WITH BOB DYLAN, GLASTONBURY 1998, PHOTO BY BLEDDYN BUTCHER
Bob Dylan: I listen to CD’s, satellite radio and streaming. I do love the sound of old vinyl though, especially on a tube record player from back in the day. I bought three of those in an antique store in Oregon about 30 years ago. They’re just little, but the tone quality is so powerful and miraculous, has so much depth, it always takes me back to the days when life was different and unpredictable. You had no idea what was coming down the road, and it didn’t matter. The laws of time didn’t apply to you.How do you discover new music these days?Mostly by accident, by chance. If I go looking for something I usually don’t find it. In fact, I never find it. I walk into things intuitively when I’m most likely not looking for anything. Tiny Hill, Teddy Edwards, people like that. Obscure artists, obscure songs. There’s a song by Jimmy Webb that Frank Sinatra recorded called, “Whatever Happened to Christmas,” I think he recorded it in the 60s, but I just discovered it. Ella Fitzgerald’s “A-Tiskit, A-Tasket.” Janis Martin, the female Elvis. Have you heard her? Joe Turner is always surprising me with little nuances and things. I listen to Brenda Lee a lot. No matter how many times I hear her, it’s like I just discovered her. She’s such an old soul. Lately, I discovered a fantastic guitar player, Teddy Bunn. I heard him on a Meade Lux Lewis – Sid Catlett record.Interview By Jeff SlatePhotograph
"Before we end the conversation, I want to ask about the controversy over your quotations in your songs from the works of other writers, such as Japanese author Junichi Saga’s “Confessions of a Yakuza,” and the Civil War poetry of Henry Timrod. Some critics say that you didn ‘t cite your sources clearly. Yet in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition.
What’s your response to those kinds of charges?
Oh, yeah, in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. That certainly is true. It’s true for everybody, but me. I mean, everyone else can do it but not me. There are different rules for me. And as far as Henry Timrod is concerned, have you even heard of him? Who’s been reading him lately? And who’s pushed him to the forefront? Who’s been making you read him? And ask his descendants what they think of the hoopla. And if you think it’s so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get. Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. It’s an old thing – it’s part of the tradition. It goes way back. These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell.
Seriously?
I’m working within my art form. It’s that simple. I work within the rules and limitations of it. There are authoritarian figures that can explain that kind of art form better to you than I can. It’s called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm, and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours. We all do it.
When those lines make their way into a song, you’re conscious of it happening?
Well, not really. But even if you are, you let it go. I’m not going to limit what I can say. I have to be true to the song. It’s a particular art form that has its own rules. It’s a different type of thing. All my stuff comes out of the folk tradition – it’s not necessarily akin to the pop world.
Do you find that sort of criticism irrelevant, or silly?
I try to get past all that. I have to. When you ask me if I find criticism of my work irrelevant or silly, no, not if it’s constructive. If someone could point out here or there where my work could be improved upon, I guess I’d be willing to listen. The people who are obsessed with criticism – it’s not honest criticism. They are not the people who I play to anyway.
But surely you’ve heard about this particular controversy?
People have tried to stop me every inch of the way. They’ve always had bad stuff to say about me. Newsweek magazine lit the fuse way back when. Newsweek printed that some kid from New Jersey wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” and it wasn’t me at all. And when that didn’t fly, people accused me of stealing the melody from a 16th-century Protestant hymn. And when that didn’t work, they said they made a mistake and it was really an old Negro spiritual. So what’s so different? It’s gone on for so long I might not be able to live without it now. Fuck ’em. I’ll see them all in their graves.
Everything people say about you or me, they are saying about themselves. They’re telling about themselves. Ever notice that? In my case, there’s a whole world of scholars, professors and Dylanologists, and everything I do affects them in some way. And, you know, in some ways, I’ve given them life. They’d be nowhere without me."
- from the September 27th, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.
Personally I was always rather fond of Judas in the story book (The Goat Herders Iron Age Guide To The Galaxy) and if you end up hating him then I don’t think you really get the point of the story. Without Judas it doesn’t really work. The main character understood this well and good
"Nothing much is happening here I guess.
Bob Shelton is waiting for Jean.
The dogs are waiting to go out.
The thieves are waiting for an old lady.
Little kids are waiting for school.
The cop is waiting to beat up on someone.
Them lousy bums are waiting for money.
Grove Street is waiting for Bedford Street.
The dirty are waiting to be cleaned.
Everybody is waiting for cooler weather.
And I am just waiting for you"
“Bob was charismatic: he was a beacon, a lighthouse… He was also a black hole. He required committed backup and protection I was unable to provide consistently, probably because I needed them myself.”
Suze Rotolo
I’m not, like, agog. Most people get speechless. I just kid him to death. He’s got a great sense of humour and we’ve always got on. God knows what he’s done for everyone’s writing. I really like Bob. And I’m a fan.
Stephen Stills
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After three years, the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour comes to an end this week at the Royal Albert Hall. Any speculation that a Beacon show or two could still get added, however unlikely at this late date, was finally squashed by a longtime crew member writing that these were the “last 3 shows of the year.” This is it. Until whatever’s next.
Following this fall tour from afar, as I had been up until last night, it looked like an odd way to end things. For one, it seemed unlike Dylan to turn the page—as he did this summer, switching to the entirely different Outlaw Tour—and then turn the page back. Once he was done with Rolling Thunder, he was done with Rolling Thunder, you know? He didn’t revive it for another go-round after the 1978 tour.
The other bit of on-paper oddness was the setlist. After the entire 2.5-year tour featured an almost entirely unchanged setlist (say it with me: except for the covers), suddenly the Rough and Rowdy setlist has looked different these last two months. The songs from the titular album remained, naturally, but jettisoned were some equally core older songs. “Most Likely You Go Your Way,” “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” “Gotta Serve Somebody”—staples up until now, as seemingly integral to the show as “I Contain Multitudes,” all given the boot (as was “River Flow” briefly, but, like a cockroach, it always finds a way to survive). Even weirder: In their place? A bunch of “voice of a generation”-era greatest hits. Very un-Rough and Rowdy.
So my question going into night one of the Royal Albert Hall was: Does this even feel like a Rough and Rowdy show anymore?...
As Facebook’s Alan Bershaw so wisely points out "Woody Guthrie wrote these lyrics 74 years ago and this penetrating performance is from 48 years ago, yet the song couldn't be more relevant today. "You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane. All they will call you will be deportees."
"After “Like a Rolling Stone” had been written, Bob Dylan invited Mike Bloomfield to his Woodstock home in Upstate New York for the weekend to play the new material. In an interview, Bloomfield later said, “The first thing I heard was ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. I figured he wanted blues, string bending because that’s what I do. He said, ‘Hey, man, I don’t want any of that B.B. King stuff.’ So, OK, I really fell apart. What the heck does he want? We messed around with the song. I played the way that he dug, and he said it was groovy.”
Dylan and company recorded the song on June 15 and 16 in 1965 at Studio A of Columbia Records in New York City. It was produced by Tom Wilson (and was the last song Wilson would produce for Dylan). Along with Bloomfield, Wilson recruited musicians Paul Griffin for piano, Joe Macho Jr. on bass, Bobby Gregg on drums, Bruce Langhorne on tambourine.
On the second day of recording, Al Kooper joined the session. Then, just 21 years old, Kooper was known as a guitar player. He wasn’t even supposed to play on the session, but when he had a chance, Kooper sat down to take part in the proceedings. As the day continued to transpire, Kooper, who had now ingratiated himself in the session, later told the powers that be that he had a good organ part for the song.
At first, Kooper was scoffed at and was told “no.” But when Dylan heard a playback, which included Kooper’s organ part, he insisted that the organ be turned up, even though Kooper was not a formal organ player. The rest is history. In total, the band did 20 takes and ended up using take No. 4 as the final.
Many have speculated as to the identity of the song’s main character, Miss Lonely. While the figure may be made up or an amalgamation of several people, many big names have been suggested as to the identity of the central figure, from model Edie Sedgwick to folk heroin Joan Baez.
Dylan performed the song for the first time live within days of its release in Newport, Rhode Island at the Newport Folk Festival. Famously, many in the audience protested Dylan going electric. "
By
Jacob Uitti / American Songwriter
I have two issues with the "Before the Flood" album. First, I usually prefer full concerts, warts and all, to live albums selected from multiple concerts. And second, it seemed to me that Dylan was just going through the motions, playing his "greatest hits" to please the large crowds without much enthusiasm on his part.
It turns out that's exactly what happened. Dylan had been in seclusion pretty much since his 1966 motorcycle accident. He'd only done one full concert in all the years since then (at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969), plus a handful of guest appearances. The public demand to see him on tour was immense. Add to that the fact that his backing band in 1966 were just a bunch of unknowns, but had since been deemed "the Band," and had some hits and critically praised albums of their own. They were a big concert draw in their own right, so to see them back Dylan was extra special. The resulting tour was one of the biggest and most hyped tour in rock and roll up until that point, selling out everywhere.
Unfortunately, whoever booked the tour set up a punishing schedule, with two shows per days sometimes and almost no days off. As the tour went on, Dylan started to lose the power of his voice. He often resorted to shouting the songs more than singing them. Furthermore, he played fewer and fewer rarities as the tour went on, ending up with just his biggest crowd pleasers by the end. Unfortunately, the "Before the Flood" album is drawn from the end of the tour. But most Dylan fanatics are more interested in the beginning of the tour, when Dylan and the Band were excited instead of weary, Dylan was singing great, and they weren't afraid to play unusual songs.
But there are more problems with the box set. One is that some of the concerts were not professionally recorded in full, due to technical difficulties or negligence or the like. Another is that although the Band played many of their own songs in every concert on the tour, the box set contains absolutely NONE of those.
The very first concert on the tour took place in Chicago on January 3, 1974. That one, plus the next one, also in Chicago, on January 4th, are the most interesting ones to me, in terms of the set list as well as the quality of the performance. But there's a pretty good sounding audience bootleg for the January 4th show, but only a very poor sounding bootleg for January 4th. So I decided to post the January 4th concert.
I used the audience bootleg to fill in the missing Band songs, all ten of them (tracks 7-12 and 21-24). The sound quality on these isn't as good, and you'll probably notice that right away. But I still think they sound very listenable. I used some tricks with the UVR5 and MSVEP audio editing programs to make them sound a little better. For instance, I got rid of most of the crowd noise in the middles of sounds, generally only keeping the cheering at the starts and ends of songs.
Another problem with this concert is that five of the Dylan songs were missing (probably due to technical problems). Those were: "Lay, Lady, Lady," "All Along the Watchtower," "Forever Young," "Something There Is about You," and "Like a Rolling Stone." Luckily for my purposes, all five of these songs happened have been performed the night before, even though there were many differences in the two set lists. So, for those five songs, I used the versions from January 3rd, since the sound quality was significantly better than the audience bootleg from the Fourth.
There was yet another problem with this concert recording. Namely, for both the January 3rd and 4th recordings, virtually all of the applause was quickly faded out at the ends of songs. This would have resulted in the loss of all banter between songs, but it so happened Dylan and the members of the Band almost never said a word between songs, so there probably wasn't anything lost there. However, it sounded annoying to me to have the applause cut off. So I did some editing, patching in extra applause after virtually every song, except for the Band ones, since they were sourced differently. It seems whoever was recording the concerts cut the applause off like that for all the early dates in the tour. Maybe it was to save on recording tape, I don't know.
Because it had been so long since Dylan had gone on tour, many of the songs were being played for the first time on these two Chicago nights. For instance, even though "All Along the Watchtower" had been written way back in 1967, and Dylan would go on to perform that song in concerts more than any other (2300 plus and growing as I write this), he'd never played it in concert before this. Others had only been done rarely. For instance, "Hero Blues" and "Song to Woody" had only been performed a couple of times back in 1962 and/or 1963. Dylan and the Band released a new studio album right as the tour was starting, called "Planet Waves." They only played a few songs from the album on tour though, and they gradually dropped out of the set lists as the tour went on. But this concert has "Tough Mama," "Something There Is about You," and "Forever Young," plus the outtake "Nobody 'Cept You." Additionally, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" had only been released the year before on a movie soundtrack, and was being played for the first time as well.
If you're a Dylan fanatic, you should get the entire box set. If you're not though, I'd easily recommend this over the "Before the Flood" album, even though the Band songs sound a little worse.
This album is an hour and 57 minutes long.
01 Hero Blues
02 Lay, Lady, Lay
03 Just like Tom Thumb's Blues
04 It Ain't Me, Babe
05 Tough Mama
06 Ballad of a Thin Man
07 Stage Fright
08 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
09 King Harvest [Has Surely Come]
10 Long Black Veil
11 I Shall Be Released
12 Up on Cripple Creek
13 All Along the Watchtower
14 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
15 Knockin' on Heaven's Door
16 The Times They Are A-Changin'
17 Love Minus Zero-No Limit
18 The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
19 Nobody 'Cept You
20 It's Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding]
21 Rag Mama Rag
22 When You Awake
23 The Shape I'm In
24 The Weight
25 Forever Young
26 Something There Is about You
27 Like a Rolling Stone
28 Maggie's Farm
Now I have said before ( and keep saying - ED) that I don’t, or won’t, post any more Bob Dylan Boots and they are all become much of a muchness in recent years and even the so called soundboards are very particular (bass heavy and vocal diminished ) so that I don’t bother but every now and then someone posts something of interest and this is such from Paul over at Albums That Should Exist.
I adored Before the Flood and especially Most Likely You Go Your Way . . . . . . it means something to me and this will too. I loved the Bobby and The Band tour of 1974
Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, the ballad of a true original. A Film by James Mangold. Co-starring Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, and Monica Barbaro. Only in theatres Christmas Day. #ACompleteUnknown
Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician BOB DYLAN’s (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. A Film By James Mangold. Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Norbert Leo Butz, Dan Fogler, and Scoot McNairy. Subscribe To Searchlight Pictures:
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#ACompleteUnknown #SearchlightPictures"Nowadays I listen to music on CDs, satellite radio and streaming. I do love the sound of old vinyl, especially on a tube record player from back in the day. I bought three in an antique store in Oregon about 30 years ago.
The tone quality is so powerful and miraculous, has so much depth. It always takes me back to the days when life was different and unpredictable.." [Bob Dylan]
From a few days ago this. . . . . . . . . .
“Well I picked up a rose
And it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard the deafening noise,
I felt transient joys
I know they’re not what they seem
In this earthly domain,
Full of disappointment and pain
You’ll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you,
And that’s sayin' it true
And I’ll be with you
When the deal goes down.”
