Warren Zevon sings Bob Dylan songs

“This is a song by my hero”
– Warren Zevon (intro to Dark Eyes in Cleveland, 2000)

“Buffett I guess. Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy. John Prine. Guy Clark. Those kinds of writers.”
– Bob Dylan (on his favourite songwriters)

 

Let’s listen to Warren Zevon’s renditions of Bob Dylan’s songs. He has done quite a few and they are wonderful.

We found 6 Dylan songs in his repertoire, if there are more, please tell us in the comments.

“’Lawyers, Guns and Money’. ‘Boom Boom Mancini’. ‘Down hard stuff’.” And then he adds, “‘Join me in LA’ sort of straddles the line between heartfelt and primeval. His musical patterns are all over the place, probably because he’s classically trained. There might be three separate songs within a Zevon song, but they’re all effortlessly connected. Zevon was a musician’s musician, a tortured one. ‘Desperado Under the Eaves.’ It’s all in there.”
– Bob Dylan on what he likes about Warren Zevon (Huffington post)

Let us start with Warren’s last Dylan song, his heart breaking performance of Knocking on Heavens Door.

 

Mama, take this badge off of me
I can’t use it anymore
It’s gettin’ dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door

Warren Zevon – Knocking on heavens door (audio):

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August 31: Bob Dylan & The Band at Isle of Wight 1969 (videos)

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]It’s a good Dylan performance, not a great one, but very interesting in view of the silences that precede and follow it, and much more alive and spirited than his studio performances at this time.
–>Paul Williams (Bob Dylan: Performing Artist 1960-73)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Woodside Bay
Near Ryde, Isle Of Wight, England
31 August 1969

  • Bob Dylan (guitar & vocal)
  • Robbie Robertson (guitar)
  • Richard Manuel (piano)
  • Garth Hudson (organ)
  • Rick Danko (bass)
  • Levon Helm (drums)

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Elvis sings Bob Dylan songs

Elvis Bob Cowboy
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]When I first heard Elvis’ voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss. He is the deity supreme of rock & roll religion as it exists in today’s form. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.
I think for a long time that freedom to me was Elvis singing “Blue Moon of Kentucky”. I thank God for Elvis.
– Bob Dylan (24 August 1987 – US magazine feature on Elvis’ death anniversary)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

‘I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.’
– Bob Dylan (1997)

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977). Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as “the King of Rock and Roll”, or simply, “the King”.

Bob Dylan and Elvis clearly love/loved the same kind of music, blues, rock’n roll, country and gospel.

Elvis has done a few Bob Dylan songs.

Tomorrow Is A Long Time

RCA’s Studio B, Nashville – May 25, 1966
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Yeah, Elvis Presley. I liked Elvis Presley… Elvis Presley recorded a song of mine. That’s the one recording I treasure the most… It was called Tomorrow Is A Long Time. I wrote it but never recorded it.
-Bob Dylan (Rolling Stone Magazine interview – November 1969)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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August 30: Bob Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited 55 years ago in 1965

Bob_Dylan_-_Highway_61_Revisited

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]“I never wanted to write topical songs, have you heard my last two records, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61? It’s all there. That’s the real Dylan.”
~Bob Dylan (Frances Taylor Interview, Aug 1965)

[Highway 61] Oh yes, it goes from where I used to live… I used to live related to that highway. It ran right through my home town in Minnesota. I traveled it for a long period of time
actually. It goes down the middle of the country, sort of southwest…. lot of famous people came off that highway.
~Bob Dylan (John Cohen And Happy Traum Interview, June/July 1968)

Dylan’s sixth album and his first fully fledged eagle-flight into rock. Revolutionary and stunning, not just for its energy, freshness and panache but in its vision: fusing radical electric music—electric music as the embodiment of our whole out-of-control, nervouenergy-fuelled, chaotic civilization—with lyrics that were light-years ahead of anyone else’s, Dylan here unites the force of blues-based rock’n’roll with the power of poetry.
~Michael Gray (Bob Dylan Encyclopedia)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Like a Rolling Stone:

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

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August 29: Bob Dylan released Modern Times in 2006

The album’s cover photo is Ted Croner’s 1947 photograph Taxi, New York at Night.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]“There’s no nostalgia on this record, pining for the past doesn’t interest me.”
~Bob Dylan (to Edna Gundersen Aug 2006)

[the 10 songs] “are in my genealogy, I had no doubts about them. I tend to overwrite stuff, and in the past I probably would have left it all in. On this, I tried my best to edit myself, and let the facts speak. You can easily get a song convoluted. That didn’t happen. Maybe I’ve had records like this before, but I can’t remember when.”
~Bob Dylan (to Edna Gundersen Aug 2006)

.. This music is relaxed; it has nothing to prove. It is music of accumulated knowledge, it knows every move, anticipates every step before you take it. Producing himself for the second time running, Dylan has captured the sound of tradition as an ever-present, a sound he’s been working on since his first album, in 1962. (One reason Modern Times is so good is that Dylan has been making it so long.) These songs stand alongside their sources and are meant to, which is why their sources are so obvious, so direct..
~Joe Levy (rollingstone.com)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

#1 Thunder on The Mountain (official video)

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]I was thinkin’ ’bout Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep from crying
When she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the line
I’m wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be
I been looking for her even clear through Tennessee
(from “Thunder on The Mountain”)

[about Alicia Keys]“I liked her a whole lot. People stay in your mind for one reason or another.”
~Bob Dylan (to Edna Gundersen Aug 2006)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Listen to Bob Dylan’s Recording Session With George Harrison in 1970 (56 min audio)

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]New York — Bob Dylan snuck into Columbia’s Studio B in New York on May Day and recorded for 12 hours with George Harrison, lead guitarist for a reportedly defunct British rock and roll group, the Beatles.
-Rolling Stone Magazine (May 28, 1970) [/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Wikipedia:
After work on Self Portrait was virtually completed, Dylan held more sessions at Columbia’s recording studios in the Columbia Studio Building at 49 East 52nd Street in New York, beginning May 1, 1970. Held in Studio B, the first session was accompanied by George Harrison, bassist Charlie Daniels, and drummer Russ Kunkel. A large number of covers and old compositions were recorded in addition to several new compositions. The results were rejected, although “Working on a Guru” and alternate versions of “Time Passes Slowly” and “If Not For You” have since been released.

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