piss people off. They didn’t spend any money advertising the album and the album just really took off. People have made a lot out of it, as if it was some sort of ink blot test or something. But it never was intended to be anything else but just a bunch of songs, really, maybe it was better’n I thought.” Nashville Skyline continued Dylan’s string of albums recorded at the CBS studio in the country music capital of the world. His voice, sweetened by a brief break from cigarettes, Dylan produced one of his biggest single hits in April of 1969. Written for the movie Midnight Cowboy, Lay Lady Lay missed the deadline for inclusion on the soundtrack. The producers used Fred Neil’s Everybody’s Talkin’ instead. Dylan released Lay Lady Lay himself and it is that love song that became one of his longest lasting hits. “I don’t know what made me sound that way. Today I don’t think I could sound that way if I wanted too. Clive Davis really wanted to release that song as a single. Actually I was slightly embarrassed by it, wasn’t even sure I even liked the song. He said it was a smash hit... I thought he was crazy. I was
really astonished, you know, when he turned out to be right.” Dylan’s next release was 1970’s Self Portrait, a double album of standards and several live tracks from his concert at the Isle of Wight. Criticized as trivial at the time, now revered by critics looking for an argument, the album seemed to make a simple statement—he enjoyed singing other people’s material but it also further signaled that Bob Dylan had no responsibility toward the vocal few who still demanded to know why he stopped writing “protest songs.” One man, A.J. Weberman, had even become famous for going through Dylan’s garbage for “clues.” “Self Portrait,” Dylan explained recently, “was a bunch of tracks that we’d done all the time I’d gone to Nashville. We did that stuff to get a (studio) sound. To open up we’d do two or three songs, just to get things right and then we’d go on and do what we were going to do. And then there was a lot of other stuff that was just on the shelf. But I was being bootlegged at the time and a lot of stuff that was worse was appearing on bootleg records. So I just figured I’d put all this stuff together and put it out, my own bootleg record, so to speak. You know, if it actually had been a bootleg record, people probably would have sneaked around to buy it and played it for each other secretly. Also, I wasn’t going to be anybody’s puppet and I figured this record would put an end to that... I was just so fed up with all that who people thought I was nonsense.” It would be his last work of the sixties, a decade that Dylan had largely spent in a spin-cycle of touring and recording. He had become a part of everybody else’s sixties experience but did he feel like he’d had one of his own? “I never looked at it that way,” answered Dylan. “I didn’t even consider it being the sixties. People who were in it, it never occurred to anybody that we were living in the sixties. It was too much like a
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pressure cooker. There wasn’t any time to sit around and think about it. Not like what we’re living now is the eighties where everybody says, ‘These are the eighties and ain’t it great.’ In the sixties they didn’t say that. Nobody wanted to say that. There were a lot of people who jumped on the bandwagon who didn’t know it existed before. As far as I know, they’re the only ones who made a big deal about it. People like to think of themselves as being important when they write about things that are important. But for people who were active, it didn’t matter. It could have been the twenties. Nobody really figured it out until the late sixties that something happened. I remember Joe Strummer said that when he first heard my records, I’d already been there and gone. And in a way that’s kind of true. It was like a flying saucer landed... that’s what the sixties were like. Everybody heard about it, but only a few really saw it.” Dylan soon released New Morning, a confident album of originals. It was another critically heralded return for a man who’d never really left. He’d simply learned to work at his own pace, a pace that tended not to interfere with the raising of his family. Dylan spent the next few years in New York, popping up only occasionally with performances like Concert for Bangladesh or a single like Watching the River Flow or George Jackson. In 1973, Kris Kristofferson talked Dylan into joining him on the Durango, Mexico set of the late Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid. Dylan ended up not only scoring the movie, but turning in a clever performance as Alias, sidekick to Billy the Kid. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, one of Dylan’s most successful singles, was released from the soundtrack album. The film featured Peckinpah’s trademark violent and unpolished beauty, and the music fit it perfectly. The project seemed to signal a new period of activity. “I think he’s getting ready for something,” said co-star Kris Kristofferson at the time. “He sat down at the piano the other night. He
had that look in his eyes...” Said Dylan, “Actually, I was just one of Peckinpah’s pawns. There wasn’t a part for me and Sam just liked me around. I moved with my family to Durango for about three months. Rudy Wurlitzer, who was writing this thing, invented a part for me but there wasn’t any dimension to it and I was very uncomfortable in this non-role. But then time started to slip away and there I was trapped deep in the heart of Mexico with some madman, ordering people around like a little king. You had to play the dummy all day. I used to think to myself, ‘Well now, how would Dustin Hoffman play this?’ That’s why I wore glasses in that reading part. I saw him do it in Papillon. It was crazy, all these generals making you jump into hot ants, setting up turkey shoots and whatever and drinking tequila ’til they passed out. Sam was a wonderful guy though. He was an outlaw. A real hombre. Somebody from the old school. Men like they don’t make anymore. I could see why actors would do anything for him. At night when it was quiet, I would listen to the bells. It was a strange feeling, watching how this movie was made and I know it was wide and big and breathless, at least what was in Sam’s mind, but it didn’t come out that way. Sam himself just didn’t have final control and that was the problem. I saw it in a movie house one cut away from his and I could tell that it had been chopped to pieces. Someone other than Sam had taken a knife to some valuable scenes that were in it. The music seemed to be scattered and used in every other place but the scenes in which we did it for. Except for Heaven’s Door, I can’t say as though I recognized anything I’d done for being in the place I’d done it for. Why did I do it, I guess I had a fondness for Billy the Kid. In no way can I say I did it for the money. Anyway, I was too beat to take it personal. I mean, it didn’t hurt but I was sleepwalking most of the time and had no real reason to be there. I’d gotten my family out of New York, that was the important thing, there was a lot of pressure back there. But even so, my wife got fed up almost
immediately. She’d say to me, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ It was not an easy question to answer.” Much in music had changed over the previous few years. Bob Dylan could now look around to see a world of rock megatours, chartered 747’s, mega-platinum artists, rockers on the cover of world news magazines and more. Dylan, who first left Minnesota at a time when rock and roll was still a forbidden entity, was about to venture back at a time when it had become the biggest business. In 1974 he reunited with The Band and began recording a batch of new songs in Los Angeles. First titled Ceremonies of the Horseman and later re-titled Planet Waves, the album (and the first single, On A Night Like This) set the tone for a highspirited return. Dylan’s first coast-to-coast US tour was announced. The seats sold out in hours but the event brought on board a number of new questions. What would Dylan be like? Could he match the intensity of his early days in huge arenas? Would he mean as much? The questions were dispensed with in short order. Dylan appeared at full strength, with an adrenalin-charged voice and powerful backing from The Band. The concerts were cheered like victory parties. Remembers Robbie Robertson, “We were hoping to do an extremely different kind of show. But we rehearsed and eventually settled on a show that wasn’t dissimilar from our last tours (in ’65-’66). But this time when we played, everybody loved us. I don’t know if we needed it but it was kind of a relief.” All the while, Dylan had some problems with the myth-making proportions of the tour. “I think I was just playing a role on that tour,” he said. “I was playing Bob Dylan and The Band was playing The Band. It was all sort of mindless. The people that came out to see us came mostly to see what they missed the first time around. It was just more of a ‘legendary’ kind of thing. They’ve heard about it, they’d bought the records, whatever, but what they
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saw didn’t give any clue to what was. What got it to that level wasn’t what they saw. What they saw you could compare to early Elvis and later Elvis, really. Because it wasn’t quite the same, when we needed that acceptance it wasn’t there. By this time it didn’t matter. Time had proven them all wrong. We were cleaning up but it was an emotionless trip.” “Rock-and-roll had become a highly extravagant enterprise. T-shirts, concert booklets, lighting shows, costume changes, glitter and glamour... it was just a big show, a big circus except there weren’t any elephants, nothing really exceptional just Sound and Lights, Sound and Lights, and more Sound and Lights. That’s what it had become and that’s what it still is. It is like those guys who watched the H bomb explode on Bikini Island and then turn to each other and say, ‘Beautiful, man, just incredibly beautiful.’ That’s what this whole scene had become. The only thing people talked about was energy this, energy that. The highest compliments were things like ‘Wow, lotta energy, man.’ It had become absurd. The bigger and louder something was, the more energy it was supposed to have. You know, like knock me out, drive me to the wall, kick my brains in, blow me up, whip me ’til it hurts, that’s what people were accepting as heavy energy. Actually it was just big industry moving in on the music. Like the armaments manufacturers selling weapons to both sides in a war, inventing bigger and better things to take your head off while behind your back, there’s a few people laughing and getting rich off your vanity. Have you ever seen a slaughterhouse where they bring in a herd of cattle? They round them all up, put them all in one area, pacify ’m and slaughter them... big business, brings in lots of bucks, heavy energy. It always reminds me of that. The greatest praise we got on that tour was ‘incredible energy, man’, it would make me want to puke. The scene had changed somewhat when we stepped into that picture. We were expected to produce a show that lived up to everybody’s
expectations. And we did. It was utterly profound. “What they saw wasn’t really what they would have seen in ’66 or ’65. If they had seen that, that was much more demanding. That was a much more demanding show. People didn’t know what it was at that point. When people don’t know what something is, they don’t understand it and they start to get, you know, weird and defensive. Nothing is predictable and you’re always out on the edge. Anything can happen. I always had those songs though and so I always figured everything was alright.” When the tour was over commemorated by a cover in Newsweek, the same magazine that once questioned his authorship of Blowin’ In The Wind, Dylan responded in surprising style. Just as he had cultivated his most public performing style yet, he reversed himself, contacted several acoustic musicians and told his label he was going to record some “private songs.” He wanted to do them quickly, in a small way. He began recording what is often recognized as his finest album of the seventies, Blood On The Tracks. Reportedly inspired by the breakup of his marriage, the album derived more of its style from Dylan’s renewed interest in painting. The songs cut deep and their sense of perspective and reality was always changing. This was acoustic soul music and clearly not the work of an artist intent on staying in arenas touring on the strength of his own myth. “I’m not concerned with the myth,” Dylan said in a 1977 interview, “because I can’t work under the myth. The myth can’t write the songs. It’s the blood behind the myth that creates the art. The myth doesn’t exist for me like it may for other people. I’d rather go on, above the myth.” After Blood On The Tracks, Dylan stayed in New York. He recorded one of his most successful albums, Desire, with a new group of musicians led by Scarlet Rivera. Dylan had seen her playing on a street comer and invited her to join the band.
Her violin helped characterize Hurricane, the unreleased Abandoned Love and many other songs from this period. Dylan also began popping up in clubs around Greenwich Village, on some of the same stages where he started out. More than a few visitors in the Village, accustomed to seeing the early photos of a long-gone Dylan still pasted in the windows, did a triple take when they actually saw Dylan back again on the stage. Slowly, those club performances grew to include others like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Joan Baez, T-Bone Burnett, Robert McGuinn, Mick Ronson and others. Those shows built into the Rolling Thunder Revue, a bicentennial tour of small to mid size halls that was documented in a TV special, a number of books and later in Dylan’s own film Renaldo and Clara. In what was now Dylan’s third or fourth wave of popularity, even candidate Jimmy Carter was campaigning for president with a speech that quoted Bob Dylan. By the time of Renaldo and Clara’s release, Dylan was already past it. He had relocated to a converted rehearsal hall in Santa Monica, California and was rehearsing musicians for a band he could both tour and record with. The resulting elevenpiece group was one of his biggest and most precise. They toured the world in 1978 and also recorded the underrated Street Legal album. The sound of this period was something close to the dense precision of Blonde on Blonde, with a measure of gospel blues added. Street Legal defined Dylan’s work for the next several years. Said Dylan, “The critics treated this record spitefully... I saw one review that accused me of going ‘Vegas’ and copying Bruce Springsteen because I was using Steve Douglas, a saxophone player... the Vegas comparison was, well you know, I don’t think the guy had ever been to Vegas and the saxophone thing was almost slanderous... I mean I don’t copy guys that are under fifty years old and though I wasn’t familiar with Bruce’s work, his saxophone player
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couldn’t be spoken of in the same breath as Steve Douglas who’d played with Duane Eddy and on literally all of Phil Spector’s records... I mean no offense to Clarence or anything but he’s not in the same category and the guy who reviewed my stuff should have known it... anyway people need to be encouraged, not stepped on and put in a straight jacket.” After his world tour, reports would soon circulate that Dylan had become a born-again Christian. The next album told the bigger story. Dylan was inspired with religious thought but he’d also struck a smoldering studio groove with celebrated rhythm and blues producers Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett. This partnership produced one of the most finely recorded albums of Dylan’s recording career. Slow Train Coming was both a critically praised and successful work. Dylan received his first Grammy and the album went platinum. It also won the Dove Award for Inspirational Album of 1979. The follow-up album, Saved, with its Biblical inscription on the outer sleeve, fared less well. Religious themes have had a place in his music from the beginning, but for a time the media searched these songs for clues to his commitment. Although the messages might have been too much for pop music mentality, the meaning behind the songs did not fall entirely on deaf ears. “Yes mon,” said Bob Marley,... “that is a good verse too, a revelation, a link-up with a Rasta, as Haile Selassie is the Conquering Lion of the house of Judah. And me like his song Serve Somebody quite a bit as well... I glad him do it, too, y’know, because there comes a time when an artist just cannot follow the crowd. If you are an artist like Bob Dylan, you got to make the crowd follow you. I can tell you that it doesn’t mean anything to him that people might not like what he is doing. Him still do it. And that is the most important thing. Him still do it.” Shot of Love, a somewhat more secular LP
recorded in Los Angeles, was produced by Dylan and Chuck Plotkin (with the help from Bumps Blackwell on Shot of Love). The range of influence was wider, the music was technically improved from earlier days but the feel could have been 1966. This was raw Dylan, live in the studio, scrambling to get to the heart of his new songs. “People didn’t listen to that album in a realistic way. First of all, Shot of Love was one of the last songs Bumps Blackwell produced and even though he only produced one song, I gotta say that of all the producers I ever used, he was the best, the most knowledgeable and he had the best instincts... I would have liked him to do the whole thing but things got screwed up and he wasn’t so called ‘contemporary’... what came out was something close to what would have come out if he was really there... also Clydie King and I sound pretty close to what’s all the best of every traditional style so how could anybody complain about that... and the record had something that, I don’t know, could have been made in the ’40s or maybe the ’50s... there was a cross element of songs on it... the critics, I hate to keep talking about them, wouldn’t allow the people to make up their own minds... all they talked about was Jesus this and Jesus that, like it was some kind of Methodist record. I don’t know what was happening, maybe Boy George or something but Shot of Love didn’t fit into the current format. It probably never will. Anyway people were always looking for some excuse to write me off and this was as good as any... I can’t say if being ‘non-commercial’ is a put down or a compliment.” The next album, Infidels, was a critical and artistic success that also ushered Dylan into the video age with Sweetheart Like You and Jokerman. “I don’t feel like I know what I’m going to do even next week, or not do,” Dylan said of the future. “Mostly I just write songs, make records, and do tours, that takes up most of my time, so I just
expect it to go on that way. I started a book awhile back called Ho Chi Minh in Harlem. I’d probably like to finish that. Maybe write some stories the way Kerouac did, about some of the people I know and knew, change the names—New developments, new ideas? I guess I’d like to do a concept album like, you know, Red Headed Stranger or something, maybe a children’s album, or an album of cover songs but I don’t know if the people would let me get away with that... A Million Miles From Nowhere, I Who Have Nothing, All My Tomorrows, I’m In The Mood For Love, More Than You Know, It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie... I guess someday I’d like to do an album of standards, also, maybe instrumentals, guitar melodies with percussion, people don’t know I can do that sort of thing. I can get away with a lot more in a show than I can on record... I mean I’m aware of synthesizers and drum machines but they don’t affect my stuff to any great degree. There’s a great temptation to see how false you can be. I can see where pretty soon the human voice will be synthesized, become totally unreal. You know, like put in Paul Anka and get him sounding like Howlin’ Wolf or vice versa. I guess it don’t matter but it’s irritating, it’s a cheap substitution for reality, stimulating little boys and little girls with sex in a bottle, it’s all got the soul of a robot, your mind thinks it’s true but your heart knows it’s wrong. Too much chaos on the airways for the senses to take, assault on the all too fragile imagination as it is... fill up everything, put in every color, clog it all up... if you wanna make things clear, you’ve got to leave other things out... like that’s why the old black and white movies look better than color movies, they give your eye and your imagination something to do, well, that’s one of the reasons, same thing with the old music and the new music... probably too much progress or something. I don’t know.” While Dylan had often deflected artistic inquiries in the past, on this day he was almost earnest in his
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observations. Bob Dylan’s perspective in the mid eighties is a valuable one, one he seemed inspired to have gained. “No, I really don’t have a plan. You know what I mean, if you’ve heard my records and know what was going on at the time I turned them out. A lot of the styles and lyrical dynamics that I use I feel I have invented myself or stumbled into accidentally. Either back in the sixties or even in the late seventies or eighties using certain combinations that have never come up before, so I work mostly in that area. I can’t stop doing it just because a whole lot of other people have taken certain elements of it and used it for their own thing. I mean Muddy Waters didn’t stop playing just because the J. Geils Band started making records. I noticed that George Jones didn’t roll over just because Merle Haggard appeared. It’s actually quite complimentary to witness your own influence in someone else’s success. But I don’t know, I guess it can be taken the other way too... look at what happened to Lefty Frizzell. Link Wray invented heavy metal music but who knows it? TBone Walker is really the essence of city blues, can wipe B.B. Jones off the map but who can tell you that? Isn’t Bessie Smith rock ‘n’ roll? People forget. You have to know there’s always someone else that’s gonna come along after you. There’s always going to be a faster, bigger and younger gun, right? Pop music on the radio? I don’t know. I listen mostly to Preacher stations and the country music stations and maybe the oldies stations... that’s about it. At the moment I like Judy Rodman, I’ve Been Had By Love Before, more than anything happening on the pop stations. I don’t think of myself really as a pop singer anyway, so what do I know.” For a man often credited with helping to define rock, Dylan was careful to point out that he was never owned by it. “The thing about rock ‘n’ roll is that for me anyway it wasn’t enough. Tutti Frutti and Blue Suede
Shoes were great catch phrases and driving pulse rhythms and you could get high on the energy but they weren’t serious or didn’t reflect life in a realistic way. 1 knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings... My Bonnie Love Is Lang A Growing, Go Down Ye Bloody Red Roses, even Jesse James or Down By the Willow Garden, definitely not pussy stuff. There is more real life in one line than there was in all the rock ‘n’ roll themes. I needed that. Life is full of complexities and rock ‘n’ roll didn’t reflect that. It was just put on a happy face and ride sally ride, there was nothing even resembling Sixteen Snow White Horses or See That My Grave Is Kept Clean in even the vaguest way. If I did anything, I brought one to the other. There was nothing serious happening in music when I started, not even the Beatles. They were singing Love Me Do and Marvin Gaye... he didn’t do What’s Going On until the ’70’s.” What did he think of the new music? “Nothing is new. Everybody just gets their chance—most of it just sounds recycled and shuffled around, watered down. Even rap records, I love that stuff but it’s not new, you used to hear that stuff all the time... there was this one guy, Big Brown, he wore a jail blanket, that’s all he ever used to wear, summer and winter, John Hammond would remember him too—he was like Othello, he’d recite epics like some grand Roman orator, really backwater stuff though, Stagger Lee, Cocaine Smitty, Hattiesburg Hattie. Where were the record companies when he was around? Even him though, it’s like it was done 30 years before that... and God knows when else. I think of Luke the Drifter as rap records and as far as concept and intelligence and warring with words, Mighty Sparrow was and probably still is king. You go see him and in the audience there’s people just standing up and arguing away with him about every
kind of thing... politics, sex, outerspace, whatever, he answers ’m all back, never breaks stride, all in poetry, his shows are like prize fights and he always comes out on top, all this and a fifteen or twenty piece band just blasting away... Calypso King... Mighty Sparrow... he’s fantastic. Rock ‘n’ roll, I don’t know, rhythm and blues or whatever, I think it’s gone. In its pure form. There are some guys true to it but it’s so hard. You have to be so dedicated and committed and everything is against it. I’d like to see Charlie Sexton become a big star, but the whole machine would have to break down right now before that could happen. It was easier before. Now it’s just rock, capital R, no roll, the roll’s gone, homosexual rock, working man’s rock, stockbroker rock, it’s now a highly visible enterprise, big establishment thing. You know things go better with Coke because Aretha Franklin told you so and Maxwell House Coffee must be OK because Ray Charles is singing about it. Everybody’s singing about ketchup or headache medicine or something. In the beginning it wasn’t anything like that, had nothing to do with pantyhose and perfume and barbecue sauce... you were eligible to get busted for playing it. It’s like Lyndon Johnson saying we shall overcome to a nationwide audience, ridiculous... there’s an old saying, ‘If you want to defeat your enemy, sing his song’ and that’s pretty much still true. I think it’s happened and nobody knows the difference. In the old days, there’s that phrase again, you paid the price to play. You could get run out of town or pushed over a cliff. Of course there was always someone there with a net. I’m not trying to paint just one side of a picture. But, you know, it was tough getting heard, it was radical. You felt like you were part of some circus side show. Now it’s the main event. You can even go to college and study rockand-roll, they turn out professors who grade your records. There’s enough dribble, magazine articles, proclamations, declarations, whatever, written
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about it to keep you guessing for a lifetime but it’s not in reading and writing about it, it’s in doing it... the best stuff was done without the spotlight before the commentaries and what not... when they came to define it, I think they killed something very important about it. The corporate world, when they figured out what it was and how to use it they snuffed the breath out of it and killed it. What do they care? Anything that’s in the way, they run over like a bulldozer, once they understood it they killed it and made it a thing of the past, put up a monument to it and now that’s what you’re hearing, the headstone, it’s a billion dollar business. I don’t know, I guess it’s hard to find flaws with this. Used to be, they were very much afraid, you know, like hide your daughters, that sort of thing... Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry... they all struck fear into the heart. Now they got a purpose sort of... to sell soap, blue jeans, anything, it’s become country club music... White House... Kentucky Fried Chicken... it’s all been neutralized... nothing threatening, nothing magical... nothing challenging. For me I hate to see it because it set me free, set the whole world on fire, there’s a lot of us who still can remember, who’ve been there. What I’m telling is no lie but then again who wants to hear it? You just get yourself worked up over nothing.” Dylan considered the thought. “The truth about anything in this society, as you know, is too threatening. Gossip is King. It’s like ‘conscience’ is a dirty word. Whatever is truthful haunts you and don’t let you sleep at night. Especially anybody who’s living a lie gets hurt. You get a lot of ugly reactions from people not familiar with it. A lot of times you don’t even bother. Not that I’m an expert or anything but I’ve always tried to stick that into my music in some kind of way or at least not to leave it untouched. The old stuff stayed in your head long after it was over, you know, even something as simple as ‘to know, know, know him is to love, love, love him,’ it became monumental in
some kind of way, now it’s just blabbering noise and after you shut it off you’ve forgotten about it and you’re glad—Some Like It Hot. Oh mercy! Spare me please! These things are just hooks, fish hooks in the back of your neck... nothing means anything, people just showing off, dancing to a pack of lies— lotta people gotta be dead first before anybody takes notice, the same people who praise you when you’re dead, when you were alive they wouldn’t give you the time of day. I like to wonder about some of these people who elevated John Lennon to such a mega-god as if when he was alive they were always on his side. I wonder who they think he was singing to when he sang ‘just give me some truth.’ Everything is just too commercial, like a sprawling octopus, too much part of the system. Sometimes you feel like you’re walking around in that movie Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and you wonder if it’s got you yet, if you’re still one of the few or are you ‘them’ now. You never know do you? When people don’t get threatened and challenged, I mean in some kind of way, they don’t get confronted, never have to make decisions, they never take a stand, they never grow, live their lives in a fishtank, stay in the same old scene forever, die and never get a break or a chance to say goodbye. I have views contrary to all that. I think that this world is just a passing through place and that the dead have eyes and that even the unborn can see and I don’t care who knows it. I don’t know. I can go off on tangents... things that got nothing to do with music... The great folk music and the great rock ‘n’ roll you might not hear it again. Like the horse and buggy. Sure, a horse and buggy is more soulful than a car but it takes longer to get where you’re going and besides that, you could get killed on the road.” Sitting across from Bob Dylan on this afternoon, one could see his influences very clearly. His speech sometimes flecked with the country-isms of his youth, a leather jacket draped on his shoulders, a
sharp hand gesture with a cigarette barely holding its ash... for all the years of who-is-Bob-Dylan analysis, the answer seemed obvious. He still is, as he always has been, a long figure with a guitar and a point-of-view. “Basically, I’m self taught. What I mean by that actually is that I picked it all up from other people by watching them, by imitating them. I seldom ever asked them to take me aside and show me how to do it. I started out as a traveling guitar player and singer,” Dylan reflected. “It had nothing to do with writing songs, fortune and fame, that sort of thing. You know what I mean? I could always play a song on a concert-hall stage or from the back of a truck, a nightclub or on the street, whatever, and that was the important thing, singing the song, contributing something and paying my way. The most inspiring type of entertainer for me has always been somebody like Jimmie Rodgers, somebody who could do it alone and was totally original. He was combining elements of blues and hillbilly sounds before anyone else had thought of it. He recorded at the same time as Blind Willie McTell but he wasn’t just another white boy singing black. That was his great genius and he was there first. All he had to do was appear with his guitar and a straw hat and he played on the same stage with big bands, girly choruses and follies burlesque and he sang in a plaintive voice and style and he’s outlasted them all. You don’t remember who else was on the bill. I never saw him. I only heard his records. I never saw Woody Guthrie in his prime. I think maybe the greatest of all those I ever saw was Cisco Houston. He was in his last days but you couldn’t tell—he looked like Clark Gable and he was absolutely magnificent... I always like to think that there’s a real person talking to me, just one voice you know, that’s all I can handle—Cliff Carlysle... Robert Johnson, for me this is a deep reality, someone who’s telling me where he’s been that I haven’t and
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what it’s like there—somebody whose life I can feel... Jimmie Rodgers or even Judy Garland, she was a great singer... or Al Jolson... God knows there are so few of them, but who knows? Maybe there are just enough. I always thought that one man, the lone balladeer with the guitar could blow an entire army off the stage if he knew what he was doing... I’ve seen it happen. It’s important to stay away from the celebrity trap. The Andy Warhol-fame-for-a minute type trip. The media is a great meatgrinder, it’s never satisfied and it must be fed but there’s power in darkness too and in keeping things hidden. Look at Napoleon. Napoleon conquered Europe and nobody even knew what he looked like... people get too famous too fast these days and it destroys them. Some guys got it down—Leonard Cohen, Paul Brady, Lou Reed, secret heroes—John Prine, David Allen Coe, Tom Waits, I listen more to that kind of stuff than whatever is popular at the moment, they’re not just witchdoctoring up the planet, they don’t set up barriers... Gordon Lightfoot, every time I hear a song of his, it’s like I wish it would last forever. Pop culture, what is it? IBM, Calvin Klein, General Motors, Mickey Mouse, and that whole kind of thing, conformity to fashion, ideas, conformity to other people’s opinions, conformity in the mirror, lots of singers who can’t even deliver live on stage, use tapes and things... Van Gogh never sold but a few paintings while he was alive, incredible, as far as he was concerned he was a failure. I don’t think for a minute though that he’s having the last laugh cause that’s not what I think it’s about. Artists should remember that—There’s a tremendous hypocrisy in this thing.” From the demos, to the songs, to the hits and the neverheards, this is a collection of music that anyone should take the time to listen to in sequence. And when the last notes of Forever Young disappear, consider this: Dylan’s influence continues to be heard all around us, from his own work to the music
of artists like Springsteen, The Clash, The Pretenders, U2, The Blasters, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and many others. Fan-sponsored publications like Telegraph and Wanted Man pour over set lists from twenty years ago, as well as Dylan’s movements of today. To many, Dylan’s life is already the stuff of myth. To Dylan, it’s a life only half begun. Just listen to the fire in his impassioned vocal on the USA for Africa single We Are The World. A hero to many, Bob Dylan has his own definition of the word. “I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom, someone who’s not afraid to jump in front of a freight train to save a loved one’s life, to draw a crowd with my guitar, that’s about the most heroic thing that I can do. To play a song to calm the king, well, everybody don’t get to do that. There’s only certain things a King wants to hear. And then if he don’t like it, he might send you to the gallows. Sometimes you feel like a club fighter who gets off the bus in the middle of nowhere, no cheers, no admiration, punches his way through ten rounds or whatever, always making someone else look good, vomits up the pain in the back room, picks up his check and gets back on the bus heading out for another nowhere. Sometimes like a troubadour out of the dark ages, singing for your supper and rambling the land or singing to the girl in the window, you know, the one with the long flowing hair who’s combing it in the candlelight, maybe she invites you up. Maybe she says, ‘Sing me another song, sweetness, sing me that song about the cat and the fiddle, the knave and long sea voyage’ or maybe she don’t. You gotta be able to feel your dream before anyone else is aware of it. ‘Your parents don’t like me, they say I’m too poor’... Gotta learn to bite the bullet like Tom Mix, take the blows, like the song says. Or like Charles Aznavour, ‘you must learn to leave the table when love is no longer being served’ but that’s a hard thing to do. You got
to be strong and stay connected to what started it all, the inspiration behind the inspiration, to who you were when people didn’t mind stepping on you, it’s easy to say but the air gets thin at the top, you get light-headed, your environment changes, new people come into your life...” Bob Dylan stood and walked to a nearby window. He stared out at a small courtyard. A cat shrieked from an overhanging balcony. Dylan was restless and ready to go. I asked him how he viewed his impact upon modern culture. He shrugged. “In the big picture, on the big stage, I’m not too sure, to take yourself seriously or to take seriously what other people are thinking, you know that could be your downfall. I mean it’s a weakness. I know I’ve done some important things but in what context, I don’t know, and also for who. It’s hard to relate to fans. I mean I relate to people as people but people as fans, I’m not sure I know what that means and don’t forget John Lennon was murdered by a so-called fan—I know it gives them all a bad name but so what? I don’t think of myself as a fan of anybody, I am more of an admirer, so why should I think of anyone as a fan of me? If they like you, they do and if they don’t, well that’s their business— nobody owes anybody anything. And anyway fans are consumers, they buy products and the company tries to please the consumers. That type of thing can rule your life. If the fan don’t like you, he becomes somebody else’s fan, like the Paul Simon song, Got To Keep The Customer Satisfied—I’m not gonna live and die behind that—I’m not selling breakfast cereal, or razor blades or whatever. I’m always hearing people saying how ‘Dylan should do this and do that, make an album like he did in the sixties.’ How the hell do they know? I could make Blonde on Blonde tomorrow and the same people would probably say its outdated... that’s the way people are. As far as the sixties go, it wasn’t any big deal. Time marches on. I mean if I had a choice I
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would rather have lived at the time of King David, when he was the high King of Israel, I’d love to have been riding with him or hiding in caves with him when he was a hunted outlaw. I wonder what he would have been saying and about who—or maybe at the time of Jesus and Mary Magdalene—that would have been interesting huh, really test your nerve... or maybe even later in the time of the Apostles when they were overturning the world... what happened in the ’60s? Wiretapping? What was so revolutionary about it? You know, there was a time when people thought the world was flat and that women didn’t have souls... you can say how ridiculous and how could they have been so stupid but nevertheless people did think it to be truth just like right now a lot of what’s thought to be truth will later be proved false... actually I’m amazed that I’ve been around this long, never thought I would be. I try to learn from both the wise and the unwise, not pay attention to anybody, do what I want to do. I can’t say I haven’t done my share of playing the fool. There was never any secret. I was in the right place at the right time. People dissect my songs like rabbits but they all miss the point. I mean have you ever seen ‘something’s happening but you don’t know what it is do you, Mr. Jones’ played over the war in Lebanon? Or the AIDS epidemic? Or Mengele’s bones? Sometimes I think I’ve been doing this too long. I can understand why Rimbaud quit writing poetry when he was 19... How would I change my life? Yeah, well, sometimes I think that I get by on only 50% of what I got, sometimes even less. I’d like to change that I guess... that’s about all I can think of.” —Cameron Crowe
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You Wanna Ramble They Killed Him Driftin’ Too Far From Shore Precious Memories
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Maybe Someday Brownsville Girl Got My Mind Made Up Under Your Spell
Musicians: Bob Dylan – guitar; T Bone Burnett, Jack Sherman, Ron Wood, Ira Ingber, Tom Petty, Dave Stewart – guitar; James Jamerson Jr., Vito San Filippo, John Paris, Howie Epstein, Carl Sealove, John McKenzie – bass; Al Kooper, Vince Melamed, Benmont Tench, Patrick Seymour – keyboards; Raymond Lee Pounds,
Anton Fig, Don Heffington, Stan Lynch, Clem Burke – drums; Steve Douglas – saxophone; Steve Madaio – trumpet; Larry Meyers – Mandolin; Al Perkins – steel guitar; Milton Gabriel, Mike Berment, Brian Parris – steel drums; Philip Lyn Jones – conga; Peggi Blu, Elisecia Wright, Carole Dennis, Madeline Quebec, Muffy Hendrix, Annette May Thomas – vocals.
One of the less substantial albums in the Dylan canon, its title borrowed from the old Louis Jordan tune “Junco Partner,” Knocked Out Loaded is another collection of odds and ends. Yet it contains one masterpiece, the eleven-minute epic “Brownsville Girl,” written with playwright Sam Shepard, a shaggy-doggish yarn about romance in the West dovetailed with memories of watching Gregory Peck in the film The Gunfighter. The lyrics play with time, memory, people, and places, and the delivery is staggering. Starting almost conversationally, Dylan ratchets up the intensity verse by verse, like a good preacher, until he is throwing everything he has into every line by the end, before bringing it in for a good landing. The set would be essential if just for that, although his remake of Junior Parker’s “I Wanna Ramble,” his pleasant, reggae-tinged reading of the spiritual “Precious Memories,” and the funny, bitter “Maybe Someday” are valuable additions.
Knocked Out Loaded July 14, 1986
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Slow Train I Want You Gotta Serve Somebody Queen Jane Approximately Joey All Along The Watchtower Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
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Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia had a bond that stretched back to their shared roots in traditional music. Their 1989 tour is remembered fondly by fans, although this record captures the hit and miss quality of a performer and a group both known for letting spontaneity rule their live performances. As Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead put it in 2006, “We could have been better rehearsed. A lot of the time was spent rehearsing songs that were never played. If I had to do it over again, I would have had him (Dylan) give us a song list.” Nevertheless, “Slow Train” and “Queen Jane” stand out as fine performances.
Dylan & The Dead
Produced by Jerry Garcia and John Cutler January 18, 1988
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Let’s Stick Together When Did You Leave Heaven? Sally Sue Brown Death Is Not The End Had A Dream About You, Baby
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Ugliest Girl In The World Silvio Ninety Miles An Hour (Down A Dead End Street) Shenandoah Rank Strangers To Me
Musicians: Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica; Danny Kortchmar, Steve Jones, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton – guitar; Steve Jordan, Stephen Shelton, Myron Grombacher, Sly Dunbar, Henry Spinetti, Mike Baird – drums; Randy Jackson, Paul Simonon, Robbie Shakespeare, Ron Wood, Kip Winger, Nathan East, Larry Klein – bass; Madelyn Quebec – vocals, keyboards; Kevin Savigar, Alan Clarke, Beau Hill, Mitchell Froom – keyboards; Bobby King, Willie Green, Clyde King, Carol Dennis, Peggi Blu, Alexandra Brown, FULL FORCE – background vocals; Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Brent Mydland - Additional vocals
Down In The Groove, from 1988, contains four Dylan originals, two of which were written with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, and none of which are masterpieces, although “Silvio” percolates with a steady beat and would soon become a concert staple rave-up. Tellingly, Dylan tries his hand at a couple of older folk songs, the traditional “Shenandoah” and the Stanley Brothers’ “Rank Strangers,” as well as the old pop tune “When Did You Leave Heaven,” which, although it was a hit for Guy Lombardo, Dylan may have picked up from a filmed performance of Big Bill Broonzy’s. In these years of the late 1980s the one place he seemed to reliably find his focus was when he turned his gaze to traditional folk, country, and blues tunes. Although the performances on Down In The Groove don’t really jell, they do point the way toward his remarkable solo albums of traditional tunes, Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong.
Down In The Groove May 19, 1988
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Political World Where Teardrops Fall Everything Is Broken Ring Them Bells Man In The Long Black Coat
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Most Of The Time What Good Am I? Disease Of Conceit What Was It You Wanted Shooting Star
Musicians: Bob Dylan – vocal, guitar; Daniel Lanois – dobro; Mason Ruffner, Brian Stoltz, Paul Synegal – guitar; Tony Hall, Larry Jolivet – bass; Cyril Neville, Daryl Johnson – percussion; Willie Green – drums; Alton Rubin jr. – scrub board; John Hart – sax; Rockin’ Dopsie – accordion; Malcolm Burn – tambourine.
Recorded in New Orleans in 1989, Oh Mercy was a much more ambitious album than its immediate predecessors. Ten new originals by Dylan, his strongest writing since Infidels, are set off by producer Daniel Lanois’ moody atmospherics. The album has a sound that commands attention, and the leader’s vocals are pulled together, even – or especially – when he is singing of confusion and chaos, as on “Political World” and “Everything Is Broken.” And “Shooting Star” and “Most of the Time” are two of the most moving ballads he ever wrote. Despite the album’s overall mood of regret and anxiety, the record let everyone know that Dylan was far from finished artistically. Dylan’s description, in Chronicles, Volume One, of the album’s genesis and recording is one of the most honest and accurate renderings of the ups and downs and reversals and tensions of the creative process ever printed.
Oh Mercy
Produced by Daniel Lanois September 12, 1989
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Wiggle Wiggle Under The Red Sky Unbelievable Born In Time T.V. Talkin’ Song
10,000 Men 2X2 God Knows Handy Dandy Cat’s In The Well
Musicians: Bob Dylan - guitar, harp, accordion, vocals; Slash, David Lindley, Waddy Wachtel, Robben Ford, Jimmy Vaughan, Stevie Ray Vaughan – guitar; George Harrison, David Lindley - slide Guitar; Al Kooper – keyboards; Jamie Muhoberac – organ; Randy Jackson, Don Was – bass; Kenny Aronoff – drums;
Bruce Hornsby – piano; Paulinho Da Costa – percussion; Elton John – piano; David Lindley – bouzouki; David McMurray – sax; Rayse Biggs – trumpet; Sweet Pea Atkinson, Sir Harry Bowens, Donald Ray Mitchell, David Was, David Crosby background vocals.
The personnel listing of Dylan’s 1990 studio album Under The Red Sky, produced by Don and David Was, is encrusted with the names of guest performers including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Elton John, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby and George Harrison, but their presence was not quite enough to bring Under The Red Sky up to the level of Dylan’s best work. One critic praises Dylan’s use of nursery rhyme motifs in some of the songs, but they don’t really help much. Still, as with almost every Dylan album, Under The Red Sky has its bright spots, in this case “God Knows,” and the ballad “Born In Time,” both of which were originally considered for inclusion on Oh Mercy. Possibly Dylan knew he was in need of serious creative renewal; in his next studio effort, Good As I Been To You, he headed straight back to the deepest well he could find.
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Under The Red Sky
Produced by Don Was and David Was and Jack Frost September 11, 1990
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Hard Times In New York Town [12/22/61] He Was A Friend Of Mine [11/20/61] Man On The Street [11/22/61] No More Auction Block [Late 1962] House Carpenter [3/19/62] Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues [4/25/62] Let Me Die In My Footsteps [4/25/62] Rambling, Gambling Willie [4/24/62]
Talkin’ Hava Negeilah Blues [4/25/62] Quit Your Low Down Ways [7/9/62] Worried Blues [7/9/62] Kingsport Town [11/14/62] Walkin’ Down The Line [1963] Walls Of Red Wing [4/24/63] Paths Of Victory [8/12/63] Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues [10/26/63] Who Killed Davey Moore? [10/26/63]
Only A Hobo [8/12/63] Moonshiner [8/12/63] When The Ship Comes In [1962] The Times They Are A-Changin’ [1963] Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie [4/12/63] Seven Curses [8/6/63] Eternal Circle [10/24/63] Suze (The Cough Song) [10/24/63] Mama, You Been On My Mind [6/9/64] Farewell Angelina [1/13/65]
Subterranean Homesick Blues [1/13/65] If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Got To Stay All Night) [1/15/65] Sitting On A Barbed-Wire Fence [6/15/65] Like A Rolling Stone [6/15/65] It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry [6/15/65] I’ll Keep It With Mine [1/27/66] She’s Your Lover Now [1/21/66] I Shall Be Released [Fall 1967]
Santa Fe [Fall 1967] If Not For You [5/1/70] Wallflower [11/4/71] Nobody ‘Cept You [11/2/73] Tangled Up In Blue [9/16/74] Call Letter Blues [9/16/74] Idiot Wind [9/19/74] If You See Her, Say Hello [9/16/74] Golden Loom [7/30/75] Catfish [7/28/75] Seven Days [4/21/76] Ye Shall Be Changed [5/27/79]
Every Grain Of Sand [9/23/80] You Changed My Life [4/23/81] Need A Woman [5/4/81] Angelina [5/4/81] Someone’s Got A Hold Of My Heart [4/25/83] Tell Me [4/21/83] Lord Protect My Child [5/3/83] Foot Of Pride [4/25/83] Blind Willie Mctell [5/5/83] When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky [2/19/85] Series Of Dreams [3/23/89]
Released in 1991, this three disc set was a revelation. Although fans had known for years that there was plenty of unreleased Dylan material in the Columbia Records vaults, a fair amount of which had dribbled out on unauthorized or “bootleg” versions, this compilation still inspired a kind of awe. It is hard to think of even a handful of performers of this or any era whose unissued work could fill three discs worth of material as good as this. Spanning almost all of Dylan’s career to that point, from Minneapolis to Oh Mercy, The Bootleg Series Volume 1 – 3 presents surprise after surprise – new versions of familiar material, previously unknown repertoire, live performances, studio alternates – in a dizzying overview of one of the most protean and vibrant creative careers of the 20th Century. Every listener will find his or her own favorites, although any list of highlights would have to include the wry, Guthrie-like “Hard Times In New York Town,” the subtle and poetic “Walls Of Red Wing” (about a Minnesota reformatory), “Mama, You Been On My Mind,” the unfinished 1966 masterpiece “She’s Your Lover Now,” the great Infidels outtakes “Blind Willie McTell” and, especially, the searing, nightmarish “Foot Of Pride”. . . There isn’t much point in going on; this is a set full of precious gems, each one different and reflecting a distinct part of the genius who produced them.
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The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare And Unreleased) 1961-1991 Produced by Jeff Rosen March 26, 1991
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
BOOTLEG SERIES VOL 1-3 original liner notes Introduction
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For most of those fabulous ‘60s, to be a bona-fide, hard-core, full paid-up Bob Dylan fan didn’t demand much more than buying the records, enthusing about the songs and Dylan’s singing to incredulous friends and puzzled parents, dreaming about one day seeing him in concert, and always waiting, with tetchy impatience, for news of what he was up to. In the faxless ‘60s, when TVs were still steamdriven and urgent correspondence was carried in the saddlebags of the Pony Express, news of Dylan’s doings would often come limping along months after the event. Over in England in 1965, Dylan was being hailed as a great new folk singer, and his “latest protest”—“The Times They Are A-Changin’”—was storming into the Top 20, several months after the decidedly non-folk rock-rap recording of “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Even in the States, not everyone was hip to what was happening. In Newport, the fussy old folkies who’d cherished the socially outspoken Bobby Dylan stuck their fingers in their ears and yelled “turn it down!” as Bob and the Butterfield Band raved on at the infamous 1965 Folk Festival, even though “Like A Rolling Stone” had been roaring out of every radio set just about on the hour in the week leading up to that “first electric concert.” Times sure were different then. By the end of the decade, die-hard enthusiasts had recording of Bob Dylan singing 103 songs on nine Columbia albums, not counting the “Greatest Hits.” Each of the records had been bought with baited breath, and carried home in triumph, with the rest of the day set aside for lyric transcription, analysis, and the appropriate indulgence of wonderment at how different each record was from the one that had preceded it. But then in late summer 1969, things changed. And for Dylan fans, life was never to be the same again.
It all began when a strange white label ‘bootleg” record called “Great White Wonder” came out of California. It was, as far as the fans were concerned, the tenth new Bob Dylan LP, though it didn’t say so on the sleeve. Although it sounded as though it had been recorded by means of tin-can-and-string technology, it was crammed with delights. Half of the tracks were taken from “The Basement Tapes,” gloriously crazy songs recorded with The Band in Woodstock in 1967; the other songs on “Great White Wonder” were recordings from 1961, on which a very young bob Dylan sang his way spiritedly through all kinds of great blues and folk songs—why, he even tried telling a joke! For the most part this stuff was great—and seemed all the more exciting just because, being rare, unreleased, and most certainly unofficial, it was something that we shouldn’t really be listening to—forbidden fruit, and the sweeter for it. The record company was understandably outraged, the copyright people were justifiably up in arms, but we had Bob Dylan singing “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” and “This Wheel’s On Fire,” and “I Shall be Released,” and life had never seemed so good. Then, in December 1969, In “Rolling Stone” #47, the second anniversary issue, Greil Marcus was let loose over five big pages to enthuse about countless hours of other unreleased Dylan tapes that he’d scrambled and hustled for himself; private recordings in friends’ apartments, tapes of early coffeehouse gigs in Greenwich Village, and songs recorded for, but never used on the official albums; outtake versions—some of them with very different words or arrangements—of songs we already knew; and tapes of concerts, both solo and with The Hawks, later known as The Band. “Dylan’s greatest recordings,” Marcus maintained.
Thus began the great tape hunt, the quest to collect anything and everything that Bob Dylan had ever recorded. Over the last 20 years, a feverish underground network of collectors has been at work, tracking, tracing, and trading tapes. And now at last, something of the true extent and value of much of the buried treasure long sought after by tape collectors is brought to light. In this cornucopia of previously unissued material are stashed home recordings, demo recordings, outtakes, alternative takes, coffeehouse recordings, concert recordings, and more. Much of it teaches us a good deal about the way in which Dylan developed as a songwriter or performer in those early years; some of it is nothing short of sensational— performances of staggering power and subtlety and seemingly infinite variety. The main focus in this collection is on Dylan as the songwriter: 38 songs that have never been released on an official album, as well as demo and rehearsal versions of wellknown songs. Subsequent volumes will deal with live work, including the legendary 1966 Royal Albert hall appearance. For those who never suspected this material even existed, there are untold delights in store. And for those exhaustive and insatiable collectors, the “completists” who like to think that they’ve heard everything, included here are a bunch of previously unsuspected tracks. Whatever reputation Bob Dylan has enjoyed as a writer and performer in his 30-year recording career will inevitably have to be reviewed in the light of this historic collection. And if the writers and critics who are called upon to reassess Bob Dylan’s achievements find that the superlatives have all been used up on his back catalog of official releases, they’ll just have to come up with a bunch of superlative outtakes, won’t they? — JOHN BAULDIE, London, 1991
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Jim Jones Blackjack Davey Canadee-i-O Sittin’ On Top Of The World Little Maggie Hard Times
Step It Up And Go Tomorrow Night Arthur McBride You’re Gonna Quit Me Diamond Joe Froggie Went A Courtin’
If the end of the 1980s saw a series of albums that suggested (with the exception of Oh Mercy) that Dylan was having trouble finding his focus, his live performances tended to come to life with the inclusion of the kinds of traditional old-time country and blues and bluegrass tunes that had been his stock in trade in his early years in New York. In 1992, Dylan went into the recording studio, steering for his old-time used-to-be, and came out with his first completely solo album in 19 years, containing not one Dylan original. Good As I Been To You is Dylan, by himself, playing blues, ballads, and folk songs associated with the Stanley Brothers (“Little Maggie”), The Mississippi Sheiks (“Sittin’ On Top of The World”), Lonnie Johnson (“Tomorrow Night”), Paul Brady (“Arthur McBride”), and Blind Blake (“You’re Gonna Quit Me”) as well as traditional songs like “Frankie And Albert” and “Froggie Went A-Courtin’.” He finds his own twist on almost all of them, and the disc contains his most committed singing and guitar playing on record in years. Here he was, once again, soaking up energy and inspiration from the people who had been important to him in the beginning, and it was plainly doing him good.
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Good As I Been To You November 3, 1992
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It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – Bob Dylan My Back Pages - Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, George Harrison
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door - everyone Girl From The North Country - Bob Dylan
Selections from On October 16, 1992, an impressive and eclectic group of artists gathered at Madison Square Garden in New York City for the purpose of celebrating the music of Bob Dylan on the occasion of his 30th anniversary of recording. Bringing together musical greats as far-flung as Johnny Cash and Eddie Vedder, The Clancy Brothers and Lou Reed, the four-hour show celebrated a truly remarkable lifetime of songs in front of a sold-out audience of over 18,000. Warmly dubbed the Bobfest by participant Neil Young, the show was broadcast around the world and featured a cast of musical notables performing carefully chosen and often surprising selections from the incomparable Dylan songbook. At evening’s end, the man of honor himself appeared on stage and gracefully brought it all back home again. In a world where all-star celebrity gatherings have become commonplace, the Bob Dylan celebration stood out as, first and foremost, a legitimately memorable musical event. — From the original 1993 liner notes, by David Wild
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Selections from The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration Produced by Jeff Rosen and Don DeVito August 24, 1993
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Love Henry Ragged & Dirty Blood In My Eyes Broke Down Engine Delia
Stack A Lee Two Soldiers Jack-A-Roe Lone Pilgrim
Some kind of light must have gone on for Dylan during the recording of Good As I Been To You, because the next year, 1993, he came out with another solo album made up entirely of traditional tunes, as good as its predecessor and maybe better in some cases. In World Gone Wrong Dylan again chooses material from the Anglo-American and African-American traditions, and at least one associated with both – his decision to perform West Virginia coal miner Frank Hutchison’s version of the African-American murder ballad “Stack A Lee” is inspired. As on the preceding album, he has the Mississippi Sheiks on the brain, performing their “Blood In My Eyes” as well as the album’s title song. Throughout, he chooses unusual and tasty items from across the spectrum of the traditional repertoire, and brings his own sensibility to them. In particular, his roaring version of Blind Willie McTell’s “Broke Down Engine” and his quiet and eerily beautiful delivery of the ballad “Lone Pilgrim” are standouts.
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World Gone Wrong Produced by Bob Dylan October 26, 1993
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
WORLD GONE WRONG original liner notes About the Songs (what they’re about)
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BROKE DOWN ENGINE is a Blind Willie Mctell masterpiece. it’s about trains, mystery on the rails—the train of love, the train that carried my girl from town—The Southern Pacific, Baltimore & Ohio whatever—it’s about variations of human longing—the low hum in meter & syllables. it’s about dupes of commerce & politics colliding on tracks, not being pushed around by ordinary standards. it’s about revival, getting a new lease on life, not just posing there—paint chipped & flaked, mattress bare, single bulb swinging above the bed. it’s about Ambiguity, the fortunes of the privilege elite, flood control—watching the red dawn not bothering to dress.
say “let’s sleep on it” but theory already living in the sanitarium. No Rights Without Duty is the name of the game & fame is a trick. playing for time is only horsing around. Stack’s in a cell, no wall phone. he is not some egotistical degraded existentialist dionysian idiot, neither does he represent any alternative lifestyle scam (give me a thousand acres of tractable land & all the gang members that exist & you’ll see the Authentic alternative lifestyle, the Agrarian one) Billy didn’t have an insurance plan, didn’t get airsick yet his ghost is more real & genuine than all the dead souls on the boob tube—a monumental epic of blunder & misunderstanding. a romance tale without the cupidity.
LOVE HENRY is a “traditionalist” ballad. Tom Paley used to do it. a perverse tale. Henry—modern corporate man off some foreign boat, unable to handle his “psychosis” responsible for organizing the Intelligentsia, disarming the people, an infantile sensualist—white teeth, wide smile, lotza money, kowtow to fairy queen exploiters & corrupt religious establishments, career minded, limousine double parked, imposing his will & dishonest garbage in popular magazines. he lays his head on a pillow of down & falls asleep. he shoulda known better, he must’ve had a hearing problem.
BLOOD IN MY EYES is one of two songs done by the Mississippi Sheiks, a little known de facto group whom in their former glory must’ve been something to behold. rebellion against routine seems to be their strong theme. all their songs are raw to the bone & are faultlessly made for these modern times (the New Dark Ages) nothing effete about the Mississippi Sheiks.
STACK A LEE is Frank Hutchinson’s version. what does the song say exactly? it says no man gains immortality thru public acclaim. truth is shadowy. in the pre-postindustrial age, victims of violence were allowed (in fact it was their duty) to be judges over their offenders—parents were punished for their children’s crimes (we’ve come a long way since then) the song says that a man’s hat is his crown. futurologists would insist it’s a matter of taste. they
WORLD GONE WRONG is also by them & goes against cultural policy. “strange things are happening like never before” strange things alright—strange things like courage becoming befuddled & nonfundamental. evil charlatans masquerading in pullover vests & tuxedos talking gobbledygook, monstrous pompous superficial pageantry parading down lonely streets on limited access highways. strange things indeed—irrationalist bimbos & bozos, the stuff of legend, coming in from left field—infamy on the landscape—“pray to the Good Lord” hit the light switch!
JACK-A-ROE is another Tom Paley ballad (Tom, one of the original New Lost City Ramblers) the young virgin follows her heart (which can’t be confined) & in it the secrets of the universe. “there was a wealthy merchant” wealthy & philosophically influential perhaps with an odd penchant for young folk. the song cannot be categorized—is worlds away from reality but “gets inside” reality anyway & strips it of its steel and concrete. inverted symmetry, legally stateless, traveling under a false passport. “before you step on board, sir...” are you any good at what you do? submerge you personality. DELIA is one sad tale-two or more versions mixed into one. the song has no middle range, comes whipping around the corner, seems to be about counterfeit loyalty. Delia herself, no Queen Gertrude, Elizabeth 1 or even Evita Peron, doesn’t ride a Harley Davidson across the desert highway, doesn’t need a blood change & would never go on a shopping spree. the guy in the courthouse sounds like a pimp in primary colors. he’s not interested in mosques on the temple mount, armageddon or world war 111, doesn’t put his face in his knees & weep & wears no dunce hat, makes no apology & is doomed to obscurity. does this song have rectitude? you bet. toleration of the unacceptable leads to the last round-up. the singer’s not talking from a head full of booze. Jerry Garcia showed me TWO SOLDIERS (Hazel & Alice do it pretty similar) a battle song extraordinaire, some dragoon officer’s epaulettes laying liquid in the mud, physical plunge into Limitationville, war dominated by finance (lending money for interest being a nauseating & revolting thing) love is not collateral. hittin’ em where they ain’t (in the
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imperfect state that they’re in) America when Mother was the queen of Her heart, before Charlie Chaplin, before the Wild One, before the Children of the Sun—before the celestial grunge, before the insane world of entertainment exploded in our faces—before all the ancient & honorable artillery had been taken out of the city, learning to go forward by turning back the clock, stopping the mind from thinking in hours, firing a few random shots at the face of time.
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RAGGED & DIRTY one of the Willie Browns did this— schmaltz & pickled herring, stuffed cabbage, heavy moral vocabulary—sweetness & sentiment, house rocking, superior beauty, not just standing there —the seductive magic of the thumbs up salute, carefully thought out overtones & stepping sideways, the idols of human worship paying thru the nose, lords of the illogical in smoking jackets, sufferers from a weak education, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle— taking stupid chances—being mistreated only just so far. LONE PILGRIM is from an old Doc Watson record. what attracts me to the song is how the lunacy of trying to fool the self is set aside at some given point. salvation & the needs of mankind are prominent & hegemony takes a breathing spell. “my soul flew to mansions on high” what’s essentially true is virtual reality. technology to wipe out truth is now available. not everybody can afford it but it’s available. when the cost comes down look out! there wont be songs like these anymore. factually there aren’t any now. by the way, don’t be bewildered by the Never Ending Tour chatter. there was a Never Ending Tour but it ended in ‘91 with the departure of guitarist G.E. Smith. that one’s long gone but there have been many others since then. The Money Never Runs Out Tour (fall of ‘91) Southern Sympathizer Tour
(early ‘92) Why Do You Look At Me So Strangley Tour (European ‘92) The One Sad Cry of Pity Tour (Australia & West Coast America ‘92) Principles Of Action Tour (Mexico—South American ‘92) Outburst Of Consciousness Tour (‘92) Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Tour(‘93) & others too many to mention each with their own character & design. to know which was which consult the playlists. — Bob Dylan
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Tangled Up In Blue Changing Of The Guards The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar Hurricane Forever Young Jokerman Dignity
Silvio Ring Them Bells Gotta Serve Somebody Series Of Dreams Brownsville Girl Under The Red Sky Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
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Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3
Produced by Gordon Carroll, Don DeVito, Jerry Wexler, Barry Beckett, Chuck Plotkin, Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Daniel Lanois, Don Was, and David Was November 15, 1994
Tombstone Blues Shooting Star All Along The Watchtower The Times They Are A-Changin’ John Brown
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 Desolation Row Dignity Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door Like A Rolling Stone With God On Our Side
Musicians: Bob Dylan – guitar, harmonica, vocals; Tony Garnier – bass; John Jackson – guitar; Bucky Baxter – pedal steel, dobro; Winston Watson – drums; Brendan O’Brien – hammond organ.
In November 1994 Dylan entered the Sony studios to tape a segment for MTV’s Unplugged series, intended to present performers in an acoustic setting. Fronting his regular touring band and playing to a wildly enthusiastic audience, Dylan served up rolling, energetic versions of favorites like “Tombstone Blues” and “All Along The Watchtower,” as well as interestingly subtle, underplayed readings of “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “Desolation Row” and “Shooting Star.” But the jewel of the set is Dylan’s reworking of 1989’s Oh Mercy outtake “Dignity,” with its tumbling, jostling imagery.
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MTV Unplugged
Produced by Jeff Kramer, Jeff Rosen June 30, 1995
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Love Sick Dirt Road Blues Standing In The Doorway Million Miles Tryin’ To Get To Heaven Til I Fell In Love With You
Not Dark Yet Cold Irons Bound Make You Feel My Love Can’t Wait Highlands
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Musicians: Bob Dylan – guitar, acoustic and electric rhythm lead, harmonica, piano, vocals; Daniel Lanois – guitar, mando-guitar, firebird, Martin 0018, Gretch gold top, rhythm & lead; “Bucky” Baxter – acoustic guitar, pedal steel; “Duke” Robillard – guitar, electric L5 Gibson; Robert Britt – Martin acoustic & Fender Stratocaster; Winston Watson – Drums; Cindy Cashdollar – slide guitar; Tony Garnier – Electric Bass &
acoustic upright bass; Augie Meyers – vox organ combo, Hammond B3 organ & accordion; Jim Dickenson – keyboards, Wurlitzer electric piano & pump organ; Jim Keltner – drums; David Kemper – drums; Brian Blade – drums; Tony Mangurian – percussion.
In 1997, Dylan released his first album of new compositions since Under The Red Sky, the amazing Time Out of Mind. Produced, like Oh Mercy, by Daniel Lanois, Time Out Of Mind is set in a spooky, subaqueous aural medium that quavers around Dylan’s stripped-to-the-bone vocals like the light in an aquarium. Through this oddly-lit gloom, Dylan sings with shocking candor about a world come loose from its moorings, of exhaustion, emptiness, aimlessness, lost love and the prospect of death. There is an honesty and directness here that is liberating for both the listener and the singer. His vocals are as strong, as focused, and as pure as anything he had done for years. The album contained moody ballads (“Make You Feel My Love,” “Not Dark Yet,” “Standing In The Doorway”), blues-based quasi-recitatives (“Million Miles,” “Til I fell In Love With You” and the 16 1/2 – minute “Highlands”), and a few scalding, claustral explorations of the borderline of sanity, “Cold Irons Bound,” “Love Sick” and “Can’t Wait.” In addition there is the beautiful and unique “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven,” with its haunting line, “When you think that you’ve lost everything/You find out you can always loooooose a little more…” The buzz surrounding the album’s release brought Dylan to a wider, and younger, audience than he had enjoyed in years. The album sold millions and earned Dylan a Grammy® Award for Album of the Year (his first ever.)
Time Out Of Mind
Produced by Daniel Lanois, in association with Jack Frost Productions September 30, 1997
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She Belongs To Me 4th Time Around Visions Of Johanna It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue Desolation Row Just Like A Woman
Mr. Tambourine Man Tell Me, Momma I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat One Too Many Mornings Ballad Of A Thin Man Like A Rolling Stone
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T h e
B o o t l e g
S e r i e s
Vo l . 4
BOB DYLAN LIVE 1966
The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4 Bob Dylan Live 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert Produced by Jeff Rosen October 13, 1998
What it was like live. The music that Dylan and his electric band made during their 1966 world tour was like nothing the world had ever heard. Ever since Dylan’s first appearance with an electric backup band at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival his electric performances had caused an outcry in the folk and pop music worlds alike. The music was assaultive, in your face; it came right up to you, rather than inviting you to gather around and listen as “folk” music was supposed to. The band Dylan used for the 1966 tour, known then as the Hawks and soon, with Levon Helm replacing Mickey Jones on drums, to be known as The Band, was a group of individual talents willing to follow Dylan into uncharted waters. They played loud and strong and every night they tested the boundaries of what people could listen to as they flung themselves and their audiences against the limits of their own energies. The show captured on Live 1966 follows the standard format for one of that year’s programs. Dylan first plays an acoustic set of songs from Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde, with none of his earlier “protest” songs in evidence. Each performance sets a spell, creates an eerie, one-on-one intimacy with the listener. Dylan’s ability to sustain this kind of focused, understated intensity through the long reaches of songs like “Desolation Row” and, especially, “Visions of Johanna” is astonishing. After intermission he would come back with the Hawks and blow the roof off the venue, with a set consisting of his recent songs like “Ballad Of A Thin Man,” and older songs gone electric, like Another Side’s “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met).” The performances would be met by a mixture of cheers, stunned confusion, and catcalls from audience members outraged at his “betrayal” of folk music. In this set’s most famous moment, someone in the audience yells out, “Judas!” The response from the stage is a tidal wave called “Like A Rolling Stone.” The concert was recorded and released illegally, becoming one of the first and best-selling rock bootlegs, known universally as the Royal Albert Hall concert – a mistake, since, although the band did play at the Albert Hall on this British leg of the tour, this performance is taken from a slightly earlier one at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. Fasten your safety belts.
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
BOOTLEG SERIES VOLUME 4 original liner notes
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In 1913, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky wrote music for The Rite Of Spring, a Diaghilev ballet, choreographed by Nijinsky. His twelve-tone scales and use of unfamiliar structures caused not just a scandal, but rather a riot, as Parisian audiences stood and shouted, drowning out the orchestra. They considered Stravinsky’s score a “blasphemous attempt to destroy music as an art” and booed roundly throughout the piece. In 1922, modern dancer Isadora Duncan began a tour with her husband, Russian poet Sergei Esenin. He read and she danced in auditoriums across the U.S. It was the height of the Red Scare and the powers that be were threatened by the Bolshevik Revolution of a few years before. When Duncan performed in Boston, she gave an impassioned speech, imploring a highly conservative audience— “You were once wild here, don’t let them tame you!” When she waved a red scarf and bared a breast, declaring “nudity is truth, it is beauty, it is art!” the audience fled the hall. In 1935, actor-director-writer Antonin Artaud performed his play The Cenci, a dramatized myth of murder, incest and adultery, in Paris. Artaud had championed the “Theater Of Cruelty,” where an audience was to be transformed through their encounter with his work. Settings were designed to disorient the spectator: recorded sound effects of trampling feet, an amplified metronome and tolling church bells were played through loudspeakers located in the four corners of the building and spectators were assaulted with macabre lighting effects. The play soon closed, and Artaud eventually wound up in an asylum. In May of 1966, Bob Dylan stands on an English stage, coming back for the second half of a concert. The first part, done solo and acoustic, was well
received, even though the lyrics were not the socially-conscious, politically-motivating messages that had gained Dylan popularity barely a year before. Now he appears in a mod cut suit and pointed boots in front of a five-piece band with an electric guitar in hand, playing incandescent rock and roll. There are catcalls throughout the set, and finally, just before the last number, someone yells “Judas!” Dylan replies, “I don’t believe you!” turns to the band and snarls, “Play fucking loud!” Drummer Mickey Jones cracks the snare like a rifle shot and The Hawks roar into “Like A Rolling Stone.” Dylan’s voice is a velvet sneer as he shouts out the line “How does it feeeeeeel” and the performance rolls on with power, defiance and a sheer majesty rarely captured on tape. By the time the first so-called “Royal Albert Hall” bootleg came out, some four or five years later, the mythology was in place: a blues-tinged Woody Guthrie comes out of the midwest, moves to N.Y., writes some poetic topical songs that become the soundtrack for the civil rights and anti-war struggles, turns inward and begins doing existentially surrealistic visionary work, hooks up with a kick-ass rock band, barnstorms the U.S., Australia and Europe, ends four months of grueling touring with a triumphant concert, returns to the U.S., breaks his neck in a motorcycle accident, and retires into a 20-month seclusion. When he returns, it’s as a vastly changed man, a bearded biblical poet, with acoustic parables from a whole other century. So what happened, and why were those people so angry? Therein lies a tale… From the 30 years down the road viewpoint, history looks like the inevitable evolution of events—but when you’re living through them, the perspective is a bit more chaotic. I first met Bob
Dylan in mid-1960, a few months before he headed east to visit Woody Guthrie. There was a beat/folk music scene going down in Dinkytown, a section of Minneapolis just off the University of Minnesota campus. Apartments, shops, and The Scholar, a store-front coffee house, were there. It was a dark and mellow kind of place where you could nurse a cup, play chess, stare out the window or talk about foreign films without being hassled. Though I didn’t know it till I read some books years later, it turns out that both Bob and I were musical expatriates from the R&R scene. He’d been involved with a high school band, and played piano on a few gigs with Top 40 hitman Bobby Vee. I had a garage blues-rock group that played a combination of Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed styled music—we cut a couple acetates and played a few dances at the VFW hall. When the band broke up with people getting drafted or otherwise leaving town, I gravitated toward the Dinkytown scene, and ran across the people making music there. In the 1960s you couldn’t find a band with amps, PA and drum kits on every block and there weren’t even that many Fender guitars around—and half of those were being played in the Flame and other CW bars downtown. The music around the U was in the trad folk line, made by people who were enamored of mountain banjo melodies and old string bands with names like Gid Tanner’s Skillet Lickers. These people had big record and tape collections. Some even sent off to the Library Of Congress to buy tape dubs from the field recording collections at $17 an hour. A Folk Society was formed—people met to discuss and play these songs and it was all pretty academic. I’d gone backwards from the Chicago blues bands to discover the roots in delta blues/folk people like Leadbelly and Sonny Terry, and ran across
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their Folkways recordings with Woody Guthrie. When I met Bob, he was a guy who’d started out with Odetta and Harry Belafonte tunes and was just getting heavily into Woody and his songs as sung by Jack Elliott; he flat-picked guitar and was starting to play harp in a neck rack. We played at some parties here and there and traded a few harp riffs. Bob headed east in late 1960. We exchanged letters and he proudly sent back a flyer advertising him playing at Gerde’s Folk City on a bill with John Lee Hooker. When he signed with Columbia and they put out his first album in February of 1962, as far as I was concerned, he was a star. From there on, it was just a matter of degrees. The album was a nice mix of blues and interesting versions of trad folk songs, with a couple of Guthrie-esque originals for good measure. During sessions for his next, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bob was hooked up with a four-piece band. The resulting 45, “Mixed-Up Confusion/Corrina, Corrina,” paired the trad tune with a rocking original that sounded like Woody gone rockabilly, with some nice piano and harp interplay—it was cool, if a bit misguided. The single wasn’t commercial enough for Top 40 radio, and electric instruments were anathema to the folk crowd who were consciously turning their backs on mainstream culture and pop music. The band tunes originally slated for the album were scratched, with only “Corrina” remaining. By early 1964 Bob was considered a spokesman by a number of groups with varying agendas. He’d appeared at the August 1963 March on Washington rally, where Martin Luther King had given his famous “I have a dream” speech. Bob sang “Only A Pawn In Their Game” and Peter, Paul and Mary performed his anthem, “Blowin’ In The Wind.” His new The Times They Are A-Changin’ album had Bertolt Brecht-inspired political ballads, but also included gut-wrenching songs of loss like “One Too Many Mornings” and “Boots Of Spanish Leather.” He’d appeared at a number of “cause” concerts, played
some voter registration rallies in Mississippi and become the fair-haired boy of the topical song movement, with new songs appearing regularly in Sing Out! and Broadside, the bibles of the activists. In June 1964, Bob went into the studio and changed directions; in a single day he cut Another Side Of Bob Dylan, which mixed love songs and humorous talking blues with the surrealistic imagery of “Chimes Of Freedom.” The result was a wave of disapproval from the People’s Songs crowd. It’s worth noting that Bob didn’t come up with the album name. Cameron Crowe quotes him in the Biograph box set booklet: “Tom Wilson titled it that, I begged and pleaded with him not to do it. You know, I thought it was overstating the obvious…it seemed like a negation of the past, which in no way was true.” As Richard Williams put it in A Man Called Alias: “The fact was though, that at the very moment when Bob Dylan was beginning to receive acclamation as the voice of his generation’s political consciousness, his new album was full of personal songs…The album moved off an interior landscape in which murdered black servants, wicked arms dealers, assassinated presidents and starving miners were nowhere to be found.” Reaction was quick to come—in the November issue of Sing Out!, editor Irwin Silber chastised him in an open letter: “…You said you weren’t a writer of ‘protest’ songs…but any songwriter who tries to deal honestly with reality in this world is bound to write ‘protest’ songs. How can he help himself? Your new songs seem to be all inner directed now, innerprobing, self-conscious—maybe even a little maudlin or cruel on occasion. And it’s happening on-stage too. You seem to be relating to a handful of cronies behind the scenes now—rather than the rest of us out front. Now that’s all okay—if that’s the way you want it. But then you’re a different Bob Dylan from the one we knew. The old one never wasted our precious time… The American Success
Machinery chews up geniuses at the rate of one a day and still hungers for more. Unable to produce real art on its own, the Establishment breeds creativity in protest against and non-conformity to the System. And then, through notoriety, fast money and status, it makes it almost impossible for the artist to function and grow. It is a process that must be constantly guarded against and fought. Give it some thought Bob. Believe me when I say that this letter is written out of love and deep concern… Irwin Silber” By then, Koerner, Ray & Glover, the blues-folk group I played with, had a couple of albums out and we were booked into the Newport Folk Festival. Of course Bob was there as well and we connected up at the hotel. One of my strongest memories of the weekend is of an afternoon with the festival rolling on in a topical-traditional mode outside, while in a room he, Bob Neuwirth, and I sang old Hank Williams tunes—and worked out the harmonies on “Tell Me”—an original number off the new Rolling Stones’ first album. In October, The Animals were on The Ed Sullivan Show doing a rock version of “House Of The Rising Sun,” a ballad also on Bob’s first album. The handwriting was in the air… In January 1965, over a three-day session, Bob cut tracks for Bringing It All Back Home, another trip deeper down his new road. One side of the album was with a band, one side solo acoustic. There was a lot to chew on there—the solo sides included “Gates Of Eden,” with phrases like “upon four-legged forest clouds the cowboy angel rides” and “the motorcycle black madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen” which sounded similar to the kind of word play that William Burroughs had used in his cut up manuscripts like Naked Lunch. Add in “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and you have some incredibly compelling moody masterpieces—which are performed excellently. It may be true that Bob never had a great voice,
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but dammit, it’s evocative and delivers his words with just-right emotional intensity—can you imagine anyone doing them with more compassion or authority? The electric side caused more waves. Most of the tunes were basically folk-styled pieces backed up with a band—with one big exception, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” a power-driven speed-rapped riff which mixed Chuck Berry riffs with Allen Ginsberg-like bursts of poetic imagery. It was a true breakthrough and amazing to hear on the radio—a weird combination of joyous rock and literate lyrics that caught the ear, tickled your funny bone and had your foot tapping all at once. It rose to number #39 on the pop charts. When I first heard it, I grinned and thought, cool—he got big enough to get a band backing him. A couple of months later, around the late March album release time, Bob was sitting in on harp with The Byrds, the first “folk-rock” group to crack the Top 40. They had several Dylan tunes in their repertoire. There was definitely something afoot. After doing several joint concerts with Joan Baez, Bob went to England for a two-week tour in late April. It was filmed and released in 1967 as Don’t Look Back. It’s a document of a man in conflict—dutifully doing the dates he’d been booked into for some time, playing a repertoire that he’d largely outgrown in those fast-moving days. (Though there were six songs from the new album included in the set lists.) The radio hit in England was “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and to anyone paying attention, it should’ve been obvious that so was Bob. The press conferences were exercises in absurdist humor and Bob was wearing a sharp leather jacket instead of his work shirt. One of the most telling shots in the movie shows him pausing to look in a music shop window, eyeing a Burns electric guitar. The Beatles and the Stones admired him, but the fans wanted to hear more of sloganeering and less
of rock poetry. He came back to the U.S. burned out. “After I finished the English tour, I quit because it was too easy,” Bob told writer Jules Siegel a year later. “There was nothing happening for me. Every concert was the same: first half, second half, two encores and run out, then having to take care of myself all night. I didn’t understand; I’d get standing ovations and it didn’t mean anything. The first time I felt no shame. But then I was just following myself after that. It was down to a pattern.” Writing was always cathartic and in one of his bouts at the typewriter he spewed out a long rambling stream. “It was ten pages long. It wasn’t called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest. In the end it wasn’t hatred, it was telling someone something they didn’t know, telling them they were lucky. Revenge, that’s a better word. I had never thought of it as a song until one day I was at the piano, and on the paper it was singing ‘how does it feel?’ in a slow motion pace, in the utmost of slow motion following something…I wrote it. I didn’t fail. It was straight.” In mid-June 1965, he was in a New York studio with some session cats plus hotshot guitarist Mike Bloomfield, who was soon to work with The Paul Butterfield Band. Over two days they cut three tunes, one of which was the six-minute epic “Like A Rolling Stone.” A month later it was on the radio—it had been released to DJs split in half on a 45 with Part 1 on the A side, part 2 on the B, but most of them were putting it back together on tape and playing a complete version. If “Subterranean” was a kick on a car radio, imagine hearing “You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat, who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat/ain’t it hard when you discover that he really wasn’t where it’s at, after he took from you everything he could steal—how does it feeeel?” and then that perfect guitar fill lacing in and out. The tune both soared and rocked, and it
was a whole other trip hearing it on the grounds of the Newport Festival in late July, on little transistor radios. There was a weird feel in the air at Newport. Fire trucks were stationed at the gates, standing ready in case the hoses were needed to quell a riot, and there was a restlessness running through the crowds that had everybody on edge. One eruption occurred at an afternoon workshop when folklorist and song collector Alan Lomax (he’d done the field recordings of Son House, Fred McDowell and Muddy Waters) made a very condescending introduction to The Paul Butterfield Band on an afternoon blues workshop, something along the lines of “Let’s see what these white kids think they can do.” As the band kicked off the first electric set ever heard on the Folk Fest grounds, manager Albert Grossman (who also managed Bob) came up to Lomax and told him that was a pretty shitty job of running a workshop. Lomax said “oh yeah?” Somebody threw a punch and they wound up rolling and scuffling in the dirt for a number of seconds as bystanders bemusedly watched these two physical and industry-sized behemoths going at each other. Bob did a solo workshop in the afternoon of the first day, then decided for his next-day concert appearance he wanted to do his new single. Guitarist Bloomfield was already there with Butter’s band, so it was an easy job to recruit the rhythm section of bassist Jerome Arnold and drummer Sam Lay, and keyboardists Al Kooper (who was also on the single session) and Barry Goldberg. Overnight rehearsals resulted in a three-song set. There seemed to be two main kinds of acceptable music at the festival, a yearly event since 1963: either straight-ahead traditional (mountain ballads, banjo breakdowns, spirituals, worksongs, blues and bluegrass), or singer-songwriters doing current event/protest songs. Neither category allowed for electric guitars or drum kits, these were considered despised symbols of Tin Pan Alley force-fed pop song
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culture. There were several agendas rampant that night: the evening concert began with Pete Seeger, the original venerable topical song singer playing a tape recording of a newborn baby crying and asking the night’s performers to tell the baby about the world it would grow up in—it was pretty obvious the message he had in mind. There was also a heavyhanded emphasis on traditional music—even to the extent of having a black group singing work songs while chopping a log on-stage. When it was time for Dylan to come on in mid-concert the amps and keyboards were hauled out. The expectations were high—till then the show had been fairly dull. I was watching from Chip Monck’s lighting trailer off to the side. Chip ran a hip hospitality house; performers were welcomed, he had a wellstocked refrigerator and there usually was some good smoking material on hand. There’d been a discussion that afternoon about doing something different with the lights during Bob’s set—after a fair amount of chuckling the idea of having the entire stage go red at the end of a tune was arrived at and approved. The first tune played was “Maggie’s Farm.” The line “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more,” given the context, took on a whole OTHER meaning. There was a power and energy there, but the problem was that the PA sound basically sucked. Paul Rothchild, an Elektra Records album producer, was clearly in over his head as he struggled with the sound board. Vocal and guitar volumes surged and/ or disappeared and the keyboards were virtually inaudible. I heard people yelling “turn up the voice,” “can’t hear the piano” etc. Backstage, according to later published reports, Seeger was going somewhat berserk, trying to cut the power cables, outraged at this loud and abrasive deviation from his vision. On-stage, the band drove on, kicking into “Like A Rolling Stone.” Without stage monitors, the on-stage sound was a mess and the beat got turned around and scrambled in spots. Still
the raw energy was undeniable, stirring more yells from the crowd, including a few voices calling out for the old tunes. They sounded betrayed, angry that Dylan, with his amplified accompanists, seemed to be embracing the world of commercial music from which they’d made such a conspicuously conscious effort to turn away from. The band plowed on with “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry” (still called “Phantom Engineer”), taken at too fast a tempo to have the melancholy majesty it would later grow into. Amid more shouts about both sound and repertoire the band quit the stage—now the crowd was mad. They wanted more than three songs—some wanted the band, some wanted their old familiar troubadour. The stage was dark and empty for a few minutes while Emcee Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary urged Dylan to return—but Bob said that was all the tunes they’d worked up. Peter said, “Then go back alone, people came to see you.” So Bob went out with a borrowed acoustic guitar and did two more totally prophetic titles; “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and, after bumming a harp from the front rows of the audience, “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The soreheads were somewhat placated by hearing the older material and it looked like they’d won, he’d abandoned the dreaded electric gear. But it was obviously an end of a chapter, and a kind of farewell. An edgy and riled up crowd filed out later that night to the calming sounds of a soulful solo harmonica, Mel Lyman of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band playing a deeply felt “Rock Of Ages”—it took the edge off. The fire trucks weren’t needed after all. Four days later, at 10 a.m. July 29 in New York City’s Columbia Records studios, recording for the new album got underway, with the same crew from the “Rolling Stone” sessions. Bob had invited me down to hang out and I found a corner in the control room. As far as I could tell, producer Bob Johnston was from the John Hammond school of production; call out take numbers, keep the logs, make phone
calls, and stay out of the way. The only people I heard making comments about the takes were Albert and Neuwirth. The sessions seemed loose but businesslike. The session men would gather around Bob as he ran down a tune for them, singing a few verses as they noted down the changes, then sit down with their instruments and try out lines and rhythms. First tune up was “Phantom Engineer,” taken at the same fast pace as Newport. After a couple takes it was played back and Bob moved on to “Tombstone Blues.” After about four or five takes, Bob was satisfied, and a lunch break was called. As most of the musicians and crew split, Bob sat down at the piano and worked over “Phantom Engineer” for an hour or more. When the crew was back in place, Bob ran down how he wanted it done differently—and in three takes they got the lovely version on the album, “It Takes A Lot To Laugh,” with some tasty guitar and piano builds in it. Then Bob pulled out a newer tune, “Positively 4th Street.” As the band worked over the arrangement, each take getting tighter, Neuwirth and I looked at each other, nodding as Bob unleashed lyrics which might have been inspired by Newport, but covered a lot of different times and places. (Fourth Street ran through the heart of Dinkytown. In N.Y.C., Bob lived on West 4th Street for a few years.) “You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend, when I was down you just stood there grinning/You got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend, you just wanna be on the side that’s winning.” By the final verse and the line “you’d know what a drag it is to see you” it was obvious there was another hit single there. The Chambers Brothers quartet who’d also been at Newport dropped by that day and while listening to tape playbacks they came up with some harmony parts for the chorus of “Tombstone Blues.” Bob liked it and told Johnston to get them an acetate to work with. (They later came in and overdubbed their parts on the track, but that version wasn’t used.)
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At the time I was conscious of watching history go down. Bob was in high gear, at a creative peak, and both Kooper and Bloomfield were positive energy fields in their own rights, definitely in synch with Bob’s flow. Sometimes the recording creative process can be deadly to watch. There are often long stretches of boredom as endless retakes are done to repair some minuscule imperfections, but that wasn’t the case here. Bob liked working fast and the band was good at synching with and abetting his drive. There really was a feeling of magic afoot. That night after the session, I caught a ride uptown in the station wagon. Neuwirth drove and Bob peered quietly out the window. When “Rolling Stone” came on the radio there was an odd moment, a kind of reality shift that nobody acknowledged, but its presence seemed right, it fit. The following day’s session was called at the more reasonable hour of 3 or 4 p.m., with mostly the same crew, except Harvey Brooks who was later added on bass. The energy wasn’t quite as charged as yesterday’s, but it was still a productive day. “From A Buick 6” went down in about three takes, but “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” took a few more, as there were a lot of breakdowns getting into it. It seemed to me the result was a paler version of “Positively 4th Street,” with less interesting lyrics. This take, issued as a single, didn’t have the rough energy of a later version cut with The Hawks. The last tune attempted that night was a long song called “Desolation Row.” By the first verse into it, it was obvious that Bob’s guitar was rather painfully out of tune. Both Neuwirth and I pointed it out, but Albert didn’t want to stop the take. “Let him go,” he said inscrutably. Some 12 minutes later, Bob called for a playback and as it began he scowled. “It’s way outta tune—why didn’t you stop me?” “It’s a long song.” Albert replied, “You’ll get it next time.” After a weekend up the country, where Bob and Kooper spent an afternoon going over the song list
and getting chord charts together for the musicians, the following week’s sessions were back on the energy track. At some point drummer Sam Lay from Butter’s band showed up and ended up taking over the drum kit on “Highway 61 Revisited.” In fact, the cigar-sized toy siren-whistle that Bob wound up sticking in his harp-holder and used to punctuate the tune came out of Lay’s drum case. The real highlight of that session was “Ballad Of A Thin Man” with its almost sinister refrain “something’s happening and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” I remember the leer on the organ player’s face as he dropped in some horror-movie swells here and there. I had to head back to Minnesota, so I missed the session where the album take of “Desolation” was cut—but even without hearing that, I knew this was gonna be a killer album, one that was going to take his fans right up to the edge. Three weeks later there was an August 28 gig at Forest Hills, New York, with a new backup band. Besides Kooper and Brooks, now added were Robbie Robertson on guitar and Levon Helm on drums. They came from The Hawks, a Canadian band that had backed rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins. Both had been part of the excellent backup band on a recent John Hammond album, So Many Roads, and Robbie’s in-concert Hubert Sumlin-inspired scorch-guitar tones were a match for Bloomfield’s manic fills. Bob decided to do the first half of the concert solo, then bring on the band. “Keep playing, no matter how weird it gets,” he told the sidemen. From Variety: “Bob Dylan split 15,000 of his fans down the middle at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium Sunday night… The most influential writer-performer on the pop music scene during the past decade, Dylan has apparently evolved too fast for some of his young followers, who are ready for radical changes in practically everything else…repeating the same scene that occurred during his performance at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan delivered a round of folk-rock songs but had to pound his
material against a hostile wall of anti-claquers, some of whom berated him for betraying the cause of folk music.” A few days later the Highway 61 Revisited album was released, about the same time as a Hollywood Bowl concert with the same personnel. A tour through the south was set to begin in late September, but Kooper and Brooks opted out. In mid-month, Bob was in Toronto checking out and then rehearsing with The Hawks, who wound up backing him for the rest of the tour. On September 24 the tour began in Austin. It’s worth pointing out that in many ways Bob was jumping off a cliff here—he wasn’t merely moving beyond the folk/topical-song audience, he was risking his whole career. There wasn’t guarantee of success in the pop field; it wasn’t a matter of going where the easy money was at all. He was not only chancing falling on his face in the competitive rock scene, but alienating his old fans as well. They wanted more of the same, yet Bob was tired of preaching to the choir; he had his own vision to follow. From Newsweek, for their story on the new “folk-rock” phenomenon: “The conversion of Dylan the performer to folk-rock was instinctive. ‘I had this thing called ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues.’ It just didn’t sound right by myself. I tried the piano, the harpsichord. I tried it as a blues. I tried it on pipe organ, the kazoo. But it fit right in with the band. I haven’t changed a bit. I just got tired of playing the guitar by myself…’” He was given more room to talk in an interview with Joseph Hass for the Chicago Daily News: “…I didn’t go into folk music to make any money, but because it was easy, you could be by yourself. You didn’t need anybody, all you needed was a guitar, you didn’t need anybody else at all… I was playing R&R when I was 13 and 14 and 15, but I had to quit when I was 16 or 17 because I just couldn’t make it that way, the image of the day was Frankie Avalon or Fabian, or this whole athletic supercleaness bit,
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which if you didn’t have that you couldn’t make any friends…about 1958 or ’59 I discovered Odetta, Harry Belafonte, that stuff and I became a folk singer… you couldn’t make it livable back then with R&R, you couldn’t carry around an amplifier and electric guitar and expect to survive, it was just too much of a hangup. It cost money to buy an electric guitar, and then you had to make more money to have enough people to play the music, you need two or three to create some conglomeration of sound…” A few days into the tour, “Positively 4th Street” hit the radio (it rose to #7). The tour got to N.Y., played Carnegie Hall, then knocked off a quick recording session where four tunes were cut, including a raw and driving version of “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” and “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” another good rocker that fell by the wayside. Back on the road for a month-and-a-half worth of dates, including one November 5 at the same Minneapolis auditorium where Elvis had appeared a decade earlier, just around the time “Heartbreak Hotel” first came out. Tickets ranged from $2 to a top of $4.50. Bob put me on the list, but I guess he didn’t have much pull, because the seats were at the back of the hall. Bob was several songs into the solo acoustic set when a guy came in late and sat down beside me. After a couple of tunes he leaned over and said, “Excuse me, do you know who that is?” “Uhhh—who were you expecting to see?” I asked. “Bob Dylan, ‘Like A Rolling Stone,’” he replied. He seemed bemused when I explained that was him and that the band would be out later. That was the point when I realized that the scene was moving to a whole other level. The band set was strong, and Bob was obviously charged about working with the group, though the sound was a bit hit and miss in the big hall. Backstage I met up with Bob, Neuwirth, Robbie and the rest. Dylan said it’d been going well, and that although people seemed to be booing the band set because they’d read about it as a thing to do, in some places people actually really dug it. He
seemed patient about it—there wasn’t a defiant feeling which had been there to a degree before, rather it was more of a man following his convictions and willing to wait till people were ready to hear what he was saying. I went along back to the hotel as they packed up, ready to fly out that night for the next gig in Buffalo, New York. As Bob closed up his suitcase he pointed to the rabbit suit hanging on a doorknob, with his harp rack draped over it— “There’s Bob Dylan,” he smiled. “Right there.” Gigs continued through November: Cleveland, Toronto, Chicago and Washington. At month’s end, drummer Levon Helm got fed up with going out every night, playing kick-ass tunes and getting booed because of all the non-musical baggage that came attached—so he quit and went back to Arkansas. His chair was filled by session man Bobby Gregg. More recording in N.Y. with a couple of tunes attempted; another shot at “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” and another long one, “Freeze Out” (which later became “Visions Of Johanna”). The next day, December 1, the tour hit Seattle, followed by a couple weeks in California. The San Francisco public television station televised a live press conference, which mixed some suits trying to get Bob to explain the reasons for his popularity along with Allen Ginsberg asking “Do you think you’ll ever be hung as a thief?” Bob mentioned that there were a few places where he hadn’t been booed; Texas, Atlanta, Boston, Ohio and Minneapolis. In mid-December the New York Herald-Tribune and The New York Times Sunday magazines simultaneously featured long articles on Dylan. The Tribune piece, though uncredited, was actually written by Dylan. The tour took a month off, resuming shortly after more late January album sessions in N.Y.C., now with Sandy Konikoff (another Hawks alumnus) on drums. A number of tunes that would later turn up on Blonde On Blonde were tried, but only one from this session, “One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)” made the cut. After a week-and-a-half of
east coast dates, Bob went into the Nashville Columbia studios for three days of recording. Five takes resulted, including such gems as the mystical love ballad “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” and “Visions Of Johanna,” with its spectral evocation of a haunted night ride to dawn. Back on the road again, Ottawa, Montreal, Philadelphia. Somewhere near the end of February, “One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)” was released (it made it to #45). After Miami there was a week off. Lay back? You must be kidding; back to Nashville for more sessions, with another three-day shot the second week of March, completing the rest of the Blonde On Blonde tracks, which included several tunes that became radio hits, “Just Like A Woman,” “I Want You” and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” Listening to the album now, it sounds like a contemplative work, the result of long and careful crafting. But when you look at the tour schedule you see that it was wrenched out of stolen moments, done on the run, which makes the accomplishment all the more amazing. The next day the tour continued, winding up in Vancouver at the end of March. Although the calendar shows a couple of weeks off, album mixing and photo sessions were going on. Bob was not just burning the candle at both ends, he was using a blowtorch on the middle, and running on various octanes of ingredients. Then began the European leg of the tour, with yet another drummer, Mickey Jones (he’d previously worked with Trini Lopez and Johnny Rivers). An April 9 date in Honolulu was followed by a hostile press welcome to a week-and-a-half in Australia. The group hit Stockholm on April 29. There would be 23 more concerts over the next six weeks. Joining up was filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, who’d shot Bob’s previous European dates for Don’t Look Back. Among other things, there was an ABC television special in the works, and his film would provide some raw material for that. Around this time “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” was released to mixed
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newspaper reviews—it was called a drug song by some, a load of rubbish by others. The English musical press had been fanning the flames for some time. Their review of “Rolling Stone” the previous August called it “sub-standard Dylan.” It went on; “the monotonous melody line and expressionless intoning…will offend folk purists with the strings [sic] and electric guitars, unlikely to appeal to pop fans because of its length, monotony and surrealist lyrics…but Dylan no doubt enjoys confounding critics and going over to the electronic enemy.” This was followed a month later by an interview with British folkie and staunch traditionalist Ewan MacColl, who muttered, “Dylan is to me the perfect symbol of the anti-artist in our society. He’s against everything—the last resort of someone who really doesn’t want to change the world…He deals in generalizations…also I think his poetry is punk. Derivative and old hat.” This set off a firestorm of letters to the editors, and drew comments from other musicians as well—most of them taking Dylan’s side. But it was obvious that opinions were running volatile. May 5th was in Dublin, the electric set is interrupted by shouts and the review is headlined “The Night Of The Big Letdown.” The following night in Belfast is more of the same. The fact that the band is right on the money is proved with a track from Dublin that turned up on Biograph, “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)”; Garth’s organ swirls in and out of Robbie’s guitar lines as Dylan’s vocal and harp ride the top of the sound wave. May 10th was the first date on British soil; again shouts of “turn it down” and walkouts were gleefully reported. Most of the halls’ small PA systems weren’t adequate to handle a band, so the tour took the innovative step of bringing in its own gear, a practice that wouldn’t become common until several years later. With their amps, soundboards and huge speaker cabinets, the sound was, quite
simply, the loudest that most of the audience had EVER heard. But if Bob was in the people’s faces, they were in his as well. At many venues, when the hall sold out, extra seats were added at the sides and back of the stage. In Like The Night by C.P. Lee, (a recent chronicle of the European tour which focuses on his hometown show in Manchester) photos show faces peering intently from a few feet behind the drum kit—literally surrounding the band. On to Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool. Another track from the live set surfaced later as the B-side of “I Want You”—“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.” (Like the previously mentioned live number, it came from a line feed recorded on a Nagra for the filmmakers.) Again, the track is a great example of the power and precision that the ensemble could muster up in the face of overt hostility. Leicester, then Sheffield—the first of four shows recorded by Columbia, using a three-track machine. Later at the hotel, everybody listens to playbacks and probably gets some welcome confirmation of the fact that, yes, they are playing some great shit, the booing has nothing to do with the quality of what they’re creating. The combination of the hectic schedule and the intense white heat in which Dylan was working were beginning to take their toll. Watching him in the film that was later shown as Eat The Document is scary, he has a wired-to-the-bone stoned fragility that makes it look like he might vanish in a burst of flame at any second. He’s at a peak of young-lion power and beauty, but you can see the ghost of electricity in the bones of his face for sure—he looks like a man with exposed nerve endings. Paul Williams in Performing Artist: The Music Of Bob Dylan 1960-73 describes the psychic scene: “The concerts were incandescent because the singer was living for art, was literally burning himself out, not to please the audience and certainly not out of obligation, but for the sheer joy of doing it, traveling with intrepid companions out into unknown aesthetic
realms, shining lights into unexplored darkness.” May 17, Manchester. This show is also recorded by Columbia, and is the actual source for the recordings in this set, as well as the numerous bootlegs from “The Royal Albert Hall.” The audience is pin-drop respectful and responsive during the acoustic portion, they’ve heard over half of these tunes before and they’re on ground that’s comfortable here. Then comes the band set and all hell breaks loose again. On to Glasgow (filmed from on-stage by Pennebaker), Edinburgh and Newcastle. At both Scottish gigs Dylan is subjected to slow hand-claps and walkouts. C.P. Lee quotes a member of the Scottish Communist party as saying that this was actually the result of heated party meetings, where the subject was how to respond to Dylan as a traitor to the proletariat cause. (A real Communist plot!?!) Dylan has one last press conference in Paris, the day before his show at the Odeon on his 25th birthday. There are photos of him with a marionette on his knee—strings would help them both. Back to London for the final two shows at Royal Albert Hall. By now it looks like Dylan is dangerously close to crashing out altogether. Still, he manages to impress a crowd of fans and rock royalty over two nights, again with Columbia recording. It’s later said that the first night’s electric set was distorted on the tapes, which is why they weren’t issued, and that the second night was distorted in other ways. (Though some great tapes have emerged from the solo set, check out “Visions Of Johanna” from the 26th on Biograph.) Free at last, Bob heads to Spain for a brief holiday before returning to the U.S. June and July are busy weeks in Woodstock, editing film for the ABC TV special. Pennebaker had come up with a fairly straightforward tour/performance version called Something Is Happening, but Bob and cameraman Howard Alk decide to re-edit, using outtakes. The result becomes the rarely seen Eat
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The Document, which was, in short, an ahead-of-itstime prototype for the way MTV-style rock videos were later made. There are a lot of jump cuts, barely glimpsed faces, songs cut off in the middle and fans interviewed saying “he needs shooting”— it’s no wonder it was rejected by the network. At the end of July, the wheel on Bob’s Triumph motorcycle locks up and he’s thrown, breaking his neck. He goes into total seclusion and all projects, including Tarantula, a book of free-form fragments, are shelved. He’s not heard from again musically until November of 1967. When he returns, he’s had a haircut, grown a beard, and is singing spare mystical songs, with an acoustic guitar. By then 1966 was not only just the past, it was another life. And so the myth begins… When the first bootlegs came out they were misidentified. Why? Well, for one thing, it makes a better story—the last-ever concert of a kick-ass tour before the artist crashed, burned and turned his back on his previous existence. There may also have been some incorrectly marked tape boxes used, with mismatching dates and locations. All this has been the subject of endless speculation and arguments in fanzines and on the Internet. But at bottom, what really matters is that one night in 1966, a poet stood on a stage with a band he chose to help him propel his vision and made incredibly powerful music which was utterly unique. He was true to his vision and he went right to the edge for it. To this day, this concert stands as one of the greatest events in rock music. —Tony Glover St. Paul, May 1998
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Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right The Times They Are A-Changin’ It Ain’t Me, Babe Maggie’s Farm
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue Mr. Tambourine Man Subterranean Homesick Blues Like A Rolling Stone Positively 4th Street Just Like A Woman
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 All Along The Watchtower The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo) I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight Lay, Lady, Lay If Not For You
I Shall Be Released You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door Forever Young Tangled Up In Blue Shelter From The Storm Hurricane
Gotta Serve Somebody Jokerman Silvio Everything Is Broken Not Dark Yet Things Have Changed
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The Essential Bob Dylan
Produced by Gordon Carroll, Don DeVito, Jerry Wexler, Barry Beckett, Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Daniel Lanois, Tom Wilson, Bob Johnston, John Hammond, and Leon Russell
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum Mississippi Summer Days Bye And Bye Lonesome Day Blues Floater (Too Much To Ask)
High Water (For Charley Patton) Moonlight Honest With Me Po’ Boy Cry A While Sugar Baby
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BOB DYLAN
“Love And Theft” “Love And Theft” Produced by Jack Frost September 11, 2001
Musicians: Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, piano; Larry Campbell – guitar, violin, banjo, mandolin; Charlie Sexton – guitar; Tony Garnier – bass; David Kemper – drums; Augie Meyers – vox organ, B3, accordion; Clay Meyers - bongos on “Tweedle Dee” and “Honest With Me.”
“Love And Theft,” Dylan’s next studio album after Time Out of Mind, was released on September 11, 2001. “Love and Theft” dispenses with the unified tone of Time Out Of Mind, displaying a richer mix of materials and even better vocals. This is, in fact, one of Dylan’s very best vocal performances ever – roaring, sly, snarling, whimsical, totally assured – a tour de force, despite the obvious ravages of the years on his voice. The album has an ingenious arrangement in which a couple of very distinct types of material play off against one another; six of the twelve tunes are blues-based material of one sort or another, from the rockabilly extravaganza “Summer Days” to the scary, apocalyptic “High Water (For Charley Patton)” to the blazing, swaggering “Cry A While,” with its Charley Patton-derived guitar riff. Another five of them are easygoing, light, romantic songs with an occasionally wistful aspect, like “Po’ Boy,” “Bye And Bye” and the gorgeous “Moonlight.” “Mississippi” is one of Dylan’s most sustained lyrics in years, and an excellent performance. The final song on the disc, “Sugar Baby,” is unlike any of the others, a heartbreaking song of loss, of letting go, even of defeat – a much older, wiser, and sadder version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” All in all, “Love And Theft” has to be counted among the very top Dylan albums. To see it follow Time Out Of Mind, 35 years after Blonde On Blonde and 25 years after Blood On The Tracks, leaves one shaking one’s head in amazement, and gratitude.
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Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You It Ain’t Me, Babe A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll Romance In Durango Isis Mr. Tambourine Man
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Simple Twist Of Fate Blowin’ In The Wind Mama, You Been On My Mind I Shall Be Released It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue Love Minus Zero/No Limit Tangled Up In Blue The Water Is Wide
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It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry Oh, Sister Hurricane One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below) Sara Just Like A Woman Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
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BOB DYLAN LIVE 1975
The Rolling Thunder Revue was one of Dylan’s most inspired ideas: take a group of congenial musicians, capable of doing short individual sets as well as playing together, and head out into America playing at small venues, scattering excitement, surprise and wonder in all directions. At various times the tour included Dylan’s old singing partner Joan Baez, his early role model and fellow Guthrie acolyte Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Canadian folk and pop star Joni Mitchell, painter and aide de camp Bob Neuwirth, playwright Sam Shepard, poet Allen Ginsberg, and even, for a short stretch, his mother, Beatrice Zimmerman, and his wife Sara. The Tour was part rock and roll extravaganza, part Medicine Show and traveling carnival troupe. It was also a moveable film-in-progress; much of Dylan’s Renaldo And Clara was filmed during the tour, and the film’s musical segments come from those shows. The tracks on Bootleg Vol. 5 capture the tone and feeling perfectly. Many of his older tunes got new treatments to invigorating effect, as you can hear on “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “It Ain’t Me Babe” and many others. Dylan joined voices with Joan Baez for several duets, including the rarely-heard “Mama You Been On My Mind.” A fine souvenir of an exhilarating and optimistic time.
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THE ROLLING THUNDER REVUE
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5 Bob Dylan Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue
Produced by Jeff Rosen and Steve Berkowitz November 26, 2002
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
BOOTLEG SERIES VOLUME 5 original liner notes
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Like countless others in the Sixties, my life was changed by Bob Dylan. Now I’d like to be able to say that I heard “Blowin’ in the Wind” and then rushed off to Mississippi to register voters for SNCC or that after listening to “The Times They Are A Changin’,” I marched on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King but that wasn’t the case. I was a little late coming to the Dylan party. In fact, I got turned on to Dylan because I was a charter member of the Rolling Stones Fan Club. That was about the extent of my anti-social activity. Growing up in semi-suburban Queens, New York, I was a member of the Kiwanis Club at Bayside High and had an after-school job reconciling bank statements for a neighborhood pizzeria. Then came that fateful day in June of 1965. I went into a record store on Bell Boulevard and looked at that week’s single charts. There, at number 43, was a song called “Like a Rolling Stone” by someone named B. Dylan. I was irate. Convinced that this Dylan guy was ripping off Mick and the boys name to get famous, I bought his record. And it changed my life. From the opening cacophony of ethereal organ, honky-tonk piano and blistering guitar, I was hooked. Then that voice—one part sneer, one part salve—kicked in and like in some surreal, urban fairy tale (“Once upon a time…”), I was transported to a world populated by bums and diplomats, Napoleon in rags and Siamese cats, Miss Lonely and the Mystery Tramp. How did it feel? Like I was home. When the album was released, I borrowed my parents’ car and drove into Flushing to a store named Gertz where I picked up Highway 61 Revisited, on sale for $1.88 in mono. It was a revelation. The King of the Philistines put the pied pipers in prison. Dump trucks unloaded heads. God talked to Abraham.
Angels left looking just like ghosts. Einstein disguised himself as Robin Hood and Romeo met Cinderella out on Desolation Row. I immediately knew something was happening and I knew that it wasn’t the Kiwanis Club. Or the Rolling Stones. Within a month, I had the whole Dylan canon. And a few weeks after that I spotted a small ad in the paper for a Dylan concert in White Plains. I immediately wrote for tickets and convinced my parents to drive me to Westchester. They took in a movie while my friend and I went to the show. The place was jammed and after about an hour wait, Dylan finally strode onstage. He did a stunning solo set, mixing up the classic folk ballads with some middle-period love-hate songs and some new, amazingly intense songs like “Freeze-Out” (later to be released as “Visions of Johanna”) and “Desolation Row.” A quick bow and he was off. After the intermission, the lights dimmed and five strangers wandered onstage. The drummer tested the high-hats, the guitar players plugged into amplifiers and then Dylan strode back onstage. I noticed he was wearing an olive box-checkered suit. A quick countdown and then wham—the most incredible rock music I’d ever heard permeated the hall. Like a dream, it was over all too fast. Dylan took a regal half-bow, waved to someone in the audience and ambled off. To the best of my recollection of that February night in White Plains, there were no boos, no calls of “Judas!” from the folk-purist segment of Dylan’s audience. (For a great evocation of the drama of these ’65-’66 shows see Tony Glover’s liner notes to the Bob Dylan—Live 1966 two-CD set.) Just mindblowing music that seemed as spontaneous as it was divine.
On the ride home that music was still resounding in my head. That cinched it. My cultural touchstone was no longer Andy Bathgate of the New York Rangers. It was now B. Dylan. Each chance I got, I started driving to the city and hanging out in Greenwich Village. I bought clothes at the Paul Sergeant store mentioned on the liner notes to Highway 61. I watched the chess players and musicians in Washington Square Park. I saw the Fugs at the Players Theatre on MacDougal Street singing their odes to pot, pussy and perversity. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to major in accounting anymore. No, thanks to Dylan, I was exploring Rimbaud and going to Students for a Democratic Society meetings and loitering at the Peace Eye Bookstore in the East Village, hoping to catch a glimpse of Allen Ginsberg. And waiting for the next musical pronouncement from the Minnesota bard himself. Blonde on Blonde just cemented the relationship. Haunting yet perfectly unobtrusive music servicing brilliant, enigmatic songs. Even more enigmatic photos on the inner sleeve. A whole side of one album given to a marvelous ode to a mysterious muse— the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. With a new arsenal of material, I couldn’t wait to see Dylan play those songs. Little did I know I’d have to wait eight years. I still recall the item in the New York Post. The rock star Bob Dylan had been seriously injured in a motorcycle accident. His tour was canceled. He was holed up in a place in upstate New York called Woodstock. Then the rumors spread. He had been horribly disfigured. No, he was paralyzed. Come on, he didn’t even have a motorcycle accident, he had merely lost his mind. Wait, that couldn’t be true—
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he was seen in a local café drinking coffee and doing The New York Times crossword puzzle. His next album, John Wesley Harding only fueled the rumors. The majesty of the musical genre that Dylan invented (which was labeled “folk-rock”) had given way to a trimmed-down acoustic sound played by some of Nashville’s best session men. And those murky, late night freeze-out songs that seemed to come right out of urban lofts like Andy Warhol’s Factory had been replaced by taut, woodsy, almost biblical parable-songs. Now it was the rock’n rollers who felt betrayed. A year and a half later almost everyone felt betrayed. I was in my senior year of college, in the middle of a three-month, twenty-four hour occupation of the Social Sciences building at Queens College, when Nashville Skyline was released in April of 1969. We were protesting the war, fighting racism, embracing Significant Issues, and Dylan, whether he liked it or not, was our leader (even though he had warned “don’t follow leaders...”). So what was this Nashville Skyline, these moonJune-spoon country songs? And what was with that high-pitched voice? The troops on the front line were mystified and disgruntled. But I secretly loved the album. I didn’t know from country music but these songs certainly spoke to me. There was the poignancy of “I Threw It All Away,” the seductiveness of “Lay, Lady, Lay,” the surrealism of “Country Pie.” It was clear that the one thing that you couldn’t have if you were interested in the work of Mr. Dylan was expectations about that work. So with that in mind, I bought and cherished his next collection of outtakes and covers called, wryly enough, Self-Portrait. In 1970, I moved to the Midwest to organize welfare mothers and go to graduate school and it was a New Morning for both Dylan and me. But then the well seemed to run a little dry. For years we had to make do with a greatest hits collection (volume 2, no less!) and a
soundtrack album that was mostly instrumental. I guess with all those tired horses in the sun, how was he supposed to get any riding/writing done? Dylan brought it all back home (or back on the road, to be more precise) in 1974. With the release of Planet Waves, an album that seemed to be an attempt to reconcile artistic vision with the demands of domesticity, Dylan took to the road with the Band (his 1966 back-up band who had gone on to fame with their own finely-crafted albums) in January of 1974. By then I had graduated with a master’s degree in deviance from the University of Wisconsin and I was writing about rock music for Rolling Stone magazine. I saw the opening night show in Chicago in the cavernous Chicago Stadium (home of the Chicago Black Hawks). Even though the stage had been decorated with carpets, lamps and even a couch to give a sense of intimacy and warmth to this cold arena, I could sense that Dylan felt a little stilted. Maybe it was the rust of eight years off. Maybe it was the expectations of the crowd that made the Dylan/Band reunion a major Media Event in itself. In the end, the experience wasn’t totally pleasant for either the Band or Dylan. “Tour ’74 was hard work, just the intensity of the music was so high that it was really straining,” Robbie Robertson remembered. “Whenever Bob sings with the Band it’s like Thunder and Mountains, you know, screaming at the gods in the sky and everything is so high-pitched, such intensity and energy. We can certainly do that but we can do a bunch of other things too, and we didn’t get to that. I think that his anticipation and nervousness on that tour didn’t allow for any laid-back stuff…we didn’t do any of that on Tour ’74.” My sense at the time was that Dylan was ambivalent about that tour. When I told him that two years later, he seemed to agree. “Yeah, I got kind of held up on that tour, you know, I mean I wasn’t
really in control of the situation. Nobody was in control. We were just shuffled around from airport to limo to hotel lobby to hockey rinks. I felt like Willis Reed. And in order for me to do what ever it is that I do, I have to have control and I didn’t have too much control on that specific tour.” But with the album and the tour, it was clear that Dylan was once again out on the front lines, doing what he does best—telling the tribe the news of the hour. The next dispatch was the breathtakingly heart-breaking Blood On The Tracks. I got a chance to hear an early version of that album and I did a preview piece for Rolling Stone (in fact, that album helped me out of a jam when I got assigned by Rolling Stone to cover the George Harrison tour. I came on when they reached the East Coast; right after Stone editor Ben Fong Torres’ piece lambasting the tour was printed. After that, Harrison wanted nothing to do with anyone from Rolling Stone but, at promoter Bill Graham’s urging, he reluctantly agreed to sit down and hear my plea for an interview for my article. We met in a dressing room in the bowels of Madison Square Garden the day of the show. To break the ice, I asked Harrison if he had heard Dylan’s still unreleased album. “Yeah, isn’t it great?” George enthused. And after we both broke into “Tangled Up in Blue,” trading lines, Harrison warmed up and gave me an interview). Blood On The Tracks was released in January of 1975. By that summer, Dylan started spending a lot of time back in New York, hitting some of the same spots that he had thirteen years earlier when he first burst onto the music scene. One of the places that Dylan frequented was The Other End, the latest incarnation of The Bitter End, a popular music and comedy venue in the early Sixties. At the Other End one night, Dylan ran into Jacques Levy, an offBroadway director and ex-clinical psychologist who had written lyrics for ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn. It seems that Dylan had been working on some new
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material and the two went around the corner to Levy’s loft. Dylan sat down on the piano and started into a slow dirge. Next thing they knew, they were trading lyrics and they worked all through the night. The song became “Isis,” a picaresque narrative about grave robbing and lost love. Late that night, Levy typed up the then current version of the lyrics and he and Dylan went back to the Other End, where Bob proceeded to read them to the lucky few who were sitting around the bar. The collaboration went so well that the two of them went out to the Hamptons for three weeks and continued to knock out songs. “Romance in Durango,” a story about a gunslinger and his love on the run, “Joey,” the true story of Crazy Joe Gallo, the iconoclastic mobster that was hit in Umberto’s Clam Bar, and “Mozambique,” an ironic, saccharined picture-postcard for a country that was verging on revolution. “One of the things about [those songs] that’s so wonderful is that they give [Dylan] a chance to do some acting,” Levy told me. “Bob was really open, ready to come out, ready to express how he felt about things.” Working feverishly, with only a few breaks to go shoot some eight ball, an album’s worth of material coalesced. Including a song Bob wrote by himself, an autobiographical, bittersweet lament to his wife, “Sara.” The song was incredibly powerful— listening to it was as intimate as viewing snapshots from a family album—except this album belonged to one of the most famous people on the planet. By the end of July, they were back in the city and Dylan headed straight for the studio. The first session was on Monday, July 28th and Dylan had assembled a cast of musicians that was Felliniesque in its scope. Crammed into Columbia’s studio were guitar hero Eric Clapton, his backup vocalist Yvonne Elliman, an eight-member English R&B funk band named Kokomo, singer Emmylou Harris, and studio pros Hugh McCracken and Vinnie
Bell. Plus Village bassist Rob Stoner, who was then backing long-time Dylan pal Bobby Neuwirth, folkie Eric Frandsen, an old friend of Bob’s, and Sugar Blue, whose regular gig was blowing harp out on Eighth Street for spare change. Then there was Scarlet Rivera. Dylan had been riding around the city with an aspiring singer named Sheena when he saw a dramatic-looking woman with waist-length jet-black hair carrying a violin. They stopped the car, asked her if she could play that violin and next thing she knew she was in the middle of this madness. “That was amazing,” Clapton later told a Rolling Stone interviewer. “[Bob] was trying to find a situation where he could make music with new people. He was just driving around, picking musicians up and bringing them back to the sessions. It ended up with something like twentyfour musicians in the studio, all playing these incredibly incongruous instruments. Accordion, violin—and it didn’t really work. He was after a really large sound but the songs were so personal that he wasn’t comfortable with all the people around… I had to get in the fresh air ‘cause it was just madness in there.” After two nights of this, Dylan and his producer Don DeVito met with Rob Stoner who, by virtue of his ability to watch Dylan’s fingers and communicate the changes to the rest of the musicians, had become the de facto bandleader. They decided to go with a smaller group. Since Kokomo was departing, a drummer was needed. Urgent calls were put out to super session men Jim Gordon and Kenny Buttrey, to no avail. Then Stoner suggested his drummer, Howie Wyeth. On Wednesday night, Wyeth, Stoner, Emmylou, Scarlet and Sheena joined Dylan and after one take of “Isis,” it was evident that magic was afoot. “One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below),” “Joey,” “Mozambique,” “Hurricane,” “Oh, Sister,” “Black Diamond Bay”– if they completed a song, it was a
take. They worked feverishly through the night, recording until 6 a.m. and listening to playbacks until 8 a.m. when it was time to move the cars lest they get towed away. On the way back down to the Village, to drop off the musicians, Dylan was ecstatic. “He felt that he had succeeded, from the playbacks, from the vibrations,” Sheena remembered. “And he immediately started talking about a tour.” It was speculated that one impetus for the tour was a song that Dylan and Levy wrote about the imprisoned boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Carter was a fierce middleweight who seemed destined to be the champ. He was also a proud black man who was very outspoken about racial and social issues; something that boxers just didn’t do in the era when Muhammad Ali was still Cassius Clay. So the suspicion that Carter was a marked man by the authorities was reinforced when he and his companion John Artis were arrested in June of 1966 for the murder of three whites in a tavern shoot-up. Two of the wounded victims described the killer as a lightskinned black, about six feet tall, with a pencil-thin moustache. Carter was 5’ 8,” 155 pounds, and he was hardly light-skinned. No matter, he was convicted and sent to Rahway State Prison where he always maintained his innocence and even penned a book called The Sixteenth Round. A defense committee was formed and a copy of the book was sent to many celebrities, Dylan included. After reading the book, Dylan visited Rubin in jail and was convinced that “this man’s philosophy and my philosophy were running on the same road.” So it was natural for Dylan and Levy to work up a song about Rubin’s plight called “Hurricane.” In fact, Dylan felt so passionate about this cause that he paid a visit to Walter Yetnikoff, the president of Columbia Records, urging him to get the song out as soon as possible. Carter’s plight notwithstanding, the reality is that Dylan had decided to put together a unique form of a musical revue long before any of the
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songs for the Desire album were even written. Robbie Robertson remembered that even before the sturm und drang of Tour ’74, Dylan had been talking about traveling by train and having a “gypsy caravan situation happening where it was loose and different people could get up and do different things at different times and nothing would be out of place.” But the idea for a revue crystallized in Dylan’s mind in the spring of 1975. “I was in Corsica,” Bob later told me. “I was just sitting in a field, overlooking some vineyards. The sky was pink, the sun was going down and the moon was sapphire. I recall getting a ride into town with a man with a donkey cart and I was sitting on this donkey cart, bouncing around on the road there, and that’s when it flashed on me that I was gonna go back to America and get serious and do what it is that I do because by that time people didn’t know what it was that I did. All kinds of people, most people don’t know what I do, only the people that see our show know what it is that I do, the rest of the people just have to imagine it.” Perhaps as a reaction to the impersonality of that limited Tour ’74, Dylan decided to put together an old-timey medicine show, a musical extension of the commedia dell’arte, the Italian street theatre troupes. Instead of traveling by train, as he had previously envisioned, they would pile into buses and campers and criss-cross the Northeast. It was guerilla theatre at its best. A small hall would be rented, under an assumed name. A week before the gig, local college campuses would be invaded by advance men who circulated handbills for the show, so that the tickets sold largely by word-of-mouth. The night before the show, the buses would hit town, then immediately after the show, they’d take off for the next venue. Now all Dylan had to do was cast the characters. For that, he dug back into his past. Joan Baez was a logical choice. When Dylan first began performing, the already established folk star often
brought him onto her stage. Seeing them reunite and perform old Dylan classics like “Blowin’ In The Wind” or “Mama You Been On My Mind” would be a folkies dream. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott was another natural. A contemporary of the great Woody Guthrie, one of Dylan’s musical forefathers, Elliot was one of Bob’s early champions. Bobby Neuwirth, Dylan’s long time confidant and a musician in his own right, was enlisted to put together the back-up band. He made some very eclectic choices. Of course, it included the band that Bob used to record Desire, which meant Stoner on bass, Wyeth on drums and Scarlet on the violin. To supplement them, Neuwirth hired a lanky, young Texas songwriter/guitarist named T-Bone Burnett, an L.A. songwriter named Steve Soles, Mick Ronson, the guitar virtuoso who was most famous for playing with David Bowie, and David Mansfield, a multi-instrumentalist who had a band called Quacky Duck. Luther Rix provided percussion. But chance played a part in the makeup of the revue too. One night at the Other End, Dylan shared a piano for a few hours with the actress/musician Ronee Blakely. By the end of the night, she was on the bus. Another night, the ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn and I stumbled into the Other End after a late night meal in Chinatown. We bumped into Bob and next thing we knew, McGuinn was part of the band and I was invited by Dylan to cover the tour, which I did for Rolling Stone. Now the tour needed a name. And even the genesis of the name was shrouded in mystery. There were reports that Dylan first wanted to call it the Montezuma Revue. But by late October when the tour was about to depart from New York, the name had morphed into the Rolling Thunder Revue. There was a prevailing theory that the tour was named after an Indian medicine man/shaman named Rolling Thunder, who had been the subject of an eponymous book. Others maintained that the tour was named after that ignoble episode at the end of the Vietnam
War when Nixon decided to saturate-bomb Cambodia. That bombing mission was code-named Rolling Thunder. And when Neuwirth outfitted the back-up band with T-shirts that read “Guam,” that speculation increased since Guam was the U.S. base that those flights originated from. But according to Dylan, there was a simpler explanation for Rolling Thunder. “I was just sitting outside my house one day thinking about a name for this tour, when all of a sudden, I looked into the sky and I heard a boom! Then, boom, boom, boom, boom, rolling from west to east. So I figured that should be the name.” (If Bob was sitting at home at Malibu at the time, McGuinn was convinced that the noise was from jets taking off from the nearby Vanderburg Air Force base and that the tour should have actually been named the Sonic Boom Jet Revue.) Dylan was later pleased to learn that in American Indian lore the phrase “Rolling Thunder” means “speaking truth.” When the buses (and two campers, one for Dylan and one for tour promoter Barry Imhoff) finally rolled out of New York, there were seventy people on board, including the famous beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his long-time lover Peter Orlovsky. Fifteen of those seventy people were part of a film crew. Besides shooting footage of the concerts, Dylan had decided to make a full-length film along the way. On off-days, the Rolling Thunder musicians were to be cast as actors in a mythocumentary that would combine scripted pieces, documentary footage and improvised scenes. (The resultant four-hour movie Renaldo and Clara was savaged by the critics but greatly influenced a whole generation of music video directors.) The first stop on the tour was the Sea Crest Motel in North Falmouth, Massachusetts. They rehearsed there for a few days and made a surprise visit to a Mah Jongg convention where Dylan and Baez sang and Ginsberg recited some poetry to the
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blue-haired Jewish mommas in the audience. On October 30, the tour officially opened, appropriately enough in Plymouth. At 8:20, the band took the stage at the quaint 1800-seat Plymouth Memorial Auditorium and Neuwirth broke into an easygoing version of “Good Love Is Hard To Find.” After songs from T-Bone, Stoner, Soles, Ronson and Ronee Blakely came on for a solo spot. Then Neuwirth started a song about Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and sure enough, Jack rambled onstage. He did four numbers, accompanied by an unintroduced Roger McGuinn on banjo. Jack left only to be followed by a short, wiry figure emerging from the backstage darkness. It was Dylan, clad in jeans, a vest, a black leather jacket and wearing a gray hat, strumming on an acoustic guitar. “Here’s another old friend,” Neuwirth slyly said and the audience cheered as Dylan and Neuwirth dueted on “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” A smoking, almost bossa nova version of “It Ain’t Me Babe” was next and by the song’s end, almost all of the 1800 spectators were on their feet, cheering. Neuwirth gestured towards his old friend. “Bob Dylan!” he shouted. Then the tempo picked up with a torrid version of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” followed by “Romance In Durango” which featured Scarlet’s gypsy violin. Then Dylan slipped off his guitar, sipped some coffee and grabbed the mike as the band ripped into “Isis.” Levy was right, these new narrative songs gave Dylan the chance to emote and he gestured with one hand, then both, feet tapping constantly, eyes burning intensively as he related the star-crossed story of Isis. The song ended with a signature Dylan harmonica flourish, then a quick wave and the curtain slowly tumbled down, ending the first half of the show. After a while, the lights flicked and with the curtain still down, a familiar sound rang out through the hall. Two iconographic voices, one low and guttural, the other vibrant and soaring. The curtain
slowly lifted to reveal an amazing sight—Dylan and Baez, together again, sharing a mike, singing “The Times They Are A Changin.’” Then they went into a Johnny Ace song, “Never Let Me Go,” followed by an intense, compelling version of “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll.” After doing “I Shall Be Released” Dylan affectionately patted Baez on the hair and yielded the stage to her. Baez then did a five-song set and brought on Roger McGuinn who led the band in a blistering version of “Chestnut Mare.” Then Baez came back and finished her set with “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” As soon as Baez departed, before the audience could even catch its collective breath, Dylan ambled onstage alone and soloed on “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Then he was joined by a pared-down ensemble of Stoner, Wyeth and Scarlet and they performed the haunting “Oh, Sister.” A screen was lowered and Rubin Carter’s face appeared above the performers, as they ripped through “Hurricane.” “One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)” was next, followed by a moving “Sara.” The rest of the band then filtered on for a tender version of “Just Like A Woman.” Then it was hootenanny time as Neuwirth, Ramblin’ Jack, Baez, and Dylan each took a verse of “This Land Is Your Land.” It wasn’t until 11:30, three hours after showtime, that Dylan led the assemblage offstage. But the audience wouldn’t let up—the standing ovation lasted for a full eight minutes. The Revue had exhausted all their songs so the crowd reluctantly filtered out, content to know that they were the first to see this new world of music—the first to see Plymouth Rock. Except for varying songs here and there, that was the essential structure of a Rolling Thunder show. Except the Revue just got tighter and tighter as they wended their way around New England. Another night in Plymouth then on to North Dartmouth, playing the gym at Southern Massachusetts University. Lowell was next, another college
gym, but Dylan and Ginsberg found time to pay a visit to Jack Kerouac’s grave where the film crew caught them improvising a blues song after Ginsberg read a selection from Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues. Lowell was also the first place that Dylan donned whiteface make-up, igniting a flurry of press reports that speculated on the significance of it. Some pundits claimed it was an attempt to distance himself from the audience. Ronee Blakely was convinced that it was a strategy to force people to look at the two most expressive areas of his face, his eyes and his mouth since the rest of his face was blanked out by the clown-white makeup. When I asked him why he wore the make-up, Dylan seemed perturbed at the question. “I don’t know… there’s always people that don’t understand, always people that try to make more out of it than what it is. One reason I put it on is so you can see my face from far away.” Then again, when Bruce Springsteen turned up in New Haven and went backstage after the show, his girlfriend also asked Dylan why he wore the make-up. “I saw it once in a movie.” From Lowell the Revue moved to Rhode Island where the tour was joined by Rolling Thunder himself, in full Cherokee regalia, along with his wife Spotted Fawn and another Native American brave. The next morning, Rolling Thunder and his entourage led the musicians in a moving sunrise ceremony on a beach in Newport. Then it was onto the buses and forward to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, stopping briefly for a private tour of the Breakers, the Vanderbilt mansion. The next shows were at the Springfield Coliseum and by now the band was sizzling. Jacques Levy had blocked out the shows so that local artists could get up and do their thing as the tour progressed. So in Springfield, Arlo Guthrie showed up and did a few numbers. In New Haven, Joni Mitchell did likewise and enjoyed it so much that she wound up on the rest of the tour. In
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Toronto, Gordon Lightfoot brought the house down when he sat in. By the time Rolling Thunder got to the metropolitan Boston area, they had been on the road for three weeks and the music was incendiary. Most of the tracks on these discs were culled from those venues. Except for a few of the Dylan-Baez duets that opened the second half of the shows, all of these tracks collected here are from Bob’s segments of the shows. The first stop in the Boston area was in Worcester, a working-class town adjacent to Boston. The Memorial Auditorium is a gorgeous old hall filled with ornate woodcarvings and a beautiful marble lobby. “Hurricane,” taken from that concert, includes a plea from Dylan for anyone who was politically connected to help get Rubin out of jail and “back onto the streets.” I’m sure the vibrations from this torrid performance worked their way all the way down to Trenton State penitentiary where Rubin was then confined. The next night the tour visited Cambridge, playing the tiny Harvard Square Theatre. The 1850 seats had long been sold-out and those lucky few were treated to a night to remember. Six tracks from this compilation were recorded there including a reworked “Simple Twist Of Fate” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” which had been added to the second set and featured verses that Dylan improvised from town to town. “Thanks for coming,” a hoarse Dylan announced that night after the song. “We’ll be in the area a few days, maybe we’ll see you tomorrow night.” The next day was a doubleheader, two shows at the classic Boston Music Hall, the largest (at 4200 seats) theatre in New England, a venue that even once hosted the Bolshoi Ballet. Three songs from that afternoon matinee are included here, an evocative solo acoustic version of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a heartfelt “Sara” (witnessed live by Sara Dylan who by then had hooked up with the tour), and
the Baez duet on “I Shall Be Released.” There was hardly time to scarf down some dinner before the second show began. But the momentum continued. The band burned through “an autobiographical song for ya,” 1965’s “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry.” The core songs from Desire come from this show—red-hot versions of “Isis,” “Oh, Sister,” and “One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below).” “Tangled Up In Blue” gets a slight lyric reworking and a tender, almost wistful reading. But the highlight of that night (and for me, of this entire collection) was the compelling, mesmerizing, steamrolling version of “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll.” After Boston there were stops at Brandeis University and Hartford, Connecticut where Rick Danko of the Band played and Texas singer/ songwriter Kinky Friedman visited (Kinky would go on to join the tour on its second Southern leg.) Then it was on to Maine where Dylan’s mother joined the tour (she would later go onstage and clap along during the finale in Toronto). From Maine it was a short hop over the border to Quebec City, from there a quick flight to Toronto, and then, finally, the train ride to Montreal, where another live recording was made. By now the tour (and film) were costing so much that the Revue was being booked into hockey rinks— the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto and the Forum in Montreal. Maybe it was the taping, maybe it was the presence of fellow poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen (Dylan dispatched me to pick up Leonard in his Montreal home to make sure he’d witness the concert), but the Montreal show was so smoking that the appreciative audience gave the Revue a screaming, rollicking, standing ovation complete with a shower of huge rolls of toilet paper that were flung down from the rafters. Two of Bob’s acoustic numbers come from this show, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” While
those were songs that Dylan frequently played, the Montreal audience was treated to a rare performance of “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” off the Nashville Skyline album. No longer a C&W ditty, Dylan had completely reworked the lyrics and the band, led by some searing guitar fills from Ronson and some great pedal steel work from Mansfield, drove the message home with a fevered urgency. Even a cursory listen to these tracks points to the stark contrast between these Rolling Thunder dates and the concerts from 1966. The catcalls and the Judas cries are replaced by fans screaming “We love you, Bobby” and “Dylan for President!” And the love was reciprocated as a relaxed Dylan actually bantered with the audience. When one spectator at the second Boston show yelled out “Just Like A Woman,” Dylan looked shocked. “Just Like A Woman? What’s just like a woman? WHAT’s just like a woman? Nothing like a woman!” Later that same show, someone else made the same request and he complied. At the same Boston show someone else yelled, “Do a protest song!” “OK, here’s one for ya,” Dylan smiled and went into “Oh, Sister.” Throughout the tour, Dylan regularly dedicated songs to people as diverse as David Crosby, Sam Peckinpah, Albert Grossman, Herman Melville, Gertrude Stein, his mother, your mother, D.H. Lawrence, and Arthur Rimbaud (in the interests of full disclosure, he even dedicated a song to this reporter in Waterbury, Connecticut). What’s also evident from even a first listening is how magnificent Dylan’s performances were on this tour. The Desire album was released on January 5 of 1976, well after the first leg of Rolling Thunder had disbanded. By then, the album versions of songs like “Isis,” “Romance In Durango,” “Oh, Sister,” and “One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)” had been rendered almost superfluous by the amazing live readings of those songs on the tour. Just listen to “Isis” in its two incarnations and you’ll see the
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change—it’s like the difference between watching a movie on a many-times rented video versus watching it on a DVD on a high-definition TV. For many, seeing Dylan this powerful and this animated was a revelation. Even during the rehearsals for the show everyone knew something special was about to transpire. “I’ve never heard Dylan sing so powerful before,” Allen Ginsberg pulled me aside and confessed during one rehearsal. “He sounds like an emperor of sound.” As the band rolled through a rollicking version of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Ginsberg sung along, stamping his foot, slapping his thighs. “It’s more like he’s actually pronouncing the words,” the poet shouted to me. “The electric-made rhythm is exact to actual American speech with no romantic distortion. It syncopates even more.” And as Dylan boogied across the stage, bouncing on one foot, Ginsberg marveled, “This song has become a dance of joy!” By opening night, Allen was ecstatic. “It’s the vision of the ‘60’s becoming real,” he told me at intermission. “Dylan’s diction is real clear. He’s showing an elastic, rhythmic precision, singing much more like he speaks.” That was certainly true on the Desire songs that were specially written as narratives and gave Dylan a chance to work out his acting chops. But it’s equally true for the stunning solo performances he did on the tour. Just listen to “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” from the Montreal show or “Tangled Up In Blue” from Boston. This is Dylan engaged, openhearted, playful, a performer at the top of his game. Playfulness was certainly the note struck on the Dylan-Baez collaborations contained herein. Baez told me that trying to follow Dylan’s lead was almost impossible; he was constantly changing songs, verses, phrasings. For the first few nights, she relied on reading his lips and keeping her guitar tuned so low that if Dylan changed keys or tunings she could follow. By the time these duets were recorded they
were totally in synch—just listen to “Mama, You Been On My Mind” or their soulful cover of the traditional “The Water Is Wide.” After Montreal the tour made two more stops, both concerts to draw attention to Rubin Carter’s plight. The first was a concert at the Clinton Correctional Facility where Rubin had been moved. The second was a huge fundraiser, “The Night of the Hurricane,” at Madison Square Garden. After that show, there was a farewell party for the Revue at an uptown restaurant where Bob and Sara circulated and gave each participant a beautiful silver medallion to commemorate the tour. But even after most of the performers dispersed back to their homes, Dylan lingered on in New York, almost reluctant to admit that the tour was over. Right before Rolling Thunder hit the road, I asked Bob why tour? The question seemed to take him by surprise. “Why tour? ‘Cause, uh, I think that’s what I have to do. It’s in my blood.” Twenty-seven years later, Dylan’s still “on that road, heading for another joint.” In fact, it didn’t take him too long to put together a second Rolling Thunder tour of the South in 1976, but somehow the magic that was generated in that brisk autumnal Northeastern air was missing the second time around. Since Rolling Thunder, he’s been on the road more often than he’s been home. But if touring’s still in his blood, it seems to be an infectious disease. Baez still performs regularly as does Roger McGuinn, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Joni Mitchell. T-Bone Burnett has gone on to find a niche as a producer, winning a Grammy® for the soundtrack to “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” David Mansfield is now composing scores for films. After taking some years off to paint, Neuwirth has recently released several fine albums. Sadly enough, Mick Ronson and Howie Wyeth’s musical contributions have been silenced forever, as is the case with Rick Danko and Richard Manuel of the Band. And there’ll be no more poems
or lyrical analysis from Allen Ginsberg, no more movie parts for David Blue. No more movies for Howard Alk and no more concerts for Barry Imhoff. But, thanks to multi-track magnetic tape, we have this record of those amazing performances in the fall of 1975. After the tour was over and I was hounding Dylan for one last interview, I reached him at his uptown hotel. During our talk, I read him some comments that a contemporary songwriter had made about him in the then-current issue of Newsweek. “Dylan comparisons make me emotional,” this recording artist said. “There’s hardly a point of comparison except we’re the same age. He writes a lot of words. I write few words. He singlehandedly took the folkie emphasis on words and made it the predominant style of music in the seventies. But what he spawned is boring…. When I listen to Dylan I think, ‘Oh no, not the same three or four-chord melody again.…’” “Hey lookit, Ratso,” Bob interrupted. “You can play a song with one chord.” I continued to read the Newsweek piece. “The staple of American popular music is all three or four-chord, country or rock-oriented now,” the songwriter said. “There’s nothing that goes back to the richest, most original form of American popular music—Broadway and Tin Pan Alley—in which sophisticated lyrics are matched with sophisticated melodies.…” “Hey, Ratso,” Bob again. “You can play a song with one note.” “Well, he’s not the only one,” I argue. “There are lots of people who say that you’re a great lyricist but you just don’t understand music.” “Oh, really,” Dylan spit. “Well, I don’t understand music, you know. I understand Lightning Hopkins, I understand Leadbelly, John Lee Hooker, Woody Guthrie, Kinky Friedman. I never claimed to understand music, Ratso, if you ever heard me play the guitar you’d know that.” The singer laughed.
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“I’m an artist,” he added. Taking the bait, I went into a spirited defense of his musicianship but he interrupted me again. “You’ve seen the show, Ratso, how many times? Thirty? Forty? Have I ever let you down onstage?” I didn’t even have to think. “Never, man, never.” “OK, so why don’t you tell them that,” Dylan urged. “I will, man, I will,” I promised. He never let me down onstage. In fact, he never failed to elevate me. It’s easy to get blasé on a tour after the first few days and hang out in backstage hospitality suites during the show, but whenever it was time for Dylan to go onstage, there was a mass influx into the hall of fellow performers, film crew, techies and roadies, hangers-on and groupies—all anxious not to miss a single note. Dylan never let anybody down. And now, thanks to this two-CD set you have in your possession, he’ll never let you down either. —Larry “Ratso” Sloman New York City, September 2002 Larry “Ratso” Sloman’s first book was On The Road With Bob Dylan, his award-winning account of the Rolling Thunder tour which was just reissued by Three Rivers Press. Ratso is best known as Howard Stern’s collaborator on Private Parts and Miss America. He collaborated with the magician/mystifier David Blaine on his recent book, Mysterious Stranger. Portions of this essay appeared in a different form in On The Road With Bob Dylan, Three Rivers Press, 2002.
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The Times They Are A-Changin’ Spanish Harlem Incident Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues To Ramona Who Killed Davey Moore? Gates Of Eden If You Gotta Go, Go Now
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The
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) Mr. Tambourine Man A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall Talkin’ World War III Blues Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
Bootleg
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The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll Mama, You Been On My Mind Silver Dagger With God On Our Side It Ain’t Me, Babe All I Really Want To Do
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BOB DYLAN LIVE 1964
This famous concert, recorded Halloween night 1964 at Philharmonic Hall, has been much bootlegged but never heard in its entirety or in such crisp and present sound. This set presents Dylan on the cusp between his folky days and his new-found land of imagist poetry, the borderline claimed and explored on Another Side of Bob Dylan, which had just been released two months before. His voice was strong and confident, even cocky. The program included “topical” songs like “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” and “With God On Our Side,” featured here in a duet with Joan Baez, who joined him for four tunes, including a great, playful version of “Mama, You Been On My Mind.” Also showcased are the kinds of visionary work that was about to show up on Bringing It All Back Home – “Gates of Eden,” “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Throughout he is relaxed, funny, and charming, able to switch from self-deprecating humor to intense lyric focus on a dime. This was Dylan at the top of his game as solo artist, a role he would play for another eight months or so, until he upset everybody’s apple cart at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival by appearing with the electric Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
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C O N C E R T AT P H I L H A R M O N I C H A L L
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6 Bob Dylan Live 1964: Concert At Philharmonic Hall
Produced by Jeff Rosen and Steve Berkowitz March 30, 2004
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
BOOTLEG SERIES VOLUME 6 original liner notes
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On Halloween night, 1964, a twenty-three-year old Bob Dylan spellbound an adoring audience at Philharmonic Hall in New York. Relaxed and highspirited, he sang seventeen songs, three of them with his guest Joan Baez, plus one encore. Many of the songs, although less than two years old, were so familiar that the crowd knew every word. Others were brand new and baffling. Dylan played his heart out on these new compositions, as he did on the older ones, but only after an introductory turn as the mischievous tease. This is called “A Sacrilegious Lullaby in D Minor,” he announced, before beginning the second public performance ever of “Gates Of Eden.” He was the cynosure of hip, when hipness still wore pressed slacks and light brown suede boots (as I remember he did that night). Yet hipness was transforming right on stage. Dylan had already moved on, well beyond the most knowing New Yorkers in the hall, and he was singing about what he was finding. The concert was in part a summation of past work and in part a summons to an explosion for which none of us, not even he, was fully prepared. “Because Dickens and Dostoevsky and Woody Guthrie were telling their stories much better than I ever could, I decided to stick to my own mind” — Bob Dylan, 1963. The world seemed increasingly out of joint during the weeks before the concert. The trauma of John F. Kennedy’s assassination less than a year earlier had barely abated. Over the summer, the murders in Mississippi of the civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had created traumas anew. President Lyndon Johnson
managed to push a Civil Rights Bill through the Congress in July 1964; by early autumn, it seemed as if he would trounce the arch-conservative Barry Goldwater in the coming election. But in August, Johnson received a congressional blank check to escalate American involvement in the Vietnam conflict. On a single day in mid-October, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was overthrown and Communist China exploded its first atomic bomb. A hopeful phase of the decade was quickly winding down, and a scarier phase loomed. Dylan’s style and his art were changing too, with an accelerating and bewildering swiftness befitting the times. In December 1963, Dylan had offended a leftist New York audience by accepting a free-speech award with some atrociously-wrought, off-the-cuff remarks about hypocrisy, youthful alienation, and how he saw a bit of himself in Lee Harvey Oswald. Proclaimed by the leftists as the latest incarnation of Woody Guthrie, a new political cult hero, Dylan had seemed uncomfortable, pleased to be honored but unwilling to accept the heavy mantle that all of these old people for their own reasons, wanted to thrust upon him; and so, ambivalent and easily misunderstood, he thrust it back. The singer offended even more people the following summer with the release of Another Side of Bob Dylan—an album devoid of the fixed moral standpoint in his earlier protest self, and containing instead songs of personal freedom, whimsy, and wounded love. In the wake of the Beatles’ take-over of American top-40 radio, some members of the older Popular Front folk establishment shook their heads in dismay at what was becoming of their new Woody Guthrie. One folk commissar, writing in the respected Sing Out! magazine, would sneer at Dylan as a political
sell-out and try to force him into line, warning him not to turn into “a different Bob Dylan than the one we knew.” Little did he know that Dylan was not simply becoming different; he was also listening to the Beatles. Dylan has since recalled how much the criticism of Another Side stung, and how proud he was when, out of the blue, Johnny Cash wrote a stern letter to Sing Out! in his defense. (To this day, Dylan says, he’s held on to his copy of the magazine with Cash’s letter in it.) But at the time, he outwardly betrayed no injured feelings and kept on writing and performing in his new vein. The great majority of his fans, especially his younger fans, seemed to approve. At the Newport Folk Festival in July, two weeks before Another Side appeared, he stuck almost entirely to playing new material, along with one as-yetunrecorded song that he introduced to an afternoon workshop session as “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, Play A Song For Me.” The response was rapturous. Dylan was still the great folk-music star, a phenomenon like no other, no matter what he sang. For most of the loyalists, the shifts in Dylan’s style (unlike in the rest of the world) were not disturbing. Amid the English Rock Invasion, Dylan still stood there on stage alone, singing and playing with nothing more than his guitar and his rackclamped harmonica. When he wasn’t alone, he sang, at Newport and elsewhere, with Joan Baez, whose presence and endorsement of Dylan’s new songs eased our own transition. Dylan’s politics actually hadn’t disappeared, but had only become less preachy and much funnier, as in the joke-saga, “Motorpsycho Nitemare,” on Another Side. Dylan had always sung intensely personal songs. His most powerful earlier political material often involved
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human-sized stories, like “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” And amid the disorientation of late 1963 and 1964, who was to say that a turn to introspection was out of place? The Beatles, with their odd chords and joyful harmonies, were great, but what was “She Loves You” compared to the long-stemmed word images in “Chimes Of Freedom”? Who else but Dylan would be brainy enough and with-it enough to toss off allusions in his songs to Fellini films and Cassius Clay? To his fans, he may have been evolving, but so were we; and the Bob Dylan we now heard and saw seemed basically the same as the Bob Dylan we knew, only better. Looking back on it, we probably had no more of a clue about where he was headed than the Sing Out! writer did. But at the time, for those of us who wanted to be as close to the blade’s edge of the avant-garde as possible—or as close as we dared—Dylan could do no wrong. “I don’t want to fake you out, Take or shake or forsake you out, I ain’t lookin’ for you to feel like me, See like me or be like me” — Bob Dylan, 1964. That Dylan’s management booked Philharmonic Hall for its star’s biggest New York show of the year was testimony to his allure. Opened only two years earlier as the first showcase of the neighborhood-killer Robert Moses’ new Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) was, with its imperial grandeur and bad acoustics, the most prestigious auditorium in Manhattan—or for that matter in the entire country. Within two years of releasing his first album, Dylan’s New York venues had shot ever upward in cachet (and further uptown), from Town Hall to Carnegie Hall and now to the sparkling new home of Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. When the expectant audience streamed out of the grungy
old—mosaic-tiled IRT stop at 66th Street, and then crammed into the cavernous gilded theater, it must have looked to the uptowners (and the ushers) like a bizarre invasion of the hipster beatnik young. As if to make sure that we knew our place, a man appeared on stage at show time to warn us that there would be no picture-taking or smoking allowed in the house. Then, like Bernstein striding to his podium, Dylan walked out of the wings, no announcement necessary, a fanfare of applause proclaiming who he was. He started the concert, as he normally did, with “The Times They Are AChangin’.” Here we all were, the self-consciously sensitive and discerning, settling in—at a Dylan show like any other, whatever the plush surroundings. Two hours later, we would leave the premises and head back underground to the IRT, exhilarated, entertained, and ratified, but also confused about the snatches of lines we’d gleaned from the strange new songs. What was that weird lullaby in D minor? What in God’s name is a perfumed gull (or did he sing “curfewed gal”)? Had Dylan really written a ballad based on Arthur Koestler’s Darkness At Noon? The melodies were strong; and the playing on the “darkness” song had been ominous and overpowering, but it had all moved so fast that comprehension was impossible. It had turned into a Dylan show unlike any we’d ever heard. Thanks to an excellent tape, presented here for the first time in its entirety, it is now possible to appreciate what happened that night—not just in what Dylan sang, but in what he said, and in the amazing audible rapport he had with his audience. The show was divided in two, with a fifteenminute intermission. The first half was for innovation as well as some glances at where Dylan had already been. The two most pointedly political older songs, interestingly, had never been issued on record, but the audience knew them anyway, and responded enthusiastically. Back in May 1963, Dylan had been booked on
the Ed Sullivan Show, the premier Sunday night television variety program, where Elvis Presley had made three breakthrough appearances seven years earlier and had agreed, on the final show, to be shown performing only from the waist up. The downtown Irish traditional folk group the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem had appeared on Sullivan twice, vastly enlarging their following. (They played the Philharmonic Hall a year before Dylan did.) The Limelighters, the Lettermen, the Belafonte Folk Singers, and other folk acts had also performed on the Sullivan program; in March 1963, Sullivan hosted the popular Chad Mitchell Trio. For Dylan, an edgy topical singer, playing the Sullivan program would mean huge exposure. He chose as his number the satirical “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues.” (For those too young to remember: the John Birch Society, which still exists, was notorious as a hardright political group that saw Communist conspiracies everywhere. The Mitchell Trio had enjoyed a minor hit with its own mocking song, “The John Birch Society,” in 1962.) Upon hearing Dylan’s selection at the rehearsal, just before airtime, a CBS executive turned cold and, over Sullivan’s objections, ordered him to sing something less controversial. Unlike Presley, Dylan would not be censored and he refused to appear. Word of his principled walk-out burnished Dylan’s reputation among his established fans, old and young. Little did we know that the song had also been dropped, along with three others, from the original version of Freewheelin’. Dylan included the banned number on his 1964 Halloween program, introducing it, with a mixture of defiance and good humor, as “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”—a title that now seemed to cover the craven mainstream media as well as the right-wing extremists who were currently thumping their tubs for their favorite, Senator Goldwater. It was a thrilling moment for us in the audience, getting to hear what CBS had forbidden the nation to hear while also exulting in
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our own political righteousness against the forces of fear and blacklisting. “Who Killed Davey Moore?,” the other older political song, was about the death of a young featherweight boxer who, after losing a title bout to Sugar Ramos in 1963, fell into a coma and died. The incident sparked public debate about whether boxing should be banned in the United States. It also inspired the political songwriter (and Dylan’s rival) Phil Ochs to compose a long narrative song, describing in detail the flying fists and pouring sweat inside the ring and the “money-chasing vultures” and blood-lusting fans outside it. Dylan’s musical take on the episode was at once simpler— a reworking of the ancient “Who Killed Cock Robin?” theme—and more complex, pointing out the many people who bore responsibility for Moore’s death and reciting their lame excuses. On the concert tape, the audience’s instant adulatory reaction stands out most of all. As soon as Dylan sings “Who killed…,” the cheering starts. Although Dylan had not recorded the song, he had been performing it in concert as early as his Town Hall show in April 1963, less than three weeks after Davey Moore died. It was a time, one now remembers, when a folk singer, at least this one, could have a song of his achieve wide currency without even putting it on a record, let alone getting it played on the radio. Another response to “Davey Moore” also stands out on the tape, when Dylan comes to the line about boxing no longer being permitted in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Listen closely, and you will hear some scattered applause endorsing the sentiment. Maybe some of the Sing Out! old guard was in the audience — momentarily, but just momentarily, encouraged. Certainly there were younger people there, the red-diaper babies and other politicals, who still wanted to hold onto Dylan as the troubadour of the Revolution. Dylan, however, would not be type-cast as
anything, and even his rendering of “Davey Moore” tugged in other directions. “This is a song about a boxer,” he said before he began to sing it. “It’s got nothing to do with boxing, it’s just a song about a boxer really. And, Uh, its not even having to do with a boxer really. It’s got nothing to do with nothing. But I fit all these words together, that’s all.” The irreverent introduction undercut solemnity, even though some people wanted and expected solemnity. (Others in the audience did not, and made that clear in their impromptu badinage with the singer.) Dylan’s laughter in the middle of his introduction even sounded a little intoxicated. Was he aglow from drinking Beaujolais— we all knew Dylan drank Beaujolais—or maybe, even cooler, had Dylan been smoking pot? Perhaps he was intoxicated in a different way, giddy from the hall and the affectionate crowd and the joy of being back in his adopted hometown after weeks of playing the college circuit. No matter: his mellow, at times merry mood was infectious, and it had nothing to do with sermonizing. It did have something to do with sex. Nobody in the audience had yet heard “If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Got To Stay All Night)” and its sly, rollicking account of an, it’s-now-or never seduction sent everybody into stitches. Coming after “Gates Of Eden,” it was a bit of comic relief, but hip comic relief. In the song, the singer knows very well that the object of his affections is no virgin. Casual sex is no longer taboo; the repression surrounding this part of life has lifted. What Presley had done with his pelvis, Dylan was doing with his words— coy, conversational, and comical, feeding the youth conspiracy of sons and daughters who were (or wanted to be) beyond their parents’ command. Sometimes, the audience knew Dylan’s words better than he did. Nearing the end of the show’s first half, Dylan strummed his guitar but completely forgot the next song’s opening line. As if he were performing at the Gaslight down in Greenwich
Village and not in Philharmonic Hall, Dylan asked the audience to help him out, and it did. On the tape, two voices, unmistakably New York voices, carry above all the others, one rapidly following the other with the cue: “I can’t understand...” The song, “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” had appeared on Another Side less than three months earlier, but his fans knew it so well that it might as well have been “Pretty Peggy-O.” (It may have even have been more familiar to most of the audience than “Pretty Peggy-O.”) Dylan, a master of timing, did not miss a beat, picked up the line, and then sang the song flawlessly. Between these funny moments, Dylan introduced his new masterpieces, “Gates Of Eden” and “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” calling the latter, “It’s All Right Ma, It’s Life And Life Only.” These songs have become such iconic pieces over the intervening decades, their twisting images so much a part of a generation’s sub-conscious, that it is difficult to recall what they sounded like when heard for the first time, and in concert. Dylan knew that they were special, and that they would fly over his listeners’ heads the first time around. He even joked about that on stage. (On the tape, some laughter greets Dylan’s announcement of “It’s All Right, Ma” as if the song is a put-on; and he pipes up, “Yes, it’s a very funny song.”) During these performances, the audience was utterly silent, trying at first to catch the words, but finally bowled over by the intensity of both the lyrics and Dylan’s playing, even though he muffed a line. We would not get the chance to figure the songs out for another five months, when they appeared on Bringing It All Back Home—and even then it would take repeated listenings for any of it to make sense. At the time, it just sounded like demanding poetry, epic poetry (each went on for what seemed like Homeric length), proving once again that Bob Dylan was leading us into new places, the whereabouts unknown but deeply tempting. The evening’s second half of the show brought
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us back to familiar ground: songs from Freewheelin’ and The Times They Are A-Changin’, and three duets with Joan Baez. (Baez also sang “Silver Dagger,” accompanied by Dylan on the harmonica.) Dylan and Baez—the king and queen of the folk movement, known to be lovers—had been performing together off and on for well over a year. Baez had brought Dylan to the stage during several of her concerts, including one at Forest Hills in August, and now Dylan was returning the compliment. They sang of desire, rejected desire, and American history, their harmonizing ragged in places, but with an ease between them that further mellowed the mood even as it upped the star wattage on stage. Plenty has been made since about Dylan and Baez’s relationship in these years, some of it unflattering to one or the other or both of them. Much as the Kennedys’ Camelot would have its debunkers, so the magical kingdom we conjured up around Bob Dylan and Joan Baez would come crashing down. Nearly forgotten, however—but captured on the Philharmonic tape, even in that night’s laid-back, knockabout performances—have been the rich fruits of their singing collaborations. Joan always seemed, on stage, the earnest, worshipful one, overly so, in the presence of the Boy Genius; and Bob would sometimes gently mock that earnestness, as he does between songs here. But when singing together, they were quite a pair, his nasal harshness mingling wonderfully with her silken coloratura, their harmony lines adding depth to the melodies, their sheer pleasure in each other’s company showing in their voices. Listening to the tape, my favorite duet from the Philharmonic show is “Mama, You Been On My Mind.” Baez sings “Daddy” instead of “Mama.” Then, during one of the brief instrumental interludes, Baez interjects “shooka-shooka-shooka, shook-shooka”—nothing one might expect from the Folk Queen, something more pop or even rock ‘n’ roll than folk music. Was our Joan listening to the Beatles, too? I don’t recall hearing this at the time,
but now it sounds like another little portent of things to come. Dylan closed, solo, with his encore. The singer and audience were by now as one; shouted requests filled the air, for “Chimes Of Freedom,” for anything, even for “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” “God, did I record that?” Dylan joked back, basking in the revelry. “Is that a protest song?” He chose “All I Really Want To Do,” another crowd-pleaser from Another Side. Was this a secret sweet envoi to Joan Baez? Was it a gentle envoi to us, or the part of us that wanted to make of Dylan, in our own way, something more than he could possibly be? During the first half of the concert, after singing “Gates Of Eden,” Dylan got into a little riff about how the song shouldn’t scare anybody, that it was only Halloween, and that he had his Bob Dylan mask on. “I’m masquerading!” he joked, elongating the second word into a laugh. The joke was serious. Bob Dylan, né Zimmerman, brilliantly cultivated his celebrity, but he was really an entertainer, a man behind a mask, a great entertainer, maybe, but basically just that—someone who threw words together, astounding as they were. The burden of being something else—a guru, a political theorist, “the voice of a generation,” as he facetiously put it in an interview a few years ago—was too much to ask of anyone. We in the audience were asking him to be all of that and more, but Dylan was slipping the yoke. All he really wanted to do was to be a friend, if possible, and an artist writing and singing his songs. He was telling us so, though we didn’t want to believe it, and wouldn’t let him leave it at that. We wanted more. “Don’t follow leaders Watch the parking meters”
— Bob Dylan, 1965.
Less than three months after the Philharmonic Hall concert, Bob Dylan showed up at Columbia Records’ Studio A in Manhattan for the second session of recording Bringing It All Back Home—and he brought with him three guitarists, two bassists, a drummer and a piano player. One of the first songs they recorded was “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” a Chuck Berryish rock number, less sung than recited, about lures, snares, chaos, and not following leaders. That spring, Dylan would tour England and return to his acoustic playlist, but the film made of that tour, Don’t Look Back, shows him obviously bored with the material. The new halfelectric album appeared in March; by mid-summer, “Like A Rolling Stone” was all over the radio; and in late July came the famous all-electric set at Newport that sparked a civil war among Dylan’s fans. He was no longer standing alone with his guitar and harmonica. The pleasant joker now wore sinister black leather boots and a shiny jacket to match. No more Joan Baez. A bit of the old rapport reappeared when Dylan was coaxed back onstage to play some of his old acoustic material. “Does anybody have an E harmonica, an E harmonica, anybody?” he asked—and E harmonicas came raining out from the crowd and thumped onstage. But now the envoi was unmistakable, as Dylan serenaded the folkies with “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” as well as “Mr. Tambourine Man.” A year after that—with the Vietnam war tearing the country apart, urban ghettos beset by arson and riots, and conservative backlash coming on strong— Dylan would suffer his famous motorcycle crack-up, concluding the wild period when he pushed his innovations to the limit with Blonde On Blonde and with his astonishing concerts with the Hawks—not least the “Judas” show in Manchester, England, recaptured now on The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966. Live 1964 brings back a Bob Dylan on the cusp of that turmoil. It brings back a time between his scuffling sets at the downtown clubs and his arena-
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rock tours of the 1970s and after. It brings back a long gone era of intimacy between performer and audience, and the last strains of a self-aware New York bohemia before bohemia became diluted and mass marketed. It brings back a Dylan moment just before something that Pete Hamill (on the liner notes to Blood On The Tracks) called “the plague” infected so many hopes, and destroyed an older America sung of by Guthrie and, in prose, by Jack Kerouac—and by Dylan as well, who somehow survived. Above all, it brings back a great concert by an artist performing at the peak of his powers— one who would climb many more peaks to come. — Sean Wilentz, Princeton, December 2003. Sean Wilentz, the distinguished historian and writer, is the author of several books, including Chants Democratic, as well as, forthcoming, The Rise Of American Democracy, and a book about American ballads, co-edited with Greil Marcus. He has dim boyhood memories of Bob Dylan in and around the old Folklore Center on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, not far from his family’s bookstore on 8th Street. At 13, he attended the Halloween 1964 concert at Philharmonic Hall, his first Dylan show. He also writes regularly for The New Republic, The New York Times, and other publications.
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When I Got Troubles (1959) Rambler, Gambler (Home Recording) This Land Is Your Land (Live) Song To Woody Dink’s Song (Home Recording)
I Was Young When I Left Home (Home Recording) Sally Gal (Alternate Take) Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Demo) Man Of Constant Sorrow Blowin’ In The Wind (Live) Masters Of War (Live)
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Live) When The Ship Comes In (Live) Mr. Tambourine Man (Alternate Take) Chimes Of Freedom (Live) It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Alternate Take)
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A MARTIN SCORSESE PICTURE
THE BOOTLEG SERIES Vol. 7
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7 No Direction Home: The Soundtrack Produced by Jeff Rosen, Steve Berkowitz, Bruce Dickinson, and Martin Scorsese August 30, 2005
She Belongs To Me (Alternate Take) Maggie’s Farm (Live) It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (Alternate Take) Tombstone Blues (Alternate Take)
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Alternate Take) Desolation Row (Alternate Take) Highway 61 Revisited (Alternate Take) Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Alternate Take)
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (Alternate Take) Visions Of Johanna (Alternate Take) Ballad Of A Thin Man (Live) Like A Rolling Stone (Live)
The Bootleg Series Volume 7 collects extremely rare, and in most cases previously unheard, performances from the period covered by Martin Scorsese’s landmark Dylan documentary No Direction Home, which ends with Dylan’s 1966 motorcycle accident. The first half of the set presents Dylan alone with his guitar and harmonica, beginning with a 1959 home recording of a Dylan original, “When I Got Troubles.” We hear early live and home recordings that already show an extraordinary sensitivity to nuance (listen, for just one example, to the touching “Rambler, Gambler”), and watch him become a powerfully original songwriter and performer in live versions and alternate takes of “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “Masters of War,” “When The Ship Comes In,” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The high point of these acoustic performances may well be the galvanic “Chimes Of Freedom” from the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, in which Dylan’s involvement is so intense he seems almost to be writing the song on the spot. The second half presents Dylan as he begins to fuse his deep knowledge of folk music with the edge and attitude – and instrumentation – of rock and roll. There are fascinating alternate takes of five songs from the seminal album Highway 61 Revisited, three from Blonde On Blonde, and two flame-throwing performances from his historic European tour of 1966. Taken all together, Bootleg 7 is a stunning vision of the development of Dylan’s art in the time of its most staggering growth and change.
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 7 original liner notes
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world war 2 hovered over us, at least in late britain where we war-babies grew up, as if that was not enough in itself, the still of the unspoken sacrifice our elders had made in our name begat the cloud that cried—it was more than johnnie ray, the prince of wails , whom with liberace , crooned and tinkled their way into female british hearts whilst fellows got by on skiffle king lonnie donegan , colonel bogey and alec guinness’s stiff upper lip in “the bridge over the river kwai”. and we called that....... entertainment. before too long we would be saved by the sneer of elvis and the fear tear of james dean. the cloud was both suppressive and inspiring—our peers had withstood six years of 9/11 against the mighty kraut, and by the mid 50’s the world was not a better place and our parents daily let us know this. james dean was dead , elvis was as good as and eddie cochran , who had inspired us with american words and action,took three steps to heaven dying for us in an english taxi crash that also took the life of gene vincent’s right leg. britain’s exhausted mentalomics at that time were profoundly influential in shaping the cultural life of the late 50’s and early 60’s—john osborne’s 1956 play “look back in anger” is the most celebrated example. england tried to compete with tennessee williams, marlon brando and the french new wave which threw us a slew of angry young men. i was more impressed by marlon brando in 1958’s “the young lions” because he dared to play a drop dead good looking blond tormented nazi; something yer actual brit (o’toole thought he was irish) could never do.
i was more impressed by america in general, so were all my rock’n beat pals. america was a perfect audio and visual image as late britain stuttered and suppressed, americana controlled it’s lighting, dialogue and sunsets. as elvis disapeared through the paramount gates and into the army, tony and burt kissed and kowtowed the “sweet smell of success “and we studied the scheme of america. we blanked albert finney and looked at the other side and got ernest borgnine’s “marty”. america gave us rhythm and hope—eddie cochran, little richard, buddy holly, gene vincent, johnny otis, antoine “fats” domino and young rick nelson. the joy of italians, jews, blacks, TV stars and farmboys performing the soundtrack to our lives. recorded rock and celluloid cool defined our new regimen in 1960 austerity begot affluence and that became possible because of the birth pill. disposable income could go to dressing up and not diaper rental and babyfood. suddenly time was on our side and lying abed did not have to mean settling down and some of us still haven’t. there was time to idea up, time not to panic, time to avoid the mundane promised picket fenced pre-fab future. the new cold war ended the automatic connection between being a marxist and a member of the communist party. distrust of structured politics created the new left and led to the campaign for nuclear disarmament. but britain’s new affluence had a conscience—and this brave new world cried out for troubled troubadours and international anthems. i’d left school at age 16 in 1960, the last school i’d attending stating “he may do well, but not here ”. i agreed. i ran errands in the fashion fracas, hustled
the south of france and sought a life wherein mine would not end up on the cutting room floor. by 1962 i was a press agent, london’s soho and fleet street my sidney falco beat. i scoured the melody maker and the other weakly musical rags looking for gigs. a journalist told me about this bob dylan being flown in from america to appear in a BBC drama called “madhouse on castle street”. i found out that bob and his manager were rooming at the cumberland hotel overlooking marble arch. i made a point of bumping into the singer’s manager, albert grossman, in the lobby of the hotel. grossman was a calm above the norm. i hustled myself for a fiver into press-repping dylan for a week. i sat in bob’s room with the duo getting an idea of the world before i knew it. dylan was bob dylan already, just as he’s bob dylan now. it wasn’t an act, even if it was. i squired him around london, to the BBC, to max jones at the melody maker, to dobell’s record store on charing cross road. the beatles were honing their chops and loins comparatively anonymously in hamburg; the rolling stones were still in art school, the gym, and the richmond station hotel. “strange fruit” , miles davis and lenny bruce protested by night ; dylan was working at seizing the dayshift. a strange new unspoken cameraderie joined all these world war 2 progeny together. the beatles and the stones handled the love and sex, until a bit later when the fame and the drugs were not quite working and then they decided to give peace a chance. bobby d had pointed the way out in early1962. there were things other than love and sex in the world to write and sing about and that he did. by now my
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train was rollin’ , i had done PR for the beatles, met the rolling stones, become their manager and said ta-ta to the rest of my life.
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in 1963 nat hentoff wrote the first most important sleeve notes for “the freewheelin’ bob dylan”. for us it said a lot, it meant a lot , it was saul bass in prose, and showed that the liner word can and should reflect the audio. the cover of this iconic album, which included “blowin’ in the wind” and “don’t think twice, it’s all right,” remains an example of rock art influencing popular culture as a whole. dylan would soon take over the liner notation himself and between that marvel and anthony burgess you had the birth of my own liner note style for the rolling stones. in england and france , better known as europe, there was dylan before there were beatles and stones. and just as the beatles were taking america and the stones were standing in the wings faking it, “freewheelin’ “was cracking the UK top 20 and dylan already knew how many holes it took in filling the festival hall. c’mon, cor blimey, england may have been swinging but dylan took us over with words. this was above cult, this was mass status, a strange merging of the two worlds of fame allowed in europe, but as apart in the US as two versions of the same song by fats domino/little richard and pat boone. so the beatles kicked in america with “i want to hold your hand” ; a year and some change later the stones got the job done with “satisfaction”, then mr z. changed all that with “like a rolling stone” ... brilliant nerve was what it was. check mate was the name of the game. dylan made us better and our world grew up to every competitive word. “the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or culture
the most extensive “wrote marcel proust,” but those who have had the power , ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror”. 43 years later, dylan still moves the goalposts, sets the game and chronicles dem bells. our lives hath seen shakespeare again and dylan be his name. elvis gave us movement that we seized with every gland. the beatles held our hands and gave us something that was ours , something to fight for ; the rolling stones took to the streets and gave us something to fight against. and dylan ? he gave us the grace, the words and meaning, ripping our blinders off , dilating us pupils with the harsh light of the other way of looking at the looniverse. andrew loog oldham, bogota, colombia. june MM5 .
Just when I thought I had dragged up all my Dylan memories for 2005 being extensively interviewed for Greil Marcus’s book LIKE A ROLLING STONE, and being interrogated thoroughly for Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Bob, NOW I have been asked to contribute liner notes for the film’s soundtrack album. Two weeks ago, I got an email from a fan reminding me that, June 16th, 2005, made it forty years since the recording of “Like A Rolling Stone” in New York City back in 1965. That day changed my life forever and turned me from a guitar-owner into a rock organist, which I have remained for the last forty years. Being onsite for the recording of two historical albums, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and being able to contribute musically to these classics is still pretty unbelievable to me. Most everybody knows how I scammed my way into playing on the “Like A Rolling Stone” session. I was then invited to remain aboard and to play on the rest of the Highway 61 Revisited album. The cast of backup players included Mike Bloomfield on guitar, Paul Griffin on keyboards, Bobby Gregg on drums, first Russ Savakus on bass, and then Harvey Goldstein (soon to be Harvey Brooks) on bass, Bruce Langhorne on percussion, The Chambers Brothers on backup vocals, Al Gorgoni on guitar, Frank Owens on keyboards, Charlie McCoy on acoustic guitar and yours truly on keyboards and electric guitar. The final editing eliminated Gorgoni, Owens, the Chambers Brothers, and my guitar playing but there are unearthly unearthings on this collection and it seems all personnel are now up for grabs. I once told one of the producers of the soundtrack about a version of “Desolation Row,” cut quite early in the ayem when most musicians had packed it in for the night. Harvey Brooks and I stayed on and I suggested to Bob that he try a take with the three of us playing; Bob on acoustic guitar and harmonica, Harvey on Fender bass, and myself on electric guitar. It probably has never been played back again since
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that night we cut it, but Columbia found it and thought it was good enough to include. It certainly marries that song with the punkness of the rest of the album. The version that was used, with Charlie McCoy playing cool acoustic lines behind Bob is much more wistful than punk. The included version here would make the Sex Pistols or Talking Heads proud. Too bad the drummer had already gone home when we cut it. There was an afternoon where the Chambers Brothers, who also played electric at the infamous ‘65 Newport Folk Festival, with no crowd objection, came by and sang backup vocals on “Tombstone Blues.” I thought it was amazing that day, but never heard it again after that. We originally played “It Takes A Lot to Laugh,” back when it was called “Phantom Engineer,” as an up-tempo tune, in the style of “Maggie’s Farm.” But when we tried it as a ballad, with Bloomfield’s Corinna-like licks dancing around Bob’s haunting vocal, the fast version died on the cutting room floor. I actually resurrected that arrangement on the Super Session album with Stephen Stills filling in for Mike Bloomfield. After the first complete take of “Ballad of a Thin Man,” we all convened in the control room for a listen. At the conclusion of the playback, Bobby Gregg said to Dylan, “I hope that’s the take, ‘cause I just heard all the words, and I don’t know if I can play behind that sort of sentiment anymore.” Bob smiled at him, and then we all cracked up at Gregg’s attempt to put Dylan on. We did a better take on the next try which became the keeper without any more objections from Mr. Gregg. In those days, I used to wear one of those blow-into police sirens around my neck to shed some humorous paranoia into various clandestine drug gatherings I might find myself attending. I wore it like a necklace and rarely took it off. When we were recording the title song for the album, I walked over to Bob in between takes and suggested
he forego the harmonica and put the police siren in his harp holder. “A little variety for your album— suits the lyric better as well,” I suggested. Suggestion taken, recorded, and archived forever. The take included here was the first time we tried the song, before the now famous ‘police siren’ was added. With the success of the Highway 61 album, the pressure was on. New producer Bob Johnston suggested that Bob record the follow-up in Nashville with players that Johnston would handpick. Dylan agreed to this gamble but insisted on bringing Robbie Robertson and myself along so that he would feel “comfortable” recording away from New York City. The three of us, an odd-looking trio to be walking around in redneck central, were put in the care of Lamar Fike, one of Elvis’ most trusted and infamous bodyguards. Lamar had to rescue both myself and Robbie from solo journeys we took in downtown Nashville; me in a record shop, and Robbie in a bar. People meant to do us harm just because of the way we looked. In the recording studio, it was a far different story. Robbie and I were taken in as immediate friends and treated as equals from day one. The cast was mighty: Charlie McCoy, ersatz leader, played bass, trumpet, guitar and harmonica—no mean feat on a Dylan session. Wayne Moss played guitar, Kenny Buttrey played drums, Hargus “Pig” Robbins played piano, Jerry Kennedy played guitar, Joe South played guitar and bass, and Henry Strzelecki played bass. I played organ and was ersatz music director. Bob was still completing many of the songs when we arrived in Tennessee. A piano was installed in his hotel room. During the days, I was summoned to Bob’s room. Bob would teach me the song he was trying to complete, and like a not-yet-invented cassette machine, I would sit at the piano and play the song over and over again, while he finished the lyrics. After a day of this, I made a suggestion to him: “Bob, why don’t you come to the session an
hour late tonight? I will get there and teach the band this song and any others we worked on today. That way, you can just walk in, and we will know at least one or two songs that you won’t have to sit through while we learn them.” He assented; it worked out great that first night, and became the modus operandi of the rest of the sessions. However the reverse could and would happen from time to time. Bob would arrive, go out into the piano in the studio and start changing a lyric. Sometimes he would be in there for four or five hour stretches. The band took it in good humor and played pool and ping pong, watched TV and catnapped. One night a journalist slipped in with a friend, and was asked to come back later as Bob was writing. He returned four hours later and Bob appeared to be in the exact same position at the piano as when the journalist was originally expelled. “Man..... what is he ON???” the reporter asked no one in particular in a loud voice. “Columbia Records.” Albert Grossman, Bob’s manager, replied as he showed the gentleman to the door. Hargus “Pig” Robbins was genial gent and played wonderful piano. He looked like a plumber or an electrician, except for the fact that he was completely blind. Bob would whisper to me from time to time and say stuff like, “Tell the piano player to come in on the first verse and not play in the intro.” At first I said to Bob, “Why don’t YOU tell him? I’m sure he’d like to interact with you.” Dylan looked at me and whispered in my ear “You do it. I can’t call that guy ‘pig.’” And so, for the duration, I would relay Bob’s requests to Mr. Robbins. To while away the hours while their talents were not specifically called upon, manager Albert Grossman and producer Bob Johnston would furiously chuck quarters in the direction of the white cork ceiling of the control room (what other named room could these two choose to quarter in?)
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attempting to make them stick in the cork based on the velocity of their initial thrusts. It became minorly dangerous to walk in there when the two were jousting, but as the week wore on, they truly got the hang of it and the ceiling was inundated with half-quarters sticking out. Nowadays, I would’ve snuck in there one morning, turned on the subwoofers, put on a hip-hop hit, and filled a garbage bag with currency. But back then, they were all still stuck in there at week’s end when I departed for New York. Just a few credits to pass out that have been hidden over the years. Joe South is playing the soul guitar on “Stuck Inside Of Mobile.” He is also playing the great bass line on “Visions of Johanna.” We, of course, all learned to treasure his talents on “Down in the Boondocks,” “I Knew You When” and “The Games People Play.” Wayne Moss plays the amazing 16th note guitar lick that recurs after each chorus in “I Want You.” The first time he came up with that, my jaw dropped—not only for the lick, but for the effortlessness he played it with. He also had one of my favorite lines at about 5 AM one dreary morning as we sat in the control room waiting for Bob to finish lyric writing in the studio: “Ya know, that one hour of sleep I got yesterday is startin’ to get real lonely about now...” That was topped only by a starving Kenny Buttrey, as take after take rolled on one particular difficult tune. “Man, I’m so hungry...” he moaned, “....I’m fartin’ fresh air!!” I still use that today. I hope this sheds some light on things for those of you perusing these notes. I must have spent close to a month working on those two albums, and it sure is a month I will never forget as long as I live. Thanks for joining me in these remembrances. —Al Kooper—Somerville, MA July 4th, 2005
This volume of the Bootleg Series is a companion to the two- part documentary No Direction Home directed by Martin Scorsese which traces Bob Dylan’s musical journey from Hibbing high school rock’n’roll enthusiast to electric barnstormer through Europe in 1966. Classic tracks and rarities illuminate a trajectory which was as fast and fraught with ramifications as a Mercury space capsule or a Dallas bullet. This is not a soundtrack in the traditional sense. The film’s structure plays fast and loose with time, using a generous helping of unearthed footage from Dylan’s controversial 1966 tour of the British Isles as a centerpiece. The compilers of this collection used the songs in the film as a reference point, finding alternate takes, rare live performances and unreleased tracks that amplify the pivotal sequences in the film and avoid duplication with previously released tracks. WHEN I GOT TROUBLES was recorded in 1959 by Bob’s High school friend Ric Kangas. It is a rare audio snapshot and most likely the first original song recorded by Bob Dylan. In August of 1960, Cleve Patterson bought a new Radio Shack tape recorder in Minneapolis. Eager to test it out, he recorded a dozen songs by a local folk singer and habitual truant at the nearby University. Here, in one of those twelve songs, Dylan sings the traditional, RAMBLER GAMBLER, a variant of the well known folk tune “Wagoner’s Lad.” THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND finds Bob Dylan at Carnegie Chapter Hall, a small intimate annex to the well known concert stage. This 1961 recording, when Dylan is still deeply under the spell of Woody Guthrie, beautifully captures this non-anthemic performance imbued with wistfulness. SONG TO WOODY is a pivotal moment in No Direction Home. In the film, Dylan says that he had to write it because he needed to express the sentiment. It is included here for much the same reason.
DINK’S SONG and I WAS YOUNG WHEN I LEFT HOME were recorded in Minneapolis three days before Christmas by Tony Glover later of well known folk blues revivalists Koerner, Ray and Glover. Often bootlegged as the Minnesota Hotel Tapes, this is the first time it has been made available directly from Tony’s master tape. In “Dink’s Song,” we can see how, even at this early date, Dylan was a wonderful interpretive singer of traditional songs, a fact he reminded us of in the early nineties with the albums Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong. “I Was Young When I Left Home,” like “Rambler Gambler,” shows the young Dylan collecting floating lyrics from traditional songs and reshaping them into personal statements. Performers in the competitive Greenwich Village club scene quickly learned an arsenal of tricks to hold the attention of often apathetic audiences. An exuberant romp like SALLY GAL, slated but not used on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was the folkie equivalent of ending your set with “Not Fade Away.” The locomotive percussion of the guitar playing against the harmonica must have kept the tip jar filled. In his recent memoir Chronicles, Bob Dylan describes how he would regularly go the office of music publisher Lou Levy in the early sixties. Lou would put him in a small room with just a tape recorder and Dylan would perform his recent compositions so they could be transcribed for copyright and used as sheet music. The process continued when Dylan signed his new music publishing deal with Witmark Music. These songs were then pressed onto discs and sent to performers in the hope that they would record or ‘cover” the songs. The “Witmark Demos” capture the young artist in New York in a strikingly intimate setting as heard here in the evocative reading of DONT THINK TWICE, IT’S ALL RIGHT. Dylan’s performance of the traditional MAN OF CONSTANT SORROW on the 1963 television program
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Folk Songs and More Folk Songs shows how fully formed a performer he was even at this young age. Introduced with a left handed comment about the song’s recent folk hit status, Dylan presents his BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND with all the misdirection of a master magician. After saying that the words are the important thing, Dylan then proceeds to caress the melody, first on harmonica and then with his voice, until the song sounds less like a political anthem and more like a lover’s question. Also from his April 1963 performance at Town Hall comes the powerful MASTERS OF WAR, a song with tremendous resonance then and, unfortunately, now. Which is probably why it is still a part of Dylan’s touring repertoire. The next two songs come from that same year’s performance at Carnegie Hall. Here, Dylan introduces A HARD RAINS A-GONNA FALL by explaining that a hard rain means something big is going to happen, not necessarily the Cuban Missile Crisis nuke fear expressed by Nat Hentoff in the otherwise spot-on Freewheelin’ liner notes. Joan Baez tells the story of Bob Dylan, finding it difficult to get a hotel room because of his scruffy looks, channeling his anger into the lyrics of WHEN THE SHIP COMES IN. The artist was able to turn his personal experience into a grand, sweeping statement as can be seen in No Direction Home when Dylan and Baez perform the song at the civil rights March on Washington on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech. The performance of MR. TAMBOURINE MAN at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 is a high point of part one of No Direction Home and is available almost in its entirety as a bonus feature on the DVD. In the interest of added value, the first complete take of the song, from June of 1964, is included here. Joining Dylan on this recording is fellow folk singer and Woody Guthrie co-hort Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. Supposedly, this is the version of the song sent to
The Byrds though no one can remember for sure. This 1964 Newport recording of CHIMES OF FREEDOM has the loose limbed enthusiasm of an artist at the top of his powers. The sound of a man with lightening in his pocket. The first take of IT’S ALL OVER NOW BABY BLUE features a slight but sweet melodic variant. One of the most famous kiss-offs in popular music, it also served, in the role of acoustic encore after the much booed electric set at Newport, as a bittersweet goodbye to fans who were unwilling to embrace his forward motion. CD 2 starts with a lovely drum-less variation of a song originally called “Worse than Money” but now better known as SHE BELONGS TO ME. Dylan has always found infinite shadings in the blues and this track with the beautifully liquid guitar of Bruce Langhorn is no exception. Here’s where it all changes. The first moment from the famed three song electric set at Newport. Peter Yarrow introduces Dylan who launches into MAGGIE’S FARM, heard in a newly found source tape revealing the full power of the recently co-opted Butterfield Blues Band. This is the music that polarized Newport inspiring a full range of responses from cheers to boos to rumors of an ax-wielding Pete Seeger ready to cut the power lines. Originally called “Phantom Engineer”, IT TAKES A LOT TO LAUGH, IT TAKES TRAIN TO CRY was still an up-tempo shuffle here in take 8. Future legend guitarist Mike Bloomfield continues to turn the blues idiom upside down. Take 9 of TOMBSTONE BLUES features more wild Bloomfield guitar, a galloping baritone sax and what sounds like background vocals from the band. There exists another version of the issued take with background vocal overdubbed by the Chambers Brothers but the uniqueness of this version merited it’s inclusion here. This earlier take of JUST LIKE TOM THUMB BLUES,
like many of the alternates, features slight lyrical changes that offer a fascinating glimpse inside the creative process. The performance here is a bit more focused lacking the smeared crayola bleary sunrise sound of the issued take, wholly appropriate for a song about a man who “started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff”. Al Kooper discusses this version of DESOLATION ROW in his notes but two additional things must be pointed out. The first is Kooper’s inspired Bo Diddley-esque riffing towards the end of the track. And, secondly, my favorite lyrical variant on the album as “They’re spoon-feeding Casanova to get him to feel more self-assured” is, in this version, “They’re spoon-feeding Casanova the boiled guts of birds”. By take 6 of the title track from HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED, Mike Bloomfield has switched to slide guitar and has nailed down the signature riff. At the end of this take, Al Kooper takes off the siren whistle he is wearing around his neck and gives it to Dylan. The missing piece. Whether electrifying “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” in 65, blasting “Masters of War” at the Grammy Awards in 1991, or transforming “If You See Her Say Hello in Myrtle Beach” last night, Bob Dylan has constantly kept his songs alive by reshaping them, experimenting with form, rhythm, tempo and texture as can be seen by this slow, blues-drenched take of LEOPARD SKIN PILLBOX HAT. There also exists a novelty version complete with buzzers and car horns. This version, radically different from the electrified stomp heard on Blonde on Blonde and introduced by Dylan as a folk song in No Direction Home, is unique for containing two verses not heard in other versions, the second of which is a shout-out to blues great Memphis Minnie and her famous song “Me & My Chauffeur” Take 5 of STUCK INSIDE OF MOBILE WITH THE MEMPHIS BLUES AGAIN shows how quickly the
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magical Nashville sessions gelled. Already better than most performers on their best day, this song went through only minor changes before becoming one of the key tracks on Blonde on Blonde. The melancholy solo acoustic version of VISIONS OF JOHANNA seen in No Direction Home can already be found on Bootleg Series Volume 4, Live 1966. Instead of repeating it here, the compilers offer an electric attempt with Al Kooper and the Band. Except for the missing quarter note crescendos of drummer Mickey Jones, this is what it may have sounded like if it had joined “I Don’t Believe You” and “One Too Many Mornings” in the amplified portion of the European tour. BALLAD OF A THIN MAN frames the widening schism between Dylan and his English folk acolytes in No Direction Home. The sound quality leaves something to be desired. The passion of the performance doesn’t. What were those people complaining about? Finally, the famous “Judas” version of LIKE A ROLLING STONE has previously appeared on the Bootleg Series Volume 4, Live 1966 release, but as the song frames No Direction Home as well as providing its title, it seemed sacrilege to exclude it. One of the most exciting performances ever captured, it’s a great surprise to discover in the documentary’s final moments that footage actually exists of Dylan dressing down his most famous heckler before turning to the juggernaut that is his band and imploring them roll across the nay-sayers. Play it loud. — Eddie Gorodetsky, Los Feliz, California
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Blowin’ In The Wind The Times They Are A-Changin’ Mr. Tambourine Man Like A Rolling Stone Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
All Along The Watchtower Lay, Lady, Lay Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door Tangled Up In Blue Hurricane Forever Young
Gotta Serve Somebody Jokerman Not Dark Yet Things Have Changed Summer Days
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The Best Of Bob Dylan November 15, 2005
Thunder on the Mountain Spirit on the Water Rollin’ and Tumblin’ When the Deal Goes Down Someday Baby
Workingman’s Blues #2 Beyond the Horizon Nettie Moore The Levee’s Gonna Break Ain’t Talkin’
Musicians: Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano; Tony Garnier – bass, cello; George G. Receli – drums, percussion; Stu Kimball – guitar; Denny Freeman – guitar; Donnie Herron – steel guitar, violin, viola, mandolin.
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Modern Times
Produced by Jack Frost August 29, 2006
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Wade In The Water (Traditional) Arranged by Bob Dylan Recorded 1961 - Released 1994 From: “The Minnesota Hotel Tape.” Previously released on Bakhalls Litterara Roster (The Ambush’s Literary Voices) compilation CD given away with an issue of the Swedish literary magazine Bakhall.
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Handsome Molly (Live) (Traditional) Arranged by Bob Dylan Recorded 1962 - Released 2005 From: Bob Dylan Live At The Gaslight 1962
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Baby, Please Don’t Go ( Joe Williams) Recorded 1962 - Released 2005 Recorded during the sessions for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Previously available as iTunes bonus track for The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home. Produced by John Hammond
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Rare Tracks From The Vaults
I Was Young When I Left Home ( Traditional) Arranged by Bob Dylan Recorded 1961 - Released 2001 From: Bonus disc for “Love and Theft”, Columbia 86076 Produced by Jack Frost
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The Times They Are A-Changin’ (Live) ( Bob Dylan) Recorded 1963 - Released 2005 From: The promo CD Bob Dylan Live At Carnegie Columbia Legacy CSK 17254 Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Live) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1963 - Released 2005 From: The promo CD Bob Dylan Live At Carnegie Columbia Legacy CSK 17254 Boots Of Spanish Leather (Live) ( Bob Dylan) Recorded 1963 - Released 2005 From: The promo CD Bob Dylan Live At Carnegie Columbia Legacy CSK 17254 Lay Down Your Weary Tune (Live) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1963 - Released 2005 From: The promo CD Bob Dylan Live At Carnegie Hall 1963, Columbia Legacy CSK 17254
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North Country Blues (Live) ( Bob Dylan) Recorded 1963 - Released 2005 From: The promo CD Bob Dylan Live At Carnegie Hall 1963, Columbia Legacy CSK 17254
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With God On Our Side (Live) ( Bob Dylan) Recorded 1963 - Released 2005 From: The promo CD Bob Dylan Live At Carnegie Hall 1963, Columbia Legacy CSK 17254
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Mr. Tambourine Man (Live) ( Bob Dylan) Recorded 1964, live at The Newport Folk Festival - Released 2005. Previously available as iTunes bonus track for The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home.
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To Ramona (Live) ( Bob Dylan) Recorded 1965, live at The Oval, City Hall, Sheffield, England - Released 2000 From: DVD release of D. A. Pennebaker’s 1965 film Don’t Look Back.
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Outlaw Blues (Acoustic Version) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1965 - Released 2005 Recorded during the sessions for Bringing It All Back Home. Previously available as iTunes bonus track for The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home. Produced by Tom Wilson
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Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues ( Bob Dylan) Recorded in Liverpool, England, May 1966. From: Non-LP B-side of Columbia single # 43683 “I Want You” Produced by Bob Johnston
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I Ain’t Got No Home ( Woody Guthrie) Recorded 1968 - Released 1972 From: Tribute To Woody Guthrie Columbia 31171 Produced by Harold Leventhal
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The Grand Coulee Dam (Woody Guthrie) Recorded 1968 - Released 1972 From: Tribute To Woody Guthrie Columbia 31171 Produced by Harold Leventhal
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Went To See The Gypsy (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1970 - Released 2004 Recorded during the sessions for New Morning. Previously available as iTunes download single. Produced by Bob Johnston
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George Jackson (Acoustic Version) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1971 - Released 1971 From: Columbia Single #45516 Produced by Bob Dylan
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George Jackson (Big Band Version) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1971 - Released 1971 From: Columbia Single #45516 Produced by Bob Dylan
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People Get Ready (Curtis Mayfield) Recorded 1975 - Released 1978 From: Columbia Promo EP 4 Songs From Renaldo & Clara, Columbia AS 422
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Night After Night (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1986 - Released 1987 From: Soundtrack to the film Hearts Of Fire, Columbia 40870 Produced by Beau Hill
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Pretty Boy Floyd (Woody Guthrie) Recorded 1987 - Released 1988 From: Soundtrack to Folkways: A Vision Shared-Tribute To Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly, Columbia 44034
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Never Let Me Go (Live) (Joseph Wade Scott) Recorded 1975 - Released 1978 From: Columbia Promo EP 4 Songs From Renaldo & Clara, Columbia AS 422 Rita May (Bob Dylan-Jacques Levy) Recorded 1976 - Released 1977 From: Non-LP B-side of Columbia Single # 10454, “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” Produced by Don Devito & Bob Dylan Dead Man, Dead Man (Live) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1981, Live in New Orleans - Released 1989 From: Non LP B-side of “Everything Is Broken,” Columbia single I And I (Reggae Mix) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1981 - Released 2004 From: Is It Rolling Bob, Sanctuary/RAS 06078-89914-2 Produced by Bob Dylan & Mark Knopfler. Remixed by Doctor Dread
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Cold Irons Bound (Live) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1997, live at the El Rey Theater, Los Angeles, CA. - Released 1998 From: B-side of various European CBS “Love Sick” singles. Also released as a bonus track included with the Australian Time Out Of Mind, limited tour edition. Born In Time (Live) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1998, live at the New Jersey Center For The Performing Arts, Newark, NJ – Released 1998 From: B-side of various European CBS “Love Sick” singles. Also released as a bonus track included with the Australian Time Out Of Mind, limited tour edition. Somebody Touched Me (Live) (Traditional) Arranged by Bob Dylan Recorded 2000, live in Portsmouth, England. Previously unreleased in the U.S. Available on Bob Dylan Live, 1961-2000, Thirty-Nine Years Of Great Concert Performances, Sony Japan SRCS 2438 Country Pie (Live) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 2000, live in Portsmouth, England Previously unreleased in the U.S. Available on Bob Dylan Live, 1961-2000, Thirty-Nine Years Of Great Concert Performances, Sony Japan SRCS 2438
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Things Have Changed (Live) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 2000, live in Portsmouth, England Previously unreleased in the U.S. Available on Bob Dylan Live, 1961-2000, Thirty-Nine Years Of Great Concert Performances, Sony Japan SRCS 2438
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Diamond Joe (Live) (Traditional) Recorded 2002 - Released 2003 From: Masked And Anonymous, Music From The Motion Picture, Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax CK 90536, live soundstage recording. Produced by Jeff Rosen
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Return To Me (Daniel Di Minno-Carmen Lombardo) Released 2001 From: The Sopranos, Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax, C2S 85453
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Waitin’ For You (Bob Dylan) Recorded 2002 - Released 2002 From: Music From The Motion Picture: Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood, DMZ Records/ Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax 86534 Produced by T Bone Burnett
Dixie (Live) (Traditional) (arranged by Bob Dylan) Recorded 2002 - Released 2003 From: Masked And Anonymous, Music From The Motion Picture, Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax CK 90536, live soundstage recording. Produced by Jeff Rosen
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Cold Irons Bound (Live) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 2002 - Released 2003 From: Masked And Anonymous, Music From The Motion Picture, Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax CK 90536, live soundstage recording. Produced by Jeff Rosen
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Love Sick (Remix) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1997 - Released 2004 From: Lovesick, Victoria’s Secret exclusive promo CD Sony A72812 Produced by Daniel Lanois
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Tell ‘Ol Bill (Bob Dylan) Recorded 2005 - Released 2005 From: North Country, Music From The Motion Picture, Sony Music Soundtrax/ Columbia CK 97777
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Man Of Peace (With The Grateful Dead) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 1987 - Released 2002 From: The Grateful Dead, Postcards Of The Hanging: The Grateful Dead Perform The Songs Of Bob Dylan, BMG/Arista 4069/7822-14069-2 ‘Cross The Green Mountain (Bob Dylan) Recorded 2002 - Released 2003 From: Gods and Generals Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Limited Edition Version, Sony Classical/Sony Music Soundtrax SK 87891 A Jack Frost Production
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Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking (Duet Version) Performed by Bob Dylan & Mavis Staples (Bob Dylan) Recorded 2002 - Released 2003 From: Gotta Serve Somebody – The Gospel Songs Of Bob Dylan Columbia/Legacy CK 89015 Executive Producer: Jeff Gaskill
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Down In The Flood (Live) (Bob Dylan) Recorded 2002 - Released 2003 From: Masked And Anonymous, Music From The Motion Picture, Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax CK 90536, live soundstage recording. Produced by Jeff Rosen
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THE SONGS
‘Cross The Green Mountain (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 8:15 10,000 Men (Under The Red Sky) 4:21 2 X 2 (Under The Red Sky) 3:36 4th Time Around (Blonde On Blonde) 4:33 4th Time Around (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 5:37 A Fool Such As I (Dylan) 2:41 A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 6:52 A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 5:16 A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 7:44 A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 7:46 A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 6:50 A Satisfied Mind (Saved) 1:57 Abandoned Love [July 1975] (Biograph) 4:27 Absolutely Sweet Marie (Blonde On Blonde) 4:54 Ain’t No More Cane (The Basement Tapes) 3:56 Ain’t Talkin’ (Modern Times) 8:48 Alberta #1 (Self Portrait) 2:55 Alberta #2 (Self Portrait) 3:11 All Along The Watchtower (Before The Flood) 2:58 All Along The Watchtower (Biograph) 3:02 All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 3:20 All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 2:31 All Along The Watchtower (Dylan & The Dead) 6:17
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All Along The Watchtower (John Wesley Harding) 2:32 All Along The Watchtower (MTV Unplugged) 3:36 All Along The Watchtower (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 2:32 All Along The Watchtower (The Essential Bob Dylan) 2:31 All I Really Want To Do (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 4:02 All I Really Want To Do (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 3:37 All I Really Want To Do (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 4:05 All I Really Want To Do (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 4:02 All The Tired Horses (Self Portrait) 3:09 Angelina [5/4/81] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 6:57 Apple Suckling Tree (The Basement Tapes) 2:48 Are You Ready? (Saved) 4:41 Arthur Mcbride (Good As I Been To You) 6:22 As I Went Out One Morning (John Wesley Harding) 2:50 Baby, I’m In The Mood For You [7/9/62] (Biograph) 2:55 Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (Biograph) 2:33 Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 4:07 Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (Bob Dylan)2:33 Baby, Please Don’t Go (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 1:57 Baby, Stop Crying (Street-Legal) 5:19 Ballad In Plain D (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 8:16 Ballad Of A Thin Man (Before The Flood) 3:29 Ballad Of A Thin Man (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:47
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Ballad Of A Thin Man (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 8:00 Ballad Of A Thin Man (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 7:45 Ballad Of A Thin Man (Highway 61 Revisited) 5:56 Ballad Of A Thin Man (Real Live) 4:05 Ballad Of Hollis Brown (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 5:03 Ballad Of Hollis Brown [Live Carnegie Hall 1963] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 6:02 Belle Isle (Self Portrait) 2:27 Bessie Smith (The Basement Tapes) 4:17 Beyond the Horizon (Modern Times) 5:36 Big Yellow Taxi (Dylan) 2:12 Billy 1 (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 3:53 Billy 4 (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 4:59 Billy 7 (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 2:08 Black Crow Blues (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 3:12 Black Diamond Bay (Desire) 7:28 Blackjack Davey (Good As I Been To You) 5:49 Blind Willie McTell [5/5/83] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 5:52 Blood In My Eyes (World Gone Wrong) 5:04 Blowin’ In The Wind (Before The Flood) 3:46 Blowin’ In The Wind (Biograph) 2:47 Blowin’ In The Wind (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:25 Blowin’ In The Wind (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 2:46 Blowin’ In The Wind (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 2:43 Blowin’ In The Wind (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 4:03 Blowin’ In The Wind (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 2:47 Blowin’ In The Wind (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 2:47 Blowin’ In The Wind (The Essential Bob Dylan) 2:46 Blue Moon (Self Portrait) 2:27 Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream (Bringing It All Back Home) 6:31 Bob Dylan’s Blues (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 2:21 Bob Dylan’s Dream (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 5:01 Boots Of Spanish Leather (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 4:37 Boots Of Spanish Leather [Live Carnegie Hall 1963] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:38 Born In Time (Under The Red Sky) 3:38 Born In Time [Live NJ 1998] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:19 Broke Down Engine (World Gone Wrong) 3:20 Brownsville Girl (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 11:03 Brownsville Girl (Knocked Out Loaded) 11:00 Buckets Of Rain (Blood On The Tracks) 3:24 Bunkhouse Theme (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 2:13 Bye And Bye (“Love And Theft”) 3:16
Call Letter Blues [9/16/74] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 4:27 Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? (Biograph) 3:33 Canadee-I-O (Good As I Been To You) 4:23 Can’t Help Falling In Love (Dylan) 4:17 Can’t Wait (Time Out Of Mind) 5:46 Cantina Theme (Workin’ For The Law) (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 2:54 Caribbean Wind [4/7/81] (Biograph) 5:52 Catfish [7/28/75] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:48 Cat’s In The Well (Under The Red Sky) 3:20 Changing Of The Guards (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 6:36 Changing Of The Guards (Street-Legal) 7:03 Chimes Of Freedom (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 7:09 Chimes Of Freedom (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 8:02 Clean-Cut Kid (Empire Burlesque) 4:14 Clothes Line Saga (The Basement Tapes) 2:56 Cold Irons Bound (Time Out Of Mind) 7:14 Cold Irons Bound [Live El Ray Theater 1997] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 6:49 Cold Irons Bound (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:43 Copper Kettle (Self Portrait) 3:32 Corrina, Corrina (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 2:42 Country Pie (Nashville Skyline) 1:37 Country Pie [Live Portsmouth 2000] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:47 Covenant Woman (Saved) 6:02 Cry A While (“Love And Theft”) 5:05 Dark Eyes (Empire Burlesque) 5:04 Day Of The Locusts (New Morning) 3:58 Days Of 49 (Self Portrait) 5:25 Dead Man, Dead Man (Shot Of Love) 3:58 Dead Man, Dead Man [Live New Orleans 1981] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 3:56 Dear Landlord (Biograph) 3:15 Dear Landlord (John Wesley Harding) 3:15 Death Is Not The End (Down In The Groove) 5:10 Delia (World Gone Wrong) 5:45 Desolation Row (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 12:11 Desolation Row (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 11:44 Desolation Row (Highway 61 Revisited) 11:20 Desolation Row (MTV Unplugged) 8:22 Diamond Joe [Masked and Anonymous Soundtrack] (Good As I Been To You) 3:17 Diamond Joe (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:33 Dignity (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 5:57
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Dignity (MTV Unplugged) 6:30 Dink’s Song (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 4:37 Dirge (Planet Waves) 5:34 Dirt Road Blues (Time Out Of Mind) 3:35 Disease Of Conceit (Oh Mercy) 3:43 Dixie (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:13 Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others) (Slow Train Coming) 3:52 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (The Essential Bob Dylan) 3:37 Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight (Infidels) 5:54 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Before The Flood) 3:34 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:55 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 3:37 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 4:03 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 3:35 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 3:39 Don’t Ya Tell Henry (The Basement Tapes) 3:12 Down Along The Cove (John Wesley Harding) 2:22 Down In The Flood (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 2:49 Down In The Flood (The Basement Tapes) 2:03 Down In The Flood [Masked and Anonymous Soundtrack] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 3:36
Down The Highway (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 3:24 Drifter’s Escape (John Wesley Harding) 2:47 Driftin’ Too Far From Shore (Knocked Out Loaded) 3:39 Early Mornin’ Rain (Self Portrait) 3:32 Emotionally Yours (Empire Burlesque) 4:36 Endless Highway (Before The Flood) 4:45 Eternal Circle [10/24/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:37 Every Grain Of Sand (Biograph) 6:14 Every Grain Of Sand [9/23/80] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:37 Every Grain Of Sand (Shot Of Love) 6:12 Everything Is Broken (Oh Mercy) 3:13 Everything Is Broken (The Essential Bob Dylan) 3:13 Farewell Angelina [1/13/65] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 5:26 Father Of Night (New Morning) 1:28 Final Theme (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 5:21 Fixin’ To Die (Bob Dylan)2:18 Floater (Too Much To Ask) (“Love And Theft”) 5:00 Foot Of Pride [4/25/83] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 5:56
Forever Young [June 1973] (Biograph) 2:02 Forever Young (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 5:38 Forever Young (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 4:56 Forever Young (Planet Waves) 2:48 Forever Young (Planet Waves) 4:55 Forever Young (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 4:55 Forever Young (The Essential Bob Dylan) 4:56 Frankie & Albert (Good As I Been To You) 3:50 Freight Train Blues (Bob Dylan)2:16 Froggie Went A Courtin’ (Good As I Been To You) 6:23 From A Buick 6 (Highway 61 Revisited) 3:15 Gates Of Eden (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 8:37 Gates Of Eden (Bringing It All Back Home) 5:41 George Jackson [Acoustic Version] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 3:37 George Jackson [Big Band Version] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:34 Girl From The North Country (Real Live) 4:25 Girl From The North Country (The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration) 5:12 Girl From The North Country (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 3:20 Girl From The North Country [with Johnny Cash] (Nashville Skyline) 3:41 God Knows (Under The Red Sky) 3:02 Goin’ To Acapulco (The Basement Tapes) 5:26 Going, Going, Gone (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:22 Going, Going, Gone (Planet Waves) 3:26 Golden Loom [7/30/75] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 4:26 Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking (Slow Train Coming) 5:27 Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking [Duet with Mavis Staples] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:13
Gospel Plow (Bob Dylan) 1:43 Got My Mind Made Up (Knocked Out Loaded) 2:53 Gotta Serve Somebody (Biograph) 5:24 Gotta Serve Somebody (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 5:24 Gotta Serve Somebody (Dylan & The Dead) 5:42 Gotta Serve Somebody (Slow Train Coming) 5:23 Gotta Serve Somebody (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 5:23 Gotta Serve Somebody (The Essential Bob Dylan) 5:24 Gotta Travel On (Self Portrait) 3:06 Had A Dream About You, Baby (Down In The Groove) 2:51 Handsome Molly [Live] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:47 Handy Dandy (Under The Red Sky) 4:01
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Hard Times (Good As I Been To You) 4:34 Hard Times In New York Town [12/22/61] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:17
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Hazel (Planet Waves) 2:48 He Was A Friend Of Mine [11/20/61] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 4:02 Heart Of Mine [Live August 1981] (Biograph) 3:42 Heart Of Mine (Shot Of Love) 4:29 High Water (For Charley Patton) (“Love And Theft”) 4:05 Highlands (Time Out Of Mind) 16:32 Highway 51 Blues(Bob Dylan) 2:49 Highway 61 Revisited (Before The Flood) 4:05 Highway 61 Revisited (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 3:38 Highway 61 Revisited (Highway 61 Revisited) 3:25 Highway 61 Revisited (Real Live) 5:07 Honest With Me (“Love And Theft”) 5:49 Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 1:58 House Carpenter [3/19/62] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 4:07 House Of The Risin’ Sun (Bob Dylan) 5:16 Hurricane (Desire) 8 :32 Hurricane (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 8:33 Hurricane (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 8:15 Hurricane (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 8:32 Hurricane (The Essential Bob Dylan) 8:33 I Ain’t Got No Home (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 3:45 I Am A Lonesome Hobo (John Wesley Harding) 3:21 I And I (Infidels) 5:12 I And I (Real Live) 6:00 I And I [Reggae Mix] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:35 I Believe In You (Biograph) 5:09 I Believe In You (Slow Train Coming) 5:08 I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 4:22
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) [Live 5/6/66] (Biograph) 5:18
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 6:10
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 5:19
I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine (John Wesley Harding) 3:54 I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know (Self Portrait) 2:21
I Pity The Poor Immigrant (John Wesley Harding) 4:13 I Shall Be Free (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan)4:47 I Shall Be Free No. 10 (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 4:46 I Shall Be Released (Biograph) 3:02 I Shall Be Released (Before The Flood) 3:19 I Shall Be Released (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:12 I Shall Be Released (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 3:02 I Shall Be Released [Fall 1967] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:54 I Shall Be Released (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 4:32 I Shall Be Released (The Essential Bob Dylan) 3:02 I Threw It All Away (Hard Rain) 3:18 I Threw It All Away (Nashville Skyline) 2:23 I Wanna Be Your Lover [October 1965] (Biograph) 3:25 I Want You (Biograph) 3:05 I Want You (Blonde On Blonde) 3:05 I Want You (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 2:34 I Want You (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 3:09 I Want You (Dylan & The Dead) 3:59 I Was Young When I Left Home (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 5:19 I Was Young When I Left Home [1961] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:23 I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (The Essential Bob Dylan) 2:39 Idiot Wind (Blood On The Tracks) 7:49 Idiot Wind [9/19/74] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 8:52 Idiot Wind (Hard Rain) 10:12 If Dogs Run Free (New Morning) 3:37 If Not For You (Biograph) 2:41 If Not For You (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 2:40 If Not For You [5/1/70] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:32 If Not For You (New Morning) 2:39 If Not For You (The Essential Bob Dylan) 2:40 If You Gotta Go, Go Now [1/15/65] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:54 If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 4:06 If You See Her, Say Hello (Blood On The Tracks) 4:49 If You See Her, Say Hello [9/16/74] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:44 I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (Biograph) 2:45 I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 2:39 I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (John Wesley Harding) 2:38 I’ll Keep It With Mine [1/4/65] (Biograph) 3:44 I’ll Keep It With Mine [1/27/66] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:38 I’ll Remember You (Empire Burlesque) 4:12 In My Time Of Dyin’ (Bob Dylan) 2:37
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In Search Of Little Sadie (Self Portrait) 2:26 In The Garden (Saved) 5:58 In The Summertime (Shot Of Love) 3:34 Is Your Love In Vain? (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:02 Is Your Love In Vain? (Street-Legal) 4:32 Isis [Live 12/4/75] (Biograph) 5:20 Isis (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 5:11 Isis (Desire) 6 :58 It Ain’t Me, Babe (The Essential Bob Dylan) 3:32 It Ain’t Me, Babe (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 3:33 It Ain’t Me, Babe (Before The Flood) 3:15 It Ain’t Me, Babe (Biograph) 3:33 It Ain’t Me, Babe (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 3:32 It Ain’t Me, Babe (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 5:25 It Ain’t Me, Babe (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 5:11 It Ain’t Me, Babe (Real Live) 5:17 It Hurts Me Too (Self Portrait) 3:13 It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry [6/15/65] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:20
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
Joey (Dylan & The Dead) 9:10 John Brown (MTV Unplugged) 5:22 John Wesley Harding (John Wesley Harding) 2:57 Jokerman (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 6:15 Jokerman (Infidels) 6:15 Jokerman (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 6:15 Jokerman (The Essential Bob Dylan) 6:15 Just Like A Woman (Before The Flood) 4:46 Just Like A Woman (Biograph) 4:54 Just Like A Woman (Blonde On Blonde) 4:50 Just Like A Woman (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 5:03 Just Like A Woman (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 4:50 Just Like A Woman (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 6:32 Just Like A Woman (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 4:31 Just Like A Woman (The Essential Bob Dylan) 4:50 Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:37 Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 5:28 Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 6:17 Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 5:42 Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Highway 61 Revisited) 5:27
(Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 3:12
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 3:33
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (Highway 61 Revisited) 4:04 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (The Essential Bob Dylan) 4:14 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 4:14 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue [Live 5/17/66] (Biograph) 5:39 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 6:35 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 4:33 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 3:33 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bringing It All Back Home) 4:14 It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (Before The Flood) 5:12 It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 6:04 It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 10:08 It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (Bringing It All Back Home) 7:31 It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration) 6:21 Jack-A-Roe (World Gone Wrong) 4:59 Jet Pilot [October 1965] (Biograph) 0:49 Jim Jones (Good As I Been To You) 3:55 Joey (Desire) 11:04
Katie’s Been Gone (The Basement Tapes) 2:43 Kingsport Town [11/14/62] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:28 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Before The Flood) 3:30 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Biograph) 2:32 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:00 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 2:30 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 4:21 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Dylan & The Dead) 6:35 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (MTV Unplugged) 5:30 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 2:30 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration) 5:38 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 2:30 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (The Essential Bob Dylan) 2:30 Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie [4/12/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 7:08 Lay Down Your Weary Tune [10/24/63] (Biograph) 4:35 Lay Down Your Weary Tune [Live Carnegie Hall 1963] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:02 Lay, Lady, Lay (Before The Flood) 3:00 Lay, Lady, Lay (Biograph) 3:17 Lay, Lady, Lay (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 3:17
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Lay, Lady, Lay (Hard Rain) 4:47 Lay, Lady, Lay (Nashville Skyline) 3:18 Lay, Lady, Lay (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 3:18 Lay, Lady, Lay (The Essential Bob Dylan) 3:17 Lenny Bruce (Shot Of Love) 4:32 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Blonde On Blonde) 3:56 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 4:01 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 6:23 Let It Be Me (Self Portrait) 2:59 Let Me Die In My Footsteps [4/25/62] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:32 Let’s Stick Together (Down In The Groove) 3:09 License To Kill (Infidels) 3:33 License To Kill (Real Live) 3:26 Like A Rolling Stone (Before The Flood) 6:06 Like A Rolling Stone (Biograph) 6:08 Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 6:31 Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 6:07 Like A Rolling Stone [6/15/65] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 1:34 Like A Rolling Stone (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 8:12 Like A Rolling Stone (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 8:12 Like A Rolling Stone (Highway 61 Revisited) 6:09 Like A Rolling Stone (MTV Unplugged) 9:09 Like A Rolling Stone (Self Portrait) 5:15 Like A Rolling Stone (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 6:09 Like A Rolling Stone (The Essential Bob Dylan) 6:07 Lily Of The West (Dylan) 3:44 Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts (Blood On The Tracks) 8:51 Little Maggie (Good As I Been To You) 4:30 Little Sadie (Self Portrait) 1:58 Living The Blues (Self Portrait) 2:40 Lo And Behold! (The Basement Tapes) 2:45 Lone Pilgrim (World Gone Wrong) 2:39 Lonesome Day Blues (“Love And Theft”) 6:05 Long Distance Operator (The Basement Tapes) 3:38 Lord Protect My Child [5/3/83] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:57 Love Henry (World Gone Wrong) 4:23 Love Minus Zero/No Limit (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 3:52 Love Minus Zero/No Limit (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 3:13 Love Minus Zero/No Limit (Bringing It All Back Home) 2:49 Love Sick (Time Out Of Mind) 5:20 Love Sick [Remix] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:25
Maggie’s Farm (The Essential Bob Dylan) 3:51 Maggie’s Farm (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 5:06 Maggie’s Farm (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 3:51 Maggie’s Farm (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 5:53 Maggie’s Farm (Bringing It All Back Home) 3:55 Maggie’s Farm (Hard Rain) 5:23 Maggie’s Farm (Real Live) 4:54 Main Title Theme (Billy) (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 6:03 Make You Feel My Love (Time Out Of Mind) 3:31 Mama, You Been On My Mind [6/9/64] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:55 Mama, You Been On My Mind (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 3:11 Mama, You Been On My Mind (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 3:36 Man Gave Names To All The Animals (Slow Train Coming) 4:25 Man In The Long Black Coat (Oh Mercy) 4:33 Man Of Constant Sorrow (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 3:03 Man Of Constant Sorrow (Bob Dylan) 3:05 Man Of Peace (Infidels) 6:30 Man Of Peace [with The Grateful Dead] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 4:20 Man On The Street [11/22/61] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 1:55 Mary Ann (Dylan) 2:40 Masters Of War (Biograph) 4:31 Masters Of War (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 4:41 Masters Of War (Real Live) 6:35 Masters Of War (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 4:32 Maybe Someday (Knocked Out Loaded) 3:17 Meet Me In The Morning (Blood On The Tracks) 4:21 Million Dollar Bash (Biograph) 2:32 Million Dollar Bash (The Basement Tapes) 2:31 Million Miles (Time Out Of Mind) 5:52 Minstrel Boy (Self Portrait) 3:30 Mississippi (“Love And Theft”) 5:21 Mixed Up Confusion (Biograph) 2:28 Moonlight (“Love And Theft”) 3:23 Moonshiner [8/12/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 5:05 Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine (Biograph) 3:27 Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine (Before The Flood) 3:16 Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine (Blonde On Blonde) 3:27 Most Of The Time (Oh Mercy) 5:03 Motorpsycho Nitemare (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 4:32 Mozambique (Desire) 3 :00 Mr. Bojangles (Dylan) 5:31
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131
Mr. Tambourine Man (Biograph) 5:28 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:54 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 5:26 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 8:52 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 5:39 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 6:34 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 6:42 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bringing It All Back Home) 5:25 Mr. Tambourine Man (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 5:25 Mr. Tambourine Man (The Essential Bob Dylan) 5:26 Mr. Tambourine Man [Newport Folk Festival 1964] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 7:22 My Back Pages (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 4:22 My Back Pages (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 4:23 My Back Pages (The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration) 4:40 Nashville Skyline Rag (Nashville Skyline) 3 :11 Need A Woman [5/4/81] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 5:42 Neighborhood Bully (Infidels) 4:35 Nettie Moore (Modern Times) 6:52 Never Gonna Be The Same Again (Empire Burlesque) 3:06 Never Let Me Go [Live] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:49 Never Say Goodbye (Planet Waves) 2:51 New Morning (New Morning) 3:58 New Pony (Street-Legal) 4:39 Night After Night (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:50 Ninety Miles An Hour (Down A Dead End Street) (Down In The Groove) 2:55 No More Auction Block [Late 1962] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:02 No Time To Think (Street-Legal) 8:22 Nobody ‘Cept You [11/2/73] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:40 North Country Blues (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 4:31 North Country Blues [Live Carnegie Hall 1963] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 4:15 Not Dark Yet (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 6:28 Not Dark Yet (The Essential Bob Dylan) 6:28 Not Dark Yet (Time Out Of Mind) 6:28 Nothing Was Delivered (The Basement Tapes) 4:22 Obviously 5 Believers (Blonde On Blonde) 3:33 Odds And Ends (The Basement Tapes) 1:46 Oh, Sister (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:44 Oh, Sister (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 4:04 Oh, Sister (Desire) 4:01
Oh, Sister (Hard Rain) 5:08 On A Night Like This (Biograph) 2:57 On A Night Like This (Planet Waves) 2:57 On The Road Again (Bringing It All Back Home) 2:35 One More Cup Of Coffee (Desire) 3:44 One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below) (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 3:19 One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below) (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 4:14 One More Night (Nashville Skyline) 2:22 One More Weekend (New Morning) 3:08 One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) (Blonde On Blonde) 4:52 One Too Many Mornings (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 4:08 One Too Many Mornings (Hard Rain) 3:47 One Too Many Mornings (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 2:37 Only A Hobo [8/12/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:28 Only A Pawn In Their Game (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 3:30 Open The Door, Homer (The Basement Tapes) 2:49 Orange Juice Blues (The Basement Tapes) 3:37 Outlaw Blues (Bringing It All Back Home) 3:02 Outlaw Blues [Acoustic Version] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:16 Oxford Town (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 1:48 Paths Of Victory [8/12/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:17 Peggy Day (Nashville Skyline) 2:00 People Get Ready (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:50 Percy’s Song [10/23/63] (Biograph) 7:40 Please, Mrs. Henry (The Basement Tapes) 2:31 Pledging My Time (Blonde On Blonde) 3:48 Po’ Boy (“Love And Theft”) 3:06 Political World (Oh Mercy) 3:48 Positively 4th Street (Biograph) 3:52 Positively 4th Street (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 3:53 Positively 4th Street (The Essential Bob Dylan) 3:53 Precious Angel (Slow Train Coming) 6:29 Precious Memories (Knocked Out Loaded) 3:13 Pressing On (Saved) 5:11 Pretty Boy Floyd (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 4:24 Pretty Peggy-O (Bob Dylan) 3:21 Property Of Jesus (Shot Of Love) 4:33 Queen Jane Approximately (Dylan & The Dead) 6:30 Queen Jane Approximately (Highway 61 Revisited) 5:27
ALBUMS 1 ALBUMS 2 ALBUMS 3 SONGS
Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) [July 1967] (Biograph) 2:18 Quit Your Low Down Ways [7/9/62] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:39
132
Ragged & Dirty (World Gone Wrong) 4:07 Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35 (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 4:34 Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (Before The Flood) 3:09 Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (Blonde On Blonde)4.34 Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 4:34 Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (MTV Unplugged) 3:31 Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (The Essential Bob Dylan) 4:34 Rambler, Gambler (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 2:16 Rambling, Gambling Willie [4/24/62] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 4:12 Rank Strangers To Me (Down In The Groove) 2:57 Restless Farewell (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 5:33 Return To Me (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:20 Ring Them Bells (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 3:01 Ring Them Bells (Oh Mercy) 3:00 Rita May (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 3:09 River Theme (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 1:26 Rollin’ and Tumblin’ (Modern Times) 6:01 Romance In Durango [Live 12/4/75] (Biograph) 4:38 Romance In Durango (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 5:22 Romance In Durango (Desire) 5:44 Ruben Remus (The Basement Tapes) 3:13 Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands (Blonde On Blonde) 11:19 Sally Gal (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 2:37 Sally Sue Brown (Down In The Groove) 2:28 Santa Fe [Fall 1967] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:08 Sara (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 4:29 Sara (Desire) 5:30 Sarah Jane (Dylan) 2:43 Saved (Saved) 4:00 Saving Grace (Saved) 5:01 See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Bob Dylan)2;40 Seeing The Real You At Last (Empire Burlesque) 4:18 Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power) (Biograph) 5:40 Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power) (Street-Legal) 5:42 Series Of Dreams (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 5:53 Series Of Dreams [3/23/89] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 5:52 Seven Curses [8/6/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:47
Seven Days [4/21/76] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:59 She Belongs To Me (Self Portrait) 2:41 She Belongs To Me (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 2:49 She Belongs To Me (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 4:07 She Belongs To Me (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 3:18 She Belongs To Me (Bringing It All Back Home) 2:46 Shelter From The Storm (Blood On The Tracks) 5:02 Shelter From The Storm (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:30 Shelter From The Storm (Hard Rain) 5:29 Shelter From The Storm (The Essential Bob Dylan) 5:02 Shenandoah (Down In The Groove) 3:38 She’s Your Lover Now [1/21/66] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 6:08 Shooting Star (MTV Unplugged) 4:06 Shooting Star (Oh Mercy) 3:11 Shot Of Love (Shot Of Love) 4:18 Sign On The Window (New Morning) 3:45 Silver Dagger (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 3:47 Silvio (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 3:06 Silvio (Down In The Groove) 3:06 Silvio (The Essential Bob Dylan) 3:06 Simple Twist Of Fate (Blood On The Tracks) 4:17 Simple Twist Of Fate (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 4:15 Simple Twist Of Fate (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 4:16 Sittin’ On Top Of The World (Good As I Been To You) 4:30 Sitting On A Barbed-Wire Fence [6/15/65] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:52 Slow Train (Dylan & The Dead) 4:54 Slow Train (Slow Train Coming) 5:56 Solid Rock (Biograph) 3:56 Solid Rock (Saved) 3:55 Somebody Touched Me [Live] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:42 Someday Baby (Modern Times) 4:55 Someone’s Got A Hold Of My Heart [4/25/83] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 4:32 Something There Is About You (Planet Waves) 4:42 Something’s Burning, Baby (Empire Burlesque) 4:57 Song To Woody (Bob Dylan) 2:41 Song To Woody (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 2:41 Spanish Harlem Incident (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 2:25 Spanish Harlem Incident (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 2:51 Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Dylan) 4:13 Spirit on the Water (Modern Times) 7:42 Stack A Lee (World Gone Wrong) 3:51
ALBUMS 1 ALBUMS 2 ALBUMS 3 SONGS
Stage Fright (Before The Flood) 4:22 Standing In The Doorway (Time Out Of Mind) 7:42 Step It Up And Go (Good As I Been To You) 2:57 Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (Blonde On Blonde) 7:04
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 7:08
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 5:44
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Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (Hard Rain) 6:01 Subterranean Homesick Blues (Biograph) 2:19 Subterranean Homesick Blues (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 2:17 Subterranean Homesick Blues [1/13/65] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:17 Subterranean Homesick Blues (Bringing It All Back Home) 2:18 Subterranean Homesick Blues (The Essential Bob Dylan) 2:17 Sugar Baby (“Love And Theft”) 6:41 Summer Days (“Love And Theft”) 4:53 Summer Days (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 4:53 Suze (The Cough Song) [10/24/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 1:57 Sweetheart Like You (Infidels) 4:33 T.V. Talkin’ Song (Under The Red Sky) 3:01 Take A Message To Mary (Self Portrait) 2:45 Take Me As I Am (Self Portrait) 3:01 Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues [4/25/62] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:44 Talkin’ Hava Negeilah Blues [4/25/62] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 0:51 Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues [10/26/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 4:25 Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 4:22 Talkin’ New York (Bob Dylan) 3:17 Talkin’ World War III Blues (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 5:53 Talkin’ World War III Blues (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) 6:25 Tangled Up In Blue (Blood On The Tracks) 5:42 Tangled Up In Blue [9/16/74] Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 6:50 Tangled Up In Blue (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 5:41 Tangled Up In Blue (Biograph) 5:44 Tangled Up In Blue (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 4:41 Tangled Up In Blue (Real Live) 6:54 Tangled Up In Blue (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 5:42 Tangled Up In Blue (The Essential Bob Dylan) 5:41 Tears Of Rage (The Basement Tapes) 4:11
Tell ‘Ol Bill (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:09 Tell Me [4/21/83] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 4:24 Tell Me That It Isn’t True (Nashville Skyline) 2:40 Tell Me, Momma (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 5:39 Temporary Like Achilles (Blonde On Blonde) 5:00 The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest (John Wesley Harding) 5:33 The Ballad Of Ira Hayes (Dylan) 5:08 The Boxer (Self Portrait) 2:45 The Grand Coulee Dam (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:56 The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar (Biograph) 4:03 The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 4:03 The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar (Shot Of Love) 4:02 The Levee’s Gonna Break (Modern Times) 5:43 The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (Biograph) 5:45 The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 5:25 The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 7:29 The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 5:44 The Man In Me (New Morning) 3:05 The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo) (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 2:47 The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo) (Self Portrait) 2:45 The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo) (The Essential Bob Dylan) 2:18 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Before The Flood) 4:05 The Shape I’m In (Before The Flood) 3:33 The Times They Are A-Changin’ (Biograph) 3:13 The Times They Are A-Changin’ (Bob Dylan At Budokan) 5:31 The Times They Are A-Changin’ (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) 3:11 The Times They Are A-Changin’ [1963] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:58 The Times They Are A-Changin’ (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 3:30 The Times They Are A-Changin’ (MTV Unplugged) 5:48 The Times They Are A-Changin’ (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 3:11 The Times They Are A-Changin’ (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 3:11 The Times They Are A-Changin’ (The Essential Bob Dylan) 3:11 The Times They Are A-Changin’ [Live Carnegie Hall 1963] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 4:03 The Water Is Wide (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 5:16 The Weight (Before The Flood) 4:20 The Wicked Messenger (John Wesley Harding) 2:03 They Killed Him (Knocked Out Loaded) 4:00 Things Have Changed (The Best Of Bob Dylan) 5:08 Things Have Changed (The Essential Bob Dylan) 5:08 Things Have Changed [Live Portsmouth 2000] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 5:52 This Land Is Your Land (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 5:57
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This Wheel’s On Fire (The Basement Tapes) 3:45 Three Angels (New Morning) 2:05 Thunder on the Mountain (Modern Times) 5:55 Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love) (Empire Burlesque) 5:19 Til I Fell In Love With You (Time Out Of Mind) 5:15 Time Passes Slowly (Biograph) 2:35 Time Passes Slowly (New Morning) 2:35 Tiny Montgomery (The Basement Tapes) 2:45 To Be Alone With You (Nashville Skyline) 2:08 To Ramona (Another Side Of Bob Dylan) 3:51 To Ramona (Biograph) 3:52 To Ramona (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 6:02 To Ramona [Live Sheffield England 1965] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 4:28 Tombstone Blues (Biograph) 5:56 Tombstone Blues (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 3:34 Tombstone Blues (Highway 61 Revisited) 5:55 Tombstone Blues (MTV Unplugged) 4:54 Tombstone Blues (Real Live) 4:32 Tomorrow Is A Long Time (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 3:03 Tomorrow Night (Good As I Been To You) 3:43 Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 3:24 Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975) 3:55 Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (Nashville Skyline) 3:22 Too Much Of Nothing (The Basement Tapes) 3:01 Tough Mama (Planet Waves) 4:14 Trouble (Shot Of Love) 4:32 True Love Tends To Forget (Street-Legal) 4:14 Trust Yourself (Empire Burlesque) 3:26 Tryin’ To Get To Heaven (Time Out Of Mind) 5:21 Turkey Chase (Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid) 3:30 Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (“Love And Theft”) 4:46 Two Soldiers (World Gone Wrong) 5:44 Ugliest Girl In The World (Down In The Groove) 3:31 Unbelievable (Under The Red Sky) 4:05 Under The Red Sky (Under The Red Sky) 4:08 Under The Red Sky (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) 4:09 Under Your Spell (Knocked Out Loaded) 4:55 Union Sundown (Infidels) 5:22 Up On Cripple Creek (Before The Flood) 4:57 Up To Me [9/25/74] (Biograph) 6:18
Visions Of Johanna [Live 5/26/66] (Biograph) 7:31 Visions Of Johanna (Blonde On Blonde) 7:31 Visions Of Johanna (Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966) 8:48 Visions Of Johanna (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 6:36 Wade In The Water (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 2:59 Waiting For You (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 3:36 Walkin’ Down The Line [1963] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:52 Wallflower [11/4/71] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:48 Walls Of Red Wing [4/24/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 5:03 Watching The River Flow (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 3:36 Watered Down Love (Shot Of Love) 4:10 We Better Talk This Over (Street-Legal) 4:03 Wedding Song (Planet Waves) 4:41 Went To See The Gypsy (New Morning) 2:47 Went To See The Gypsy [1970 New Morning Sessions] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 3:32 What Can I Do For You? (Saved) 5:54 What Good Am I? (Oh Mercy) 4:44 What Was It You Wanted (Oh Mercy) 5:02 When Did You Leave Heaven? (Down In The Groove) 2:15 When He Returns (Slow Train Coming) 4:30 When I Got Troubles (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 1:28 When I Paint My Masterpiece (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 3:21 When the Deal Goes Down (Modern Times) 5:04 When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky [2/19/85] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 5:37
When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky (Empire Burlesque) 7:18 When The Ship Comes In [1962] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:54 When The Ship Comes In (Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home) 3:05 When The Ship Comes In (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 3:15 When You Awake (Before The Flood) 2:54 When You Gonna Wake Up? (Slow Train Coming) 5:28 Where Are You Tonight? (Street-Legal) 6:15 Where Teardrops Fall (Oh Mercy) 2:32 Who Killed Davey Moore? [10/26/63] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 3:08 Who Killed Davey Moore? (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 4:42 Wiggle Wiggle (Under The Red Sky) 2:09 Wigwam (Self Portrait) 3:07 Winterlude (New Morning) 2:22 With God On Our Side (Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964) 6:18 With God On Our Side (MTV Unplugged) 7:16
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With God On Our Side (The Times They Are A-Changin’) 7:05 With God On Our Side [Live Carnegie Hall 1963] (Rare Tracks From The Vaults) 6:50 Woogie Boogie (Self Portrait) 2:05 Workingman’s Blues #2 (Modern Times) 6:07 World Gone Wrong (World Gone Wrong) 3:53 Worried Blues [7/9/62] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 2:38
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Yazoo Street Scandal (The Basement Tapes) 3:27 Ye Shall Be Changed [5/27/79] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 4:07 Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread (The Basement Tapes) 2:13 You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (The Essential Bob Dylan) 2:44 You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) 2:44 You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (The Basement Tapes) 2:42 You Angel You (Biograph) 2:52 You Angel You (Planet Waves) 2:52 You Changed My Life [4/23/81] (Bootleg Series 1-3: Rare and Unreleased) 5:13 You Wanna Ramble (Knocked Out Loaded) 3:14 You’re A Big Girl Now [9/25/74] (Biograph) 4:21 You’re A Big Girl Now (Blood On The Tracks) 4:31 You’re A Big Girl Now (Hard Rain) 7:01 You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Blood On The Tracks) 2:53 You’re Gonna Quit Me (Good As I Been To You) 2:48 You’re No Good (Bob Dylan) 1:36
CREDITS: Executive Producer: Jeff Rosen Product Manager: Lisa Buckler Digital book design: Chika Azuma Liner Notes: Tom Piazza Special Thanks: Steve Berkowitz, Robert Bower, Stacey Boyle, Lisa Buckler, Ralph Capasso, Bruce Dickinson, Jimmy Dixon, Adam Farber, Carlos Fernandez, Glenn Frese, Sam Gomez, Jeff Jones, Diane Lapson, Adrienne Lalla, Greg Linn, Patti Matheny, Paul Oswald, Zak Profera, Lynne Sheridan, Gary Stewart, Debbie Sweeney, Marc Zbyszynski Cover photo: Danny Clinch Original album photography: Howard Alk, Joel Bernstein, Al Clayton, Danny Clinch, John Cohen, Barry Feinstein, David Gahr, Don Hunstein, Art Kane, Dan Kramer, Kevin Mazur, Reid Miles, Morgan Renard, Arthur Rosato, Jerry Schatzberg, Mark Seliger, Sandy Speiser, Randee St. Nicholas, Susie-Q
l © 2006 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
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