DylanRevisited
@DylanRevisited
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Revisiting Bob Dylan's back catalogue one album/bootleg/live record at a time. If you like my threads, why not buy me a coffee:
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I revisited The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-71) and marvelled at its many insights and treasures from a fascinating few years in Bob Dylan's career.
My five-thread revisit starts here: .
Of the many issues that contemporary critics had with Bob Dylan's 1970 album Self Portrait, the unprecedented overdubs were a most prominent complaint.
The Bootleg Series: Vol. 10 – Another Self Portrait offers a chance to discover whether the overdub objectors had a point. 🧵
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Salute him when his birthday comes.
Happy 82nd birthday Bob Dylan. Here's to many more.
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When Bob Dylan heard Music From Big Pink, he was stunned.
Despite having played music with The Band nearly every day during 1967, Robbie Robertson recalled that Dylan “couldn’t believe that that’s what we do when we’re not doing it with him”. 🧵
Photo by Elliott Landy
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Bob Dylan was on a train to Nashville, where he was about to start recording his eighth studio album, John Wesley Harding.
He wrote throughout the journey and arrived at Columbia’s Studio A with a new song that would be the first one cut for this extraordinary record. 🧵
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The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was released on this day 60 years ago.
It was the record that launched his career and, perhaps more importantly, gave us music's best album cover.
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He wrote this song. That alone is an incredible legacy. RIP Robbie Robertson.
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When Bob Dylan played what he’d recorded in Nashville to Robbie Robertson back in Woodstock, he suggested that the guitarist and his Band add overdubs to John Wesley Harding’s spare arrangements.
Robertson advised his friend to stick with what he had. 🧵
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When Bob Dylan went to war with the folk purists, Robbie Robertson stood tall beside him. What a guitarist, songwriter and visionary he was.
But Dylan still had brave soldiers on his side, none more so than guitarist Robbie Robertson, who constantly put himself in the firing line with his gutsy blues solos.
He’s a powerhouse on the Free Trade Hall version of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.
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It was Beatty Zimmerman who first divulged that her son Bob spent a lot of time reading the Bible during his year out of the spotlight in Woodstock.
The flood of biblical references on John Wesley Harding confirm Mama Dylan’s revelation. 🧵
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Johnny Cash recorded three Bob Dylan songs for his 1964 album, Orange Blossom Special, including Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.
Five years later, Cash sang that song with its writer during a spontaneous recording session. Though this duet came with a twist. 🧵
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On hearing of Woody Guthrie’s death, Bob Dylan let it be known that he wanted to be part of any tribute event that may happen.
On January 20th 1968, the singer made his first public appearance in 18 months at Carnegie Hall to honour his hero. 🧵
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Eat the Document opens with a shot of Bob Dylan snorting something off a tabletop then asking, "Have you ever heard of me?”
An ego indulging itself is an appropriate introduction to this film. 🧵
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By 1968, the daily basement sessions in Woodstock had come to an end as The Band began focusing on their debut album.
For the first time since he turned on his tap in 1962, the songs stopped flowing out of Bob Dylan. 🧵
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After a year of playing together in Woodstock, Bob Dylan and The Band released separate expressions of the basement sound.
But where Dylan’s John Wesley Harding amplified the austerity of those sessions, The Band aimed for expansion on their debut album, Music from Big Pink. 🧵
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The performers paying tribute to Woody Guthrie at Carnegie Hall in January 1968 stuck to his most well-known songs.
Except Bob Dylan, who decided to throw in an obscure number that its songwriter never even got round to recording. 🧵
Photo by David Gahr
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During the first part of Martin Scorsese’s epic documentary, No Direction Home, the story of Bob Dylan’s early career is mostly related by the singer himself.
But then the director has form with somewhat unreliable narrators, like Henry Hill and Jordan Belfort. 🧵
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In 1967, Al Grossman negotiated a lucrative new deal for Bob Dylan with Columbia Records, having threatened to move his charge from the label to MGM.
Nevertheless, the musician was becoming increasingly disgruntled with the businessman and it was showing up in his songs. 🧵
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June 16, 1965. Session musician and songwriter, Al Kooper is about to blag his way into rock history by playing an instrument he doesn't even know how to turn on.
Such is the unplanned majesty of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone and the album it opens, Highway 61 Revisited. 🧵
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Joan Baez is sitting by a huge fireplace in a kitchen straight out of Country Living magazine, recalling how at every protest or sit-in she’s attended since the mid-60s, people ask: “Is Bob coming?”
She laughs in exasperation then scoffs, “He never comes, you moron”. 🧵
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Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone was released on this day in 1965.
Here's the story of its impromptu creation and how Dylan's label nearly shelved the single:
June 16, 1965. Session musician and songwriter, Al Kooper is about to blag his way into rock history by playing an instrument he doesn't even know how to turn on.
Such is the unplanned majesty of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone and the album it opens, Highway 61 Revisited. 🧵
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In 1966 Bob Dylan left the comforts of New York, where he had recorded all of his previous records, and headed to Nashville in search of a sound.
Years later he’d describe it as “that thin, that wild mercury sound” and hail its exemplar as I Want You. 🧵
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Throughout No Direction Home, Bob Dylan recalls his early life with no trace of nostalgia or regret for the family and hometown he left behind.
But the film's soundtrack - released as The Bootleg Series Vol. 7 - contains a suggestion that the young Dylan felt differently. 🧵
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It’s lunchtime at Columbia’s Studio A and while the musicians are taking a well-earned break, Bob Dylan is working at the piano.
By the end of the hour, he has transformed a song once called Phantom Engineer into one of Highway 61 Revisited’s most captivating moments. 🧵
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“Hey, let’s do Mountain Dew – do you know it?”
Johnny Cash sounds very excited to steer his spontaneous studio session with Bob Dylan back to the classics of the past. 🧵
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Nashville Skyline - Bob Dylan’s ninth studio album - kicks off with a duet cover of one his older songs that is followed by a full band instrumental.
Anyone hoping for fresh original material won't be satisfied until they hear Dylan say: “is it rolling, Bob?” 🧵
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The soundtrack to No Direction Home starts with one of the earliest known recordings of a Bob Dylan original.
Though in 1959, the singer was still a kid from Hibbing, Minnesota named Robert Zimmerman. 🧵
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It’s past 4am in Nashville where Bob Dylan and his sleepy band are partway through a song of indeterminate length.
A tired Charlie McCoy is finding it hard to stay focused as Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ seemingly endless verses keep spilling out of the wide-awake singer. 🧵
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Todd Haynes’ schizophrenic take on Bob Dylan’s life was not a biopic aimed at casual fans of the musician.
The director demonstrated this by naming his 2007 film after an obscure, previously unreleased song from the basement. 🧵
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Bob Dylan did not arrive in Nashville in Feb 1969 intending to complete an album – he only brought four finished songs with him.
But over two weeks in Tennessee, he wrote just enough additional material to make Nashville Skyline - his shortest record yet. 🧵
📷 Elliott Landy
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Five of the songs on Blonde on Blonde feature a bridge.
By my count, just one song – Ballad of a Thin Man – does on Bob Dylan’s previous two album combined.
Which makes me think Dylan wanted his seventh album to be more of a pop record. 🧵
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Bob Dylan is perched on a chair holding a mandolin under his chin like it's a fiddle, while his other empty hand pretends to bow its strings.
It’s like his wry little nod to the weird decits on the first official release of The Basement Tapes. 🧵
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I've previously suggested that Bob Dylan’s ninth collection of new songs doesn’t really get going until after the first two tracks.
It’s also possible that Nashville Skyline really started with the last pair of songs on his previous album. 🧵
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It's a Bob Dylan special on BBC2 this evening starting with the remarkable "live" film Shadow Kingdom.
That's followed by all 3+ hours of the essential No Direction Home documentary (which I revisited here: ).
Finally other artists covering Dylan.
Throughout No Direction Home, Bob Dylan recalls his early life with no trace of nostalgia or regret for the family and hometown he left behind.
But the film's soundtrack - released as The Bootleg Series Vol. 7 - contains a suggestion that the young Dylan felt differently. 🧵
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During those frustrating Blonde on Blonde sessions in New York, Bob Dylan tried 14 takes of a song slated as Freeze Out.
Not only was he was still working on the lyrics of what would eventually become Visions of Johanna, he was unhappy with his band. 🧵
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Just one month after unleashing his rock monster Highway 61 Revisited on the world, Bob Dylan released an absolute belter of a single called Positively 4th Street. 🧵
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Finally got my hands on a copy of Shadow Kingdom.
Wow - Dylan's voice, the flow between the songs, that ever-present keening accordion, the rock'n'rolling I'll Be Your Baby Tonight. What a record.
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Music From Big Pink’s title tells you to expect the sound of cinder blocks, but most of the record is marked by John Simon’s thoughtful production and The Band’s sonic invention.
Nevertheless, the basement remains a presence throughout the album. 🧵
Photo by Elliott Landy
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Bob Dylan, a cat and a languid, smoking woman in red all stare at you through a fishbowl flare while your eye is drawn to the cultural detritus surrounding them.
As a first impression of a record, there’s a lot to unpack in the cover art of Bringing It All Back Home. 🧵
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On October 3rd 1967, Woody Guthrie died in hospital aged 55, after decades of living with the incurable neurodegenerative Huntingdon’s disease.
Around this time, Bob Dylan was singing some of Guthrie's songs with The Band in the basement. 🧵
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After months of playing together in the basement of Big Pink, the time was coming for Bob Dylan and The Band to move off in their own directions.
But as you can hear on The Basement Tapes, they were also hitting their stride as a musical collective. 🧵
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In 1967, Bob Dylan was AWOL in upstate New York following his motorcycle crash.
With no new material to release, Columbia Records decided to fill the gap with a Greatest Hits compilation. 🧵
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While Bob Dylan was messing around making Basement Tapes, his manager Al Grossman was closing some serious deals.
He secured his star client a favourable new deal with Columbia Records, while also setting up a new publishing company, Dwarf Music. 🧵
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The first music we hear in No Direction Home is a live version of Like a Rolling Stone.
Bob Dylan is howling into a microphone while The Hawks create a racket behind him.
Then there’s a sharp cut to silence and monochrome stills of bare trees and snowy landscapes. 🧵
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The second half The Bootleg Series Vol. 7 – No Direction Home: The Soundtrack is all about Bob Dylan’s controversial evolution from folk singer to rock star.
While it’s a familiar story to most fans, the studio outtakes from those iconic first electric albums were new. 🧵
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On November 22, 1965, Bob Dylan married Sara Lownds under a Long Island oak tree. It was a quiet event that the wider world only learned about a few months later.
Dylan’s new status can be felt on Blonde on Blonde’s love songs, but mostly in his typically unconventional way.
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In mid-1964, Colombia Records urged Bob Dylan back into the studio.
The label was keen to capitalise on the commercial and critical success of The Times They Are a-Changin’, which was released in January of that year.
Dylan obliged but, as ever, did so on his own terms.
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Bob Dylan doesn’t feature on nine of the 24 songs on The Basement Tapes.
While it’s always nice to hear The Band, the peculiar magic brewed in that Woodstock basement throughout 1967 had Dylan at its core. 🧵
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In September 1967, producer Bob Johnston visited Woodstock to discuss Bob Dylan's next album.
Meanwhile, The Band were in New York recording a demo for prospective record labels.
Everyone was starting to think beyond the basement. 🧵
Photo by
@ElliottLandy
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What was your Dylan gateway? How did you first get into Bob?
I'll go first:
A school friend suggested I check out Bob Dylan. My brother had Before the Flood on vinyl so I listened to it. That live album became my gateway.
Though The Band songs were my favourites.
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“What religious songs you know Bob?”
Bob Dylan will one day write his own entries to the spirituals genre.
For now, as they play together in a Nashville studio in 1969, he’s very much in Johnny Cash’s world. 🧵
📷 Al Clayton
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“Suggest it one more time and you’re fired.”
Al Grossman didn’t want Bob Dylan to record Blonde on Blonde in Nashville and threatened Bob Johnston, whose suggestion it was.
But with Dylan unhappy after the New York sessions, the producer put his job on the line. 🧵
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October 1965. Highway 61 Revisited has been on sale for a month. But that restless hungry feeling means Bob Dylan is recording again.
The second half of the deluxe Cutting Edge starts with the studio fumblings that will eventually lead to Blonde on Blonde. 🧵
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Bob Dylan was working on the lengthy closing song of Highway 61 Revisited for the third day, when producer Bob Johnston invited a friend from Nashville to the studio.
Charlie McCoy would give Desolation Row an unexpected sprinkle of magic. 🧵
Image via
@vinylvanity1
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The Big Pink treasure trove contained more Bob Dylan originals than collected on the 1975 Basement Tapes release.
But as The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete revealed, Dylan and The Band also revelled in playing other people’s music. 🧵
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Hearing Cat Power sing more Bob Dylan songs has been on my wishlist since I heard her spectacularly soulful cover of Stuck Inside of Mobile...
So what a treat to witness her recreate Dylan's infamous 1966 Royal Albert Hall show.
Here's my short revisit...🧵
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Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan are sitting at a piano, harmonising on Cash’s song I Still Miss Someone.
Despite the poor sound quality, this scene is a highlight of Eat the Document.
But it's interrupted by someone reminding Dylan that he’s due on stage. 🧵
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Most regular bands who had just written and recorded Edge of the Ocean would be rightly pleased with their strong new album track.
But Bob Dylan was knocking out dozens of such songs in Woodstock throughout the summer of 1967. 🧵
Photo by Elliott Landy
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One of the great joys of delving into The Complete Basement Tapes has been discovering the original versions of the songs that Bob Dylan and The Band covered during their Woodstock period.
I created a playlist collecting these originals - listen here:
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Just before Bob Dylan and his band of Nashville players were about to record Rainy Day Woman
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Drummer Kenny Buttrey quickly worked it out and soon Blonde on Blonde’s memorable opening was in place.
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Robbie Robertson was a road warrior, much more used to strutting on stage than sitting confined to a studio.
When Bob Dylan invited him to record Blonde on Blonde in Nashville, he was nervous about playing alongside the local session talent. 🧵
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Bob Dylan’s second album is such a freewheelin’ record, there’s an earlier version of it that features four different songs.
Although Colombia Records destroyed most of these pre-release copies, a few still exist with one later selling for $35,000.
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If the image of enduring love on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is misleading then perhaps the album’s title is a better guide.
During the year it took to record, songs are pouring out of Dylan. His art and career are speeding down the hill. Can he stay in control? 🧵
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Bob Dylan is back at the Gaslight Café, it’s still probably October 1962 and he’s still without his harmonica.
Which is one reason why some believe this Gaslight 3 Tape was made on the same day as the second recording.
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Newport Folk Festival. July 1965. A folk singer wearing a leather jacket and an electric guitar takes the stage.
Behind him the drummer kickstarts a driving rhythm, a guitar wails and the singer steps to the microphone:
“I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more”. 🧵
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Since the torrent of first lines on A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, most Bob Dylan songs had been marked by an abundance of words.
But on 1967’s John Wesley Harding, the songwriter made a sudden shift to lyrical parsimony. 🧵
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Before Al Kooper sat behind the Hammond organ during the Like a Rolling Stone sessions, he first tried out on guitar. After all, he was a guitarist, not an organ player.
But then Mike Bloomfield arrived and Kooper abandoned any hope of being Bob Dylan’s new guitarist. 🧵
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Bob Dylan’s first significant live performances in Greenwich Village came as support for bluesman John Lee Hooker.
The experience had a big impact on Dylan and he didn't forget Hooker when he and The Band were messing around in the basement. 🧵
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Bob Dylan said that Mr. Tambourine Man was the first song that truly came from inside him.
It opens the (mostly) acoustic second half of Bringing It All Back Home, a side that also contains the first song he claims came from outside him.
Image via
@adamlondontours
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In May 1963, Bob Dylan travelled to Massachusetts for a small folk festival held in the amphitheatre of Brandeis University.
Just a few weeks later, his second album The Freewheelin’... will be released and he’ll rarely play such small events again. 🧵
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What is this shit?
That infamous Self Portrait review opener by critic Greil Marcus had been posed directly to Bob Dylan six years earlier by a friend who had just read the lyrics to the title track of his third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’.
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While Suze Rotolo’s presence is felt on The Time They Are a-Changin’s few songs about love, she’s certainly not the focus of that record as she was on The Freewheelin’.
But Another Side of Bob Dylan returns to her with greater candour that ever.
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Though the true power of John Wesley Harding lies in its music, listening to the songs repeatedly does make you want to unravel the mystery of those words.
Join me tomorrow to explore more of the album's enigmas.
Image via
@vinylvanity1
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Happy birthday to Highway 61 Revisited - the first Bob Dylan album I bought for myself and still the one I turn to the most.
Here’s my five-thread revisit:
June 16, 1965. Session musician and songwriter, Al Kooper is about to blag his way into rock history by playing an instrument he doesn't even know how to turn on.
Such is the unplanned majesty of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone and the album it opens, Highway 61 Revisited. 🧵
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Hank Williams rarely played with a drummer and neither did Johnny Cash, when he was starting out with the Tennessee Two.
With Levon Helm away working on an oil rig, Bob Dylan and The Band were similarly drum-free for many of the Basement Tapes recordings. 🧵
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In late 1964, Bob Dylan heard I Wanna Hold Your Hand by The Beatles and decided he wanted some of that for his next album, Bringing It All Back Home.
But that didn’t mean he was coveting a number one or itching to plug his guitar into an amp and play some rock’n’roll. 🧵
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The song he wrote on the train that he wanted to record as soon as he hit Nashville was Drifter’s Escape – often my favourite track on John Wesley Harding.
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From shunning multiple takes on his debut to knocking out Another Side in one Beaujolais-fuelled evening, Bob Dylan’s early studio ethos was get-it-done.
But as The Bootleg Series Vol. 12 – The Cutting Edge 1965-66 shows, he soon learned how to take his time. 🧵
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I revisited No Direction Home - the Martin Scorsese directed documentary about Bob Dylan's early career - and just bloody loved it.
My three-thread revisit starts here: .
During the first part of Martin Scorsese’s epic documentary, No Direction Home, the story of Bob Dylan’s early career is mostly related by the singer himself.
But then the director has form with somewhat unreliable narrators, like Henry Hill and Jordan Belfort. 🧵
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As a relatively unknown Bob Dylan was cutting his debut record in Nov 1961, Joan Baez was selling out New York’s Town Hall.
She had also just released her second album, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, which went gold. 🧵
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I'm revisiting Bob Dylan's back catalogue one album/bootleg/live record at a time.
This 🧵collects everything I've covered so far, starting with:
Bob Dylan (1962)
Revisit it here:
Who is this guy?
Seriously, do you recognise that baby-fattened, cap-wearing troubadour staring at you with those soft eyes and the hint of a smile? 🧵
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In 1971, Bob Dylan fired Albert Grossman, the man who had managed his career since 1962.
One of Grossman’s first acts as Dylan’s manager was to buy out his existing publishing contract with Leeds and sign him to Witmark.
This deal would later become a bone of contention.
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Don’t Look Back’s classic status made this version of Bob Dylan iconic.
Who is this character that Pennebaker captured before the boos and bike crash? And does the film hint at the transformations to come? 🧵
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I revisited Bob Dylan's eight studio album, 1967's John Wesley Harding, and adored it music and mystery.
My five-thread revisit starts here:
Bob Dylan was on a train to Nashville, where he was about to start recording his eighth studio album, John Wesley Harding.
He wrote throughout the journey and arrived at Columbia’s Studio A with a new song that would be the first one cut for this extraordinary record. 🧵
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We all know the infamous one-word biblical epithet bestowed on Bob Dylan’s 1966 electric tour of the United Kingdom, as captured in The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: LIVE 1966 - The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert. 🧵
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Listening to John Wesley Harding is a continual quest for understanding.
But as the record heads to its conclusion, we get a suggestion that Dylan doesn’t actually have a message to impart.
Join me tomorrow for the album’s big twist.
Image via
@Pod_Dylan
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The stark, serious monochrome cover of The Times They Are a-Changin’ provides a notable contrast with the warm glow of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
But Times’ austere Woody Guthrie impression is an accurate representation of the album’s mood. 🧵
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It's 1966 and some of Nashville's finest session musicians are playing cards and ping-pong while waiting for Bob Dylan to finish writing songs.
Bootleg Vol. 12 - The Cutting Edge lets us hear what happened when the Blonde on Blonde tapes finally started rolling. 🧵
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On Aug 28, 1963, 250,000 people marched on Washington demanding better economic and civil rights for African Americans.
They witnessed Dr King’s I Have a Dream speech and cheered Blowin’ in the Wind, as sung by Peter Paul and Mary. But Bob Dylan wasn’t as widely well received.
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In 2014, Don’t Look Back was named the ninth best documentary feature of all time by Sight & Sound magazine.
D.A. Pennebaker’s film deservedly has a place alongside the field’s most innovative and important works.
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Joan Baez almost had to drag a very uncomfortable Bob Dylan onstage to perform at the March on Washington in August 1963.
A year later at The Philharmonic Hall, he's increasingly indifferent to the protest persona that his appearance alongside Dr. King helped cultivate.
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Live 1962-66 – Rare Performances from the Copyright Collections (henceforth Rare Live) is a valuable byproduct of an admin job.
From 2012, Sony Music released a series of multi-disc compilations of Bob Dylan recordings in order to maintain their European copyright. 🧵
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Though Pennebaker shot most of the footage, it was often under Dylan’s direction.
Rather than quietly capturing real events, Dylan wanted to stage certain scenes, like (I suspect) this inane moment of a plate being passed around a restaurant table.
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Pete Seeger may or may not have threatened to cut the power with an axe during Bob Dylan’s infamously electric 1965 Newport Festival set.
But back-to-basics Woodstock Dylan appears to bear no grudges as he and The Band play some Seeger songs in the basement. 🧵
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In July 1965, Bob Dylan announced his new electric side with a shocking plugged-in version of Maggie’s Farm at the Newport Festival of Folk.
On Rare Live – a double album of live performance from 1962-66 – we hear that Dylan and his band have toned it down two months later. 🧵
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Bear in mind that this was September 1967 and Dylan had spent the past six months writing and recording dozens of songs in various Woodstock homes and basements.
He could have shown up in Nashville and laid down any number of the best Basement Tapes tracks.
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In his riotous (if unimaginatively titled) autobiography Life, Keith Richards mentions how when his guitar idol John Lee Hooker first started playing with rock musicians, he split his set into acoustic and electric halves.
And guess what? The crowd booed when he plugged in. 🧵
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It’s a measure of how prolific Dylan was during this period that none of John Wesley Harding’s 12 songs were captured by Garth Hudson.
But it also highlights how divorced from the business of making music he’d become since his 1966 motorcycle accident.
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