Bob Dylan

August 30: Bob Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited 55 years ago in 1965

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

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?

Continue reading “August 30: Bob Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited 55 years ago in 1965” →

August 29: Bob Dylan released Modern Times in 2006

Posted on by Egil Mosbron
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]

Continue reading “August 29: Bob Dylan released Modern Times in 2006” →

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

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

[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.

Continue reading “Listen to Bob Dylan’s Recording Session With George Harrison in 1970 (56 min audio)” →

August 28: Bob Dylan – Only A Pawn In Their Game @ March On Washington in 1963

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

Martin Luther king March on washington 1963

–

bob dylan joan baez 1963

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Dylan is one of the performers at the Washington Civil Rights March. Photographs of the historic march show him perched on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, singing with Baez. He also accompanies folk revivalist Len Chandler on the traditional “Hold On,” as well as performing solo versions of “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” “Only a Pawn in Their Game” appears in bastardized form on the Folkways’s We Shall Overcome documentary album, largely obliterated by some ill-considered polemic superimposed over the song.
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)

But I thought Kennedy, both Kennedy’s – I just liked them. And I like Martin…. Martin Luther King. I thought those were people who were blessed and touched, you know? The fact that they all went out with bullets doesn’t change nothin’. Because the good they do gets planted. And those seeds live on longer than that.
~Bob Dylan (to Kurt Loder, March 1984)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Wikipedia:

Date August 28, 1963
Location Washington, D.C.
Also known as March on Washington
Participants 200,000 to 300,000 (estimated 250,000)
Litigation Civil Rights Act of 1964; Voting Rights Act

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom or “The Great March on Washington“, as styled in a sound recording released after the event, was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C..Thousands of Americans headed to Washington on Tuesday August 27, 1963. On Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech in which he called for an end to racism.

Continue reading “August 28: Bob Dylan – Only A Pawn In Their Game @ March On Washington in 1963” →

August 28: Bob Dylan & Willie Nelson Performing “Heartland” in Des Moines 2004 (video)

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]”My American dream fell apart at the seam,” sing Nelson and Bob Dylan in this elegy to America’s family farmers. A track from Nelson’s 1993 Across the Borderline, the song details in plain language the war between forlorn farmers and unsympathetic bankers, with the latter undeniably the victor. Willie wrote the song with Dylan, who famously inspired Nelson’s annual Farm Aid benefit concerts with his off-hand remark at 1985’s Live Aid that something should be done to help U.S. farmers. The lyrics are unapologetic, brimming with as much indignation as Mellencamp’s “Rain on the Scarecrow,” but it’s the pairing of two of music’s most unconventional voices that makes it a must-hear.
–rollingstone.com[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Sec Taylor Stadium
Des Moines, Iowa
28 August 2004

  • Bob Dylan (vocal & piano)
  • Willie Nelson, (guitar & vocal)
  • Stu Kimball (guitar)
  • Larry Campbell (pedal steel guitar)
  • Tony Garnier (bass)
  • George Recile (drums & percussion)
  • Lukas Nelson (guitar)
  • Micah Nelson (percussion)

Continue reading “August 28: Bob Dylan & Willie Nelson Performing “Heartland” in Des Moines 2004 (video)” →

August 27: Bob Dylan: Merrillville, Indiana – 1990 (full concert audio)

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Then, after the semi-acoustic set, Dylan dedicates a heartfelt version of “Moon River” to Stevie Ray Vaughan, following it with a rather magnificent cover of a Robert Hunter
song, “Friend of the Devil.”
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Notes:

  • Only known version of Moon River
  • First Friend Of The Devil
  • Moon River was dedicated to Stevie Ray Vaughan who died in a helicopter crash the night before after having played at an Eric Clapton concert in Alpine Valley.

Star Theatre
Merrillville, Indiana
27 August 1990

  • Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
  • G. E. Smith (guitar)
  • Steve Bruton (guitar)
  • Tony Garnier (bass)
  • Christopher Parker (drums)

Continue reading “August 27: Bob Dylan: Merrillville, Indiana – 1990 (full concert audio)” →