Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash had been circling each other for the better part of a decade before finally joining forces in the studio. The Man In Black had made the first move, writing the young troubadour a fan letter shortly after Dylan came on the scene in 1962. When they met in person at the Newport Folk Festival two years later, he gave Dylan one of his guitars as a sign of respect.
In February 1969, Dylan was in Cash’s hometown recording his ninth album, the country-imbued “Nashville Skyline”. By chance, JohnnyCash happened to be working in the studio next door. Dylan paid him a visit, and on February 17th and 18th, the pair recorded more than a dozen duets together. Of the bunch, only one of them – an update of the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan track “Girl From the North Country” – made the finished album. The rest would languish in the tape vaults until being liberated by enterprising bootleggers.
The collection is a fascinating study of two musical heavyweights revisiting their respective legacies. Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings” is given a run-through, as are Cash’s hits “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire” and “Big River.” Early Sun Records tracks like “That’s All Right” and “Matchbox” are also dusted off, with Carl Perkins himself backing the men on guitar. Judged as a loose, informal meeting of two giants, it’s very pleasurable listening, though more for Cash’s contributions than Dylan’s. With full band backing (including Carl Perkins on electric guitar), the pair run through easygoing, rockabilly-tinged versions of Dylan songs, Cash songs, old Sun rockabilly chestnuts
“Of course, I knew of him before he ever heard of me,” Dylan wrote shortly after Cash’s death in 2003. “In ’55 or ’56, ‘I Walk the Line’ played all summer on the radio, and it was different than anything else you had ever heard. The record sounded like a voice from the middle of the Earth. It was so powerful and moving.”
A few weeks after the release of Nashville Skyline, Dylan and Cash performed “Girl From the North Country” on The Johnny Cash Television Show. It was taped on May 1st, 1969 at the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville. A rough video clip (around the 30 minute mark) captures the moment. Despite Dylan’s reported nervousness, the performance was well-received. “I didn’t feel anything about it,” Cash said later. “But everybody said it was the most magnetic, powerful thing they ever heard in their life. They were just raving about electricity and magnetism. And all I did was just sit there hitting G chords.”
COLUMBIA Studio’s – Nashville TN 2-17-1969 1- MOUNTAIN DEW 2- I STILL MISS SOMEONE 3- CARELESS LOVE 4- MATCHBOX 5- THAT’S ALRIGHT MAMA 6- BIG RIVER 7- I WALK THE LINE 8- YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE 9- RING OF FIRE 10- GUESS THINGS HAPPEN THAT WAY 11- JUST, A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE 12- BLUE YODEL 13- BLUE YODEL #5 ~THE JOHNNY CASH SHOW:~ 05-01-69 14- I THREW IT ALL AWAY 15- LIVING THE BLUES 16- GIRL, FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY
Oh Mercy is the 26th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in September 1989 by Columbia Records. Produced by Daniel Lanois, it was hailed by critics as a triumph for Dylan, after a string of weaker-reviewed albums. When Dylan went recording Oh Mercy, his career was at a low-point after two poorly received albums (Knocked Out Loaded and Down In The Groove), and the feeling he lost his spark, according to his own memoir Chronicles Volume One. Bob himself thought he lost his voice back in 1987.
Oh Mercy gave Dylan his best chart showing in years. Standout tracks: ‘Where Teardrops Fall’, ‘Ring Them Bells’, ‘Most of the Time’, ‘What Was It You Wanted?’ Tracks recorded but not selected: ‘Dignity’ and ‘Series of Dreams’.
One of Dylan’s most ambitious compositions, “Series of Dreams” is given a tumultuous production from DanielLanois. The lyrics are fairly straightforward, giving a literal description of the turmoil encountered by the narrator during a “Series of Dreams.” However, the descriptions quickly unfold into a set of highly evocative verses.
“Series of Dreams” was his pick for the opening track, but ultimately, the final decision was Dylan’s. Music critic Tim Riley would echo these sentiments, writing that “‘Series of Dreams’ should have been the working title song to Oh Mercy, not a leftover pendant.”
Another outtake, “Dignity“, was one of the first songs written for Oh Mercy. Dylan viewed “Dignity” as a strong contender for the album, and an extensive amount of work was done on it. However, Dylan was dissatisfied with the recorded results, resulting in his decision to omit it.
The two most celebrated outtakes fromOh Mercy’s sessions, Dylan would not only perform “Dignity” and “Series of Dreams” live, he would eventually release them. “Series of Dreams” was the final track on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991, and it was later included on 1994’s Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 3. “Dignity” was performed live during a 1994 appearance on MTV Unplugged, and the same performance was later issued on the accompanying album. A remixed version of “Dignity” featuring new overdubs was released on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 3, while the original Lanois production would not see release until the soundtrack album of the television show, Touched by an Angel.
Two more outtakes, “Born In Time” and “God Knows“, were set aside and later re-written and re-recorded for Dylan’s next album, Under the Red Sky. Versions of both songs from the Oh Mercy sessions were also included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs. “The Oh Mercy outtake of ‘Born In Time’ was one of those Dylan performances that so surrendered itself to the moment that to decry the lyrical slips would be to mock sincerity itself”, wrote an enamored Heylin.
The songs were haunting, the songwriting excellent and it proved Dylan wasn’t done yet and relaunched his career. It thusly culminated with the success of his turn of the millenium albums, Time Out Of Mind, Love & Theft, and Modern Times. However, although Oh Mercy is a great album, some outtakes are better than the songs who made the cut. This is also the last albums where you can find several outtakes from the sessions only on bootlegs as for now. The sound is crisp, the performances intense, and Lanois production, although echoey, truly matches the songs.
Oh Mercy can perhaps best be thought of as a collaboration between Dylan and producer Daniel Lanois. Lanois, who most recently produced the Neville Brothers’ extraordinary album Yellow Moon, hooked Dylan up with members of the Nevilles’ band — guitarist Brian Stoltz, bassist Tony Hall, drummer Willie Green and percussionist Cyril Neville — and fashioned evocative, atmospheric soundscapes that elicit every nuance of meaning from Dylan’s songs while never overwhelming them. Dylan’s lyric style on Oh Mercy — a plain-spoken directness with rich folkloric and Biblical shadings — finds an ideal setting in the dark, open textures of Lanois’s sonic weave.
The album opens with “Political World”, a song that Dylan described in Chronicles Volume One as a “catalog of troubles…almost an update on ‘With God on Our Side.'” A cranky tirade against the modern world, it begins with the verse, “We live in a political world/Love don’t have any place/We live in a time where men commit crime/And crime don’t have a face”, which leaves one to argue, which age does this not apply to?.
In regard to “Everything Is Broken”, Dylan wrote, “Danny didn’t have to swamp it up too much, it was already swamped up pretty good when it came to him. Critics usually didn’t like a song like this coming out of me because it didn’t seem to be autobiographical. Maybe not, “Everything Is Broken,” is a rollicking catalog of psychic dislocation but the stuff I write does come from an autobiographical place.” A propulsive, riff-driven number, it was the first single issued from Oh Mercy
“Ring Them Bells” is one of the more celebrated tracks on Oh Mercy, and also where Lanois’s production is at its most subtle and restrained. The song features some spiritual overtones, invoking St. Peter, St. Catherine and a “Sweet Martha” who may or may not be the biblical Martha. It opens with the verse, “Ring them bells ye heathen/From the city that dreams/Ring them bells from the sanctuaries/’Cross the valleys and streams.”
“Ring Them Bells” may be the only song on the album that was released with its live vocals intact.
“One of my favorites is ‘Man in the Long Black Coat,’ which was written in the studio, and recorded in one take”, recalls Lanois. Praised by author Clinton Heylin as a “powerful reinterpretation of The Daemon Lover motif”, “Man in the Long Black Coat” also contains some prominent use of apocalyptic imagery, evoking a place where the “water is high” and “tree trunks uprooted”. In his own assessment of “Man in the Long Black Coat”, Dylan wrote that “in some kind of weird way, I thought of it as my ‘I Walk the Line,’ a song I’d always considered to be up there at the top, one of the most mysterious and revolutionary of all time, a song that makes an attack on your most vulnerable spots, sharp words from a master”.
The second half of Oh Mercy is notable for its sustained moodiness and resignation, often in relation to romantic dissolution. This is immediately apparent on the atmospheric “Most of the Time”, which features the richest production on the album. the narrator in “Most of the Time” sings of an estranged lover whom the narrator can’t quite shake from his memories. The song addresses an irreconcilable, personal relationship, and this theme would continue through “What Good Am I?”, a frank look at the narrator’s moral worth, and “What Was It You Wanted”.
Though he is still uncertain of its origins, in his autobiography Dylan does write that “Disease of Conceit” may have been inspired by the defrocking of Jimmy Swaggart. Lou Reed selected this song as one of his ‘picks of 1989’.
The album closes with “Shooting Star”.
While recovering from a hand injury in December 1987, Dylan wrote “Political World”, his first new song in a long time. According to his autobiography, the lyrics for “Political World” came to him spontaneously and were easy to write; though no melody was composed, he came up with 20 verses.
The onset of inspiration did not stop there. Days later (during the first week of 1988), he wrote verses for a second song, “What Good Am I?”, over the course of one evening. The next day, he wrote another called “Dignity”. Unlike his previous two songs, “Dignity” was written with the rhythm, tempo, and melody all in Dylan’s head. Completed over the course of an afternoon and evening, Dylan composed the song after hearing of Pete Maravich‘s death.
Over the next month or so, Dylan composed many more songs (20 by his estimate), including “Everything Is Broken”, “Disease of Conceit”, and “What Was It You Wanted?” Melodies were written for only a few of them. In the meantime, Dylan’s injured hand was healing well; he was encouraged by his doctor to play guitar again. Dylan began playing concerts again soon after his recovery.
Clinton Heylin reports, while promoting The Traveling Wilburys in the fall of 1988, George Harrison discussed some of Dylan’s upcoming work. “Harrison enthused about Dylan’s new songs…informing a skeptical world that the experience of recording the Wilburys had given him the urge to write again.”
Bono, lead singer of U2, paid Dylan a visit at his home. When he asked Dylan if he had written any new songs, Dylan showed him the ones stored in his drawer. Bono urged him to record the songs, but Dylan was reluctant. Dylan said, “Bono…suggested that Daniel [Lanois] could really record them right. Daniel came to see me when we were playing in New Orleans last year and…we hit it off. He had an understanding of what my music was all about. It’s very hard to find a producer that can play…and [still] knows how to record with modern facilities. For me, that was lacking (in) the past.”
“Most of them [the songs on “Oh Mercy” are stream-of-consciousness songs, the kind that come to you in the middle of the night, when you just want to go back to bed. The harder you try to do something, the more it evades you. These weren’t like that.”
~Bob Dylan (to Edna Gundersen, 21 September 1989)
While it would be unfair to compare ‘Oh Mercy’ to Dylan’s Sixties recordings, it sits well alongside his impressive body of work. Heylin countered this remark, arguing that the Oh Mercy sessions had the songs to compete with Dylan’s most celebrated work. A few of these songs were not issued on the album, but they soon found their way into private circulation where they acquired a strong reputation among critics and collectors.
~Clinton Heylin (Behind The Shades)
In 1989, Bob Dylan released Oh Mercy, his twenty-sixth studio album. Watch the official music video of “Most of the Time” now.
Fresh off a two-record stint with Asylum, Bob Dylan returned to Columbia Records in 1975 with one of the most acclaimed records of his career. Blood on the Tracks found Dylan reinvigorating the “confessional” singer-songwriter genre, even as he repeatedly insisted that the album’s songs had no relation to his own life and then-recent marital turmoil. Whatever the truth, Blood on the Tracks was painfully raw, vulnerable, and altogether exquisite, boasting such all-time classic compositions as “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” and “Shelter from the Storm.” The making of the album was anything but smooth, however – and now, the full story can be told on the fourteenth volume of Dylan’s long-running Bootleg Series. More Blood, More Tracks will be available on November 2nd as a 6-CD box set or 2-LP/1-CD highlights editions, chronicling the album’s original New York sessions and subsequent Minnesota rebirth via all of the extant session material including 75 previously unreleased tracks.
Dylan began recording at New York’s A&R Studios with producer-engineer Phil Ramone on September 16th, 1974. The first group of musicians including Eric Weissberg and his band, Deliverance, only lasted a couple of days before the artist brought in Paul Griffin on organ and Buddy Cage on steel guitar. (Tony Brown was retained from Weissberg’s group.) After ten days and four sessions with this group, Dylan had assembled an entire 10-song album which Columbia took to the test pressing stage in November. But the restless Dylan had second thoughts. With a new set of musicians, he entered Minneapolis’ Sound 80 studios in December. In a couple of days, he re-recorded five of the ten songs, and the raw, stark, and powerful Blood on the Tracks as we know it was finished.
Over the years, session material has trickled out. Only one of the five tracks from the test pressing, “You’re a Big Girl Now,” has ever been officially reissued. It appeared on the Biograph box set along with a version of the outtake “Up to Me.” Subsequently, The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3featured New York alternate takes of “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Idiot Wind,” and “If You See Her, Say Hello.” “Call Letter Blues,” an embryonic version of “Meet Me in the Morning,” was also included on that set. An alternate of “Shelter from the Storm” was released on the Jerry Maguire soundtrack, and in 2012, an alternate “Meet Me in the Morning” appeared as the B-side of “Duquesne Whistle” on a Record Store Day single. That left “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” as the only song from the New York sessions which had not been released in any take.
More Blood, More Tracks follows the format of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965-1966 in presenting all of the available studio material in chronological order and so every song is heard in multiple versions. (Alas, it seems much of the Minnesota session material no longer exists.) The leadoff “single” is the first take of “If You See Her, Say Hello.”The 6-CD box set boasts a lengthy hardcover book featuring new liner notes as well as high-quality reproductions of pages from Dylan’s original notebooks used during the Blood on the Tracks sessions. A 1-CD or 2-LP version will have one alternate version of each song plus one take of “Up to Me.”
The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks arrives from Columbia/Legacy on November 2nd.
The earlier album sessions that went down in New York City left many more demos and alternate versions on the cutting room than most anyone outside the innermost Dylan camp imagined.
Disc 1 consists entirely of Dylan alone in the studio, accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica, at the very beginning of the process. None of these appeared on the original album. The second disc is made up of Dylan’s initial band sessions with the group Eric Weissberg & Deliverance, whom he quickly grew dissatisfied with and replaced. Only one of those made the finished album. It’s these two discs that may represent the greatest treasure trove for serious fans.
But the remaining four discs are hardly fool’s gold themselves. Disc 3 finds him continuing to work in New York with a mostly different band that was more to his liking and produced more of the eventual album. On Discs 4 and 5 and the first part of Disc 6, he ditches that band and performs the songs solo once again, or with just a bass player, ending the New York portion of the proceedings as intimately as they started, in the creation of what many consider his most intimate album.
Bob Dylan, More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14(Columbia/Legacy, 2018)
Bob Dylan: Hard Rain US TV Broadcast Version – Full Video (May 23rd, 1976)
42 years ago today (9/13/76), Bob Dylan released his true to late 70’s form live album Hard Rain. The album was recorded during the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue and was partly recorded on May 23rd, 1976, during a concert at Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins, Colorado. The concert was also filmed and later broadcast by NBC as a one-hour television special in September. The Rolling Thunder tour is most distinguishable by the white face paint Dylan wore and that he chose to play a series of small venues with a revolving cast of musicians that included Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Roger McGuinn. Watch Dylan perform “One More Cup of Coffee” from the Rolling Thunder Revue tour live in ’75.
In pouring rain, Bob Dylan plays the open air Hughes Stadium at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He has elected to film this show to replace the aborted TV special from Clearwater. In the longest set of the tour, there are several highlights, not all appearing in the TV special. … Included in the TV special, although in a most peculiar order, are second encore “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” the entire Dylan/Baez set (“Blowin’ in the Wind,” “RailroadBoy,” “Deportees,” and “I Pity the Poor Immigrant”); three songs from the first set (“Maggie’s Farm,”“One Too Many Mornings,” and “Mozambique”); and three from the last set (two tremendously powerful readings of songs from Blood on the Tracks, “Idiot Wind” and “Shelter from the Storm” and a faded “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”). Despite the storm clouds raging, the crowd appears to be very enthusiastic, even singing “Happy Birthday” for Dylan before the second encore.
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)
–
Hughes Stadium
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado
23 May 1976
Bob Dylan (guitar & vocal)
Scarlet Rivera (violin)
T-bone J. Henry Burnett (guitar & piano)
Steven Soles (guitar)
Mick Ronson (guitar)
Bobby Neuwirth (guitar & vocal)
Roger McGuinn (guitar & vocal)
David Mansfield (steel guitar, mandolin, violin & dobro)
Rob Stoner (bass)
Howie Wyeth (drums)
Gary Burke (percussion)
Joan Baez (shared vocal on 2-5)
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Blowin’ In The Wind (Duet with Joan Baez)
Railroad Boy (Duet with Jaon Baez)
Deportees (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) (Duet wit Joan Baez)
This was a film that covered Bob Dylan on his 1966 European tour backed up by the Hawks that eventually became The Band minus, Levon Helm. The film was to be shown on ABC television but ABC rejected and saying it was “incomprehensible” because Dylan himself was one of the editors and wanted the film to have more of an artistic feel. It was shot under Dylan’s direction by D. A. Pennebaker, whose groundbreaking documentary Dont Look Back chronicled Dylan’s tour the previous year 1965 British tour.
It was filmed by D.A. Pennebaker who filmed Dylan’s 65′ European tour when he played acoustically called Don’t Look Back. Don’t Look Back is terrific. This film is very disjointed. This is the Dylan period that probably is my favorite. The Hawks are raw and powerful and Dylan was
There are some highlights to this odd film. A spontaneous piano duet with Dylan and Johnny Cash, John Lennon and Bob Dylan very high riding around in a cab, and the famous concert footage from the infamous Manchester Free Trade Hall concert, wherein an audience member yells out “Judas” because of Dylan’s conversion to electric music. After the Judas remark, he proceeds to tell RobbieRobertson to play it loud and they kick off in a vicious “Like a Rolling Stone.” My favorite live version of that song. Those folk music fans were harsh.
The film is disjointed and frustrating to watch because some of the songs you want to see and hear are there…but only partly. You will be seeing Dylan performing something and then flash away to something else. Some of the concert footage and film from this ended up in the Martin Scorsese movie No Direction Home…I would recommend No Direction Home to be seen by everyone. Other scenes include Dylan and Robbie Robertson in hotel rooms writing and working through new songs, most of which remain unreleased and unpublished. Among these songs are “I Can’t Leave Her Behind”, which was later covered by Stephen Malkmus for the I’m Not There soundtrack.
Bob was pale and nervous and there is no secret he was doing drugs heavily through this movie. After the tour, Dylan had his motorcycle wreck heard around the world and after he recovered he didn’t tour for years.
The cab ride with John Lennon is historical now. Both of them in sunglasses and Lennon trying to inject humor into the situation and Dylan is ok at first and then starts getting sick as the filming stops. As Dylan shows signs of fatigue, Lennon urges him to get a grip on himself: “Do you suffer from sore eyes, groovy forehead, or curly hair? Take Zimdawn!…Come, come, boy, it’s only a film. Pull yourself together.”
Lennon would later recall in an interview with Rolling Stone that he and Dylan who were “both in shades, and both on fucking junk, and all these freaks around us.
If you are a Dylan fan it’s worth a watch. I’m glad we have “No Direction Home” to see some clear film segments on that tour. Eat The Document has not been officially released but you can get a bootleg of it or watch most of it on youtube.
Thanks to PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture
The wait is finally over! Fourteen limited edition graphics from The Drawn Blank Series 2018 are now available to view and buy online! You can now browse the new collection here bit.ly/Dylan2018
Bob Dylan’s Gospel years inspired and rankled in unequal measure – with the critical brickbats and audience boos often drowning out the strength and beauty of the impassioned musical ministries delivered by Dylan between 1979 and 1981, gathering around him his five-strong chorus of gospel singers, and a crack band that included Little Feet guitarist Fred Tackett, bassist Tim Drummond, Muscle Shoals keyboardist Spooner Oldham and pianist Terry Young, and veteran drummer Jim Keltner. it’s no great mystery that when Bob Dylan seemed to find new faith around 1979, a lot of fans and Dylanologists lost theirs — in him. it seems clearer that another major impetus for him in heading down the path of spirituality had to be the opportunity to tap into the higher power of a great rock-gospel band.
So what were audiences to think when, with the release of 1979’s “Slow Train Coming” album, he sang that he was “Gonna change my way of thinking / Make myself a different set of rules” and preached that “there’s only one authority / And that’s the authority on high”?.
Roots music aficionado that he’s always been, Dylan has long understood the power gospel music has to move and inspire listeners. In turn, BobDylan served up some of his most impassioned, electrifying performances with these gospel-steeped songs.
“Bob Dylan — Trouble No More — The Bootleg Series Vol. 13/ 1979-1981.” This one spans the so-called “Christian period” of his trio of albums: “Slow Train Coming,” “Saved” (from 1980) and “Shot of Love” (1981).
Slow Train Coming was at least a challenging and engaging album, with much typical imagery and complexity. A stunning gospel version of the title track features in the current hit play Girl from the North Country at the Old Vic theatre. The follow-up album, though, 1980’s Savedwas too close to pure gospel, too devotional, and alienated even more fans. Shot of Love in 1981 continued the religious theme to a degree, but it was intermingled with what one might term secular tracks, and there was evidence that Dylan was once again changing course.
Filmed at Toronto’s Massey Hall and in Buffalo, New York, Dylan’s gospel shows have long been a bootlegger’s holy grail, and it was only on last autumn’s Trouble No More boxed set, the latest volume in the official Bootleg Series, that some of that footage finally found official release. Now that hour-long film has made it The nights of religious fervour and impassioned performances. It intersperses up-close and personal studio rehearsals with exceptionally intimate live footage of some of Dylan’s strongest Gospel songs – the likes of “Solid Rock”, “Slow Train”, “When He Returns” and “Precious Angel” – with slightly contrived but absorbing enough “sermons” written by Luc Sante and performed by Michael Shannon, who plays a lean, mean kind of preacher who wouldn’t be out of place in Girl from the North Country, the hit Dylan musical.
A lot of fans abandoned BobDylan during his Gospel [de]tours, largely to their own detriment
The subjects for each “sermon” were apparently suggested by Dylan, but it seems the singer had no further part in shaping their texts. A shame. There was a bit of a disconnect between the tone of these spiritual homilies and the music itself, so intimately captured, and so strong and vivid an expression of Dylan’s spiritual journey at the time. It might have made more sense to, say, use Hank Williams’ Luke the Drifter song-sermons. It was material that certainly chimed with Dylan from an early age (“I could listen to the Luke the Drifter record all day and drift away myself, become totally convinced in the goodness of man…” he wrote in Chronicles).
Director/producer Jennifer LeBeau excelled in choosing the strongest musical performances, all of it prefaced by that remarkable rehearsal footage, and closing with an extremely affecting performance of “Abraham, Martin and John” by Dylan and Clydie King, his then-girlfriend and a Gospel singer whose voice sounds like the female voice of an Old Testament God – tearing the air like paper and raising whatever roof it’s under until it hits the ground.
A lot of fans abandoned Dylan during his Gospel [de]tours, largely to their own detriment, but this was a film that put the music’s undeniable power up front, in your face and centre stage. Plenty of people back in 1979 and 1980 were talking up the “end times” and we’re enjoying a new flavour of “end times” right now, aren’t we, in a more solid, indigestible form? In that light, it’s fascinating to see and hear these spiritually impassioned songs performed under “the darkness that will fall from on high” that Dylan felt pressing down on him during those Gospel years. But let’s leave the last word to one of the men who was there, Fred Tackett. Here’s what he thinks of the film: “I was amazed, man. Everything was just so good. They picked the very best songs. Him and Spooner Oldham playing this harmonica and Hammond organ together at the end of ‘What Can I Do for You’… it was just so cool and hip, and Bob Dylan is playing so great. They found the best stuff and put it in this movie.”
In tracks like ‘Solid Rock’, you can feel his heart bursting with religious passion
That force comes through as well in the best tracks of Bob Dylan’s Trouble No More – The Bootleg Series Vol 13 1979-81, the concert chronicle of his much-maligned “Christian” albums. The fiery gospel fervour delivered here benefits a great deal from being live rather than reproduced in the studio. These two discs are dynamite, containing, I am sure, some of the very most stirring moments of Dylan’s gigantic opus. In tracks like “Solid Rock” from San Diego in 1979, you can feel his heart bursting with religious passion, and everyone else – from the tightest of bands to five red-hot back-up singers – possessed by the spirit. This combination of note-perfect excellence and total letting-go can only be good for the soul, Dylan’s own, but for us the audience as well.
The deluxe set from Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings encompasses eight CDs and one DVD with director Jennifer Lebeau’s new documentary, “Trouble No More: A Musical Film.” An abridged two-CD set and a four-LP vinyl version are also available.
The deluxe set comprises 100 tracks: alternate studio versions, rehearsal takes and live performances. Only one has been previously released: “Ye Shall Be Changed,” which appeared on the first installment from 1991, “The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3.”
The first two discs of the “Trouble No More” set are drawn from various tour stops from 1979-81, while discs 3 and 4 collect rare versions of songs from the studio albums along with several that didn’t wind up on any of those releases. The fifth and sixth discs contain his full show from April 18th, 1980 in Toronto, while CDs 7 and 8 offer up another full concert from June 27th, 1981 at Earl’s Court in London. (For Dylan completists, the singer-songwriter’s website is offering two additional discs with yet another complete performance, this one from his Nov. 28th, 1979 tour stop in San Diego.)
Discs 1 through 4 are framed smartly, each of the four opening with markedly different renditions of the same song: “Slow Train Coming,” displaying how Dylan’s restless artistry was always in search of the right feel, tempo and attitude for a given song.
An alternate studio take of one of the “Slow Train Coming” album’s higher profile songs, “Gotta Serve Somebody,” features a livelier bounce in the rhythm section of Drummond and drummer Pick Withers, while keyboardist Barry Beckett pushes the song forward with beat-anticipating piano interlaced with funky clavinet parts. The backing gospel singers on the released version are absent.
The fidelity of the live versions varies noticeably in places, which makes for some compromises. The performance of “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” on the first disc, recorded in 1980 in Portland, Ore., benefits from a more fluid reggae-ized lilt by the band, and is buoyed further by a break where the gospel singers are featured.
But Dylan’s vocal is low in the mix, rendering certain lines difficult to discern, especially to anyone not already intimately familiar with his clever roster of creation stories he cooked up for so many critters.
Released 50 years ago, it surely is one of his most controversial albums.. “Embracing” classic Country music & kicking off the “Country Rock” genre. I’ve always liked this album… It’s not a masterpiece, but a solid Dylan album.
Recorded February 12th–21th, 1969 Nashville Skyline was the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in April 1969 by Columbia Records.
Dylan looks inscrutable, or at least aloof, on many of his album covers. So it’s disarming to see him with a big grin, mid-tip of the hat, on the front of Nashville Skyline. As much as we’re looking at him, he seems to be looking back at us, and there’s a warmth to his gaze that feels all the more affecting coming from the trailblazer who once sneered, “How does it feeeel?”
He’s worn many hats throughout his career—rock star, folk crooner, musical intellectual and political troubadour—and 50 years ago, he unexpectedly added country singer to that list. Dylan released Nashville Skyline, one of the most noteworthy style deviations in his discography, it ranks high among the best albums of that year. It features the suggestive hit “Lay, Lady, Lay,” Bob Dylan’s finest drawl and a reworked version of his 1963 tune “Girl From The North Country” featuring the country king himself, Johnny Cash.
Building on the rustic style he experimented with on John Wesley Harding, “Nashville Skyline” displayed a complete immersion into country music. Along with the more basic lyrical themes, simple songwriting structures, and charming domestic feel, it introduced audiences to a radically new singing voice from Dylan—a soft, affected country croon. At the time, the album was viewed as yet another new direction for Dylan, whose previous album had been the spare, rustic, lyrically opaque, acoustic guitar-based John Wesley Harding(1967); itself a departure from the mostly electric sound of Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). Both Blonde on BlondeandJohn Wesley Harding were recorded in Nashville, the latter using three local musicians exclusively, but when he returned to Nashville in February 1969 to record Nashville Skyline(released in April ’69), he embraced country music more than he ever had before—penning simpler, more straightforward lyrics, doing a deeper dive into country instrumentation as accompaniment, and also singing with a much warmer, sweeter tone than he had shown before,
The first track on the album was a retooling of a tune Dylan originally wrote and recorded in 1963 for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (his second album), called “Girl from the North Country.” On Nashville Skyline it was sung as a duet with Johnny Cash, which might sound like an unusual pairing, but the two had actually been friends dating back a few years when both lived in Woodstock, New York. Cash even wrote an evocative liner notes poem for the Nashville Skyline.
When Johnny Cash began his three-year run as host of a popular—and excellent!—summer TV series, The Johnny Cash Show, which was shot at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium and each week featured various country and country-leaning artists. Dylan, who had barely been seen in public since early 1966, agreed to appear on the June 7th episode of Cash’s show, and they sang this version of “Girl from the North Country,” no doubt baffling some of his old fans, while introducing himself to many, many new ones.
Watch Dylan perform the song “Girl From The North Country” live in Oakland, Calif., in 1988
Kris Kristofferson played an important (albeit uncredited) role in the recording of “Lay Lady Lay.” The song’s distinctive percussion features a pair of bongos and a cowbell during the verses, and Kristofferson — then working as a janitor at Columbia Recording Studios — was asked to hold these instruments for percussionist Kenny Buttrey, allowing him to play the drum parts during the chorus. Buttrey moved the drum microphone directly over Kristofferson so it could pick up these sounds more clearly, which had the added effect of making his drumming sound fainter. The first take wound up becoming the master take, and Buttrey would later call it one of his favourite performances.
The result received a generally positive reaction from critics, and was a commercial success. Reaching number 3 in the US, the album also scored BobDylan his fourth UK number 1 album.
“Lay Lady Lay” turned out to be one of Dylan’s biggest pop hits, reaching #7 in the US, and giving him his biggest single in three years. “Lay Lady Lay” was originally written for the film Midnight Cowboy, but Dylan did not deliver it in time for it to be included in the score. He was initially reluctant to authorize the single’s release, but eventually approved at the insistence of Columbia president Clive Davis.
In the end, Nashville Skyline is a lovely album but not a heavyweight contender, though its effects were major ones. Country music was despised, hick music when Dylan took it up. People were divided into the hip and the non-hip. The counterculture was in full swing and riddled with its own self-importance and snobbery. Nashville Skyline was a hard pill to swallow: but it did ’em good. Nashville Skyline was a full-fledged country album, complete with steel guitars and brief, direct songs. It’s a warm, friendly album, particularly since Bob Dylan is singing in a previously unheard gentle croon — the sound of his voice is so different it may be disarming upon first listen, but it suits the songs.
So here he is, folks, Homebody Bob, singin’ ten songs for your listenin’ pleasure — well, nine, actually one is a hoedown sort o’ thing. Everyone knows by now, I hope, how intense that pleasure is. But hasn’t anyone noticed something odd? ….. but no one mentioned that by the mere trick of changing his entire vocal style, Dylan had crossed us up again, that “Nashville Skyline” was a bigger switcheroo than “John Wesley Harding.” It is touching that everyone wants to believe Bobby has settled down, but don’t bet on it. All those protestations of easy innocence may be just one more shuck.
“All these places and all these things – those train tracks that never stop receding; that bicycle repair yard – feel like hallowed places. There are no palaces here, no monuments, only the stuff that any eye might see and feel a part of.” Michael Glover, author and art critic
Whilst travelling on tour between 1989 and 1992, Bob Dylan created a collection of drawings that were published in a book entitled ‘Drawn Blank’ in 1994. Ingrid Mössinger – the curator of the Kunstsammlungen Museum, in Chemnitz, Germany – came across Drawn Blank‘ during a visit to New York in 2006. Instantly excited about Dylan’s work, she contacted the artist’s team and was thrilled to learn that Bob Dylan would agree to have his art exhibited in public for the first time. When Dylan had first drawn the works in this series he had intended to create paintings based upon them. Ingrid Mössinger’s proposed exhibition encouraged him to now do this using watercolour and gouache.
These paintings formed a collection entitled ‘The Drawn Blank Series’. Unlike the delicacy of the drawings in ‘Drawn Blank’ the paintings are expressive and vibrant. Dylan paints several versions of the same image, using different colours and tones which result in a dynamic variety of impressions, feelings and emotions.a carefully selected collection of Dylan’s paintings have been chosen to be published as Signed Limited Edition Graphics to enable collectors, and art lovers throughout the world, access to Bob Dylan’s works of art.
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The Fat Angel Sings 