Posts Tagged ‘D.A Pennebaker’

BOB DYLAN – ” Subterranean Homesick Blues ” Released 8th March 1965

Posted: March 8, 2017 in MUSIC
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The two-and-a-half minute film clip of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is often considered the forerunner of music videos. It was filmed at the end of Bob Dylan’s tour of England in 1965 to be used as a trailer announcing that the documentary of the tour was coming to theaters. Dylan also wanted the short film to be played on early video jukeboxes .

But first, just in case you are wondering who’s in the background. That’s the poet Allen Ginsberg (on the right, with the white shawl) the writer of Howl! among other works, and Bob Neuwirth, a musician and, like Ginsberg, a longtime friend of Dylan. It’s Bob Neuwirth holding the camera in back of Dylan on the cover of the album sleeve  “Highway 61 Revisited”. Both men were on the Rolling Thunder tour.

The director/producer D. A. Pennebaker filmed two other versions of the card flipping scene: there’s one in the Victoria Embankment Garden behind the Savoy where the finished video was filmed . In 1965, Bob Dylan released his fifth studio album, Bringing it All Back Home – watch the official music video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” now.

Bob Dylan came up with the idea that he wanted a lot of things written on paper. The cue cards are filled with intentional misspellings and puns.  The cue cards were written on the cardboard you get in shirt laundry.

The words and phrases were drawn by Dylan, Joan Baez, Pennebaker, Bob Neuwirth and Donovan.

The song was filmed at the end of the tour that is the basis of the documentary, but Pennebaker moved it to the beginning to set the “stage” for the film.  The song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” was released in March 1965 as a single on Columbia Records; it was then the lead track on “Bringing It All Back Home,” released a few weeks later. It is 2 minutes and 20 seconds long. The first showing of the film was in May 1967.

In addition to the Savoy Steps clip, two alternate takes were shot: one just outside the back of the Savoy Hotel in the Victoria Embankment Gardens featuring Bob Neuwirth, Allen Ginsberg, and an unidentified man. And another, on the roof of the Savoy Hotel, featuring Neuwirth and Dylan’s Columbia Records producer Tom Wilson who is wearing a fez. A montage of the three clips can be seen in the documentary “No Direction Home.”