Bob Dylan: Shadows in the Night review – an unalloyed pleasure

It’s Bob Dylan’s turn to take on the great American songbook – and he manages to make it utterly his own

It’s obviously up against some stiff competition from lingerie adverts and festive albums that came with free Christmas cards, but there’s an argument that Shadows in the Night may be the most improbable moment yet in Bob Dylan’s latterday career. By releasing a collection of standards from the great American songbook, Dylan, presumably inadvertently, joins in a trend begun 14 years ago by Robbie Williams. Ever since Williams proved that you could sell 7m copies of Swing When You’re Winning to an audience who’d never previously evinced much interest in the work of Cole Porter or Johnny Mercer, the great American songbook album has become a kind of sine qua non among rock stars of a certain vintage. They’ve all been at it, from Paul McCartney to Carly Simon to Linda Ronstadt. Rod Stewart seemed to treat the whole business less like a canny career move than a terrible endurance test to inflict on the general public. By the time he released his fifth great American songbook collection, you got the feeling that even the most indefatigable fan of the jazzy standard was on the floor tearfully pleading for mercy, and in danger of developing a nervous twitch brought on by the opening chords of Mack the Knife.

However, Dylan has latterly made a career out of doing the exact opposite of what most of his peers do. They dutifully tour their big hits, or perform classic albums in order; he takes to the stage and either brilliantly reinterprets his back catalogue or wilfully mangles it beyond repair, depending on whether you’re the kind of critic who gets whole paragraphs out of a change of syllabic emphasis in the lyrics of All Along the Watchtower or an audience member who’s heard three-quarters of Like a Rolling Stone without realising it’s Like a Rolling Stone. They make albums that cravenly attempt to conjure up the atmosphere of their best-loved classic works; he makes albums that conjure up a world before Bob Dylan existed – filled with music that sounds like blues or rockabilly or country from an age when pop was as yet untouched by his influence.

The latter is one of the reasons that Shadows in the Night works. Most great American songbook albums feel grafted on to the artist’s career: too obviously glommed together as a money-making exercise or a means of tiding them over when inspiration fails to strike. By contrast, Shadows in the Night sounds entirely of a piece with the albums Dylan has been making for the last decade and a half. Performed by his current touring band and produced by Dylan himself – rather more beautifully than you might expect, given his reputation for bashing everything out in the studio as quickly as possible – it glides languidly along on bowed double bass and waves of pedal steel, occasionally gently supported by pillowy, muted brass. The playing is full of lovely, subtle touches: the guitar line that shivers in the background of Autumn Leaves’ opening lines; the moment three minutes into I’m a Fool to Want You when the music momentarily loses its rhythmic pulse as Dylan sings “I can’t get along without you”, as if it’s on the verge of collapse. If the album in its entirety sounds more monotone in pace than its immediate predecessors – Dylan’s drummer is frequently relegated to occasionally tapping a hi-hat, or banished from the studio entirely – any of its tracks could have been slipped on to Modern Times or Tempest without provoking puzzlement among listeners.

Certainly, the album fits perfectly with what you might call Dylan’s latterday persona, the grizzled old geezer unveiled on 1997’s Time Out of Mind, either sentimental or growling at the world to get off his lawn; “trying to get to heaven,” as the song of the same name put it, “before they close the door”. Whether that’s a part Dylan is playing or an accurate representation of what he’s like in his 70s is a moot point, but the songs on Shadows in the Night have been chosen – usually from less well-thumbed chapters of the great American songbook – to suit the character. Their lyrical tone is usually remorseful and lovelorn – The Night We Called It a Day, What’ll I Do, Full Moon and Empty Arms – and even when it isn’t, it ends up sounding that way because of Dylan’s delivery. His version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Some Enchanted Evening takes a song about a burgeoning romance and ferrets out the misery buried in the lyrics. “Fly to her side and make her your own / Or all through your life you may dream all alone,” he sings, but there’s a rueful quality to his voice that undercuts the carpe diem sentiment and a song cautioning the listener not to miss their chances suddenly becomes a song about missed chances.

A lot has been written about the state of Dylan’s voice in recent years, but if any songs suit a ruined voice, they’re those assembled here. Most of their authors were half Dylan’s age when they wrote them, but they sounded much older: everything is suffused with world-weariness and regret. The irony is that Dylan’s vocals on Shadows in the Night sound “better” in the conventional sense than they have in years, presumably because he’s singing softly – crooning, if you will. There’s certainly nothing here that resembles the opening of Tempest’s Pay in Blood, where a combination of rage and whatever havoc has been visited on his larynx over the years left him sounding like the frontman of Autopsy or Disembowelment, and what came out wasn’t words but a terrifying, incomprehensible growl. Still, such things are relative. His voice is still cracked and catarrhal and occasionally ventures wildly off pitch, usually when he tries to hold the songs’ long, dramatic, final notes. It doesn’t matter: it fits, as if the hard-won experience of the lyrics has been etched on his throat.

Dylanologists could doubtless tell you a lot about the relationship between the songs here and his own oeuvre: you suspect they’ll have a field day with the religious overtones of Stay With Me. To say that all seems besides the point isn’t to rubbish their close reading and study, which at its best is genuinely illuminating. It’s merely to suggest that Shadows in the Night works as an unalloyed pleasure, rather than a research project. It may be the most straightforwardly enjoyable album Dylan’s made since Time Out of Mind. He’s an unlikely candidate to join the serried ranks of rock stars tackling standards: appropriately enough, given that Frank Sinatra sang all these songs before him, he does it his way, and to dazzling effect.

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Bob Dylan American musician

Bob Dylan, original name Robert Allen Zimmerman   (born May 24, 1941, Duluth,Minnesota, U.S.), American folksinger who moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock and roll, theretofore concerned mostly with boy-girl romantic innuendo, with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry. Hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan sold tens of millions of albums, wrote more than 500 songs recorded by more than 2,000 artists, performed all over the world, and set the standard for lyric writing. (See Editor’s Note: About the author.)

He grew up in the northeastern Minnesota mining town of Hibbing, where his father co-owned Zimmerman Furniture and Appliance Co. Taken with the music of Hank Williams, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Ray, he acquired his first guitar in 1955 at age 14 and later, as a high school student, played in a series of rock and roll bands. In 1959, just before enrolling at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he served a brief stint playing piano for rising pop star Bobby Vee. While attending college, he discovered the bohemian section of Minneapolis known as Dinkytown. Fascinated by Beat poetry and folksinger Woody Guthrie, he began performing folk music in coffeehouses, adopting the last name Dylan (after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas). Restless and determined to meet Guthrie—who was confined to a hospital in New Jersey—he relocated to the East Coast.

Arriving in late January 1961, Dylan was greeted by a typically merciless New York City winter. A survivor at heart, he relied on the generosity of various benefactors who, charmed by his performances at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, provided meals and shelter. He quickly built a cult following and within four months was hired to play harmonica for a Harry Belafonte recording session. Responding to Robert Shelton’s laudatory New York Times review of one of Dylan’s live shows in September 1961, talent scout–producer John Hammond investigated and signed him to Columbia Records. There Dylan’s unkempt appearance and roots-oriented song material earned him the whispered nickname “Hammond’s Folly.”

Dylan’s eponymous first album was released in March 1962 to mixed reviews. His singing voice—a cowboy lament laced with Midwestern patois, with an obvious nod to Guthrie—confounded many critics. It was a sound that took some getting used to. By comparison, Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (released in May 1963), sounded a clarion call. Young ears everywhere quickly assimilated his quirky voice, which divided parents and children and established him as part of the burgeoning counterculture, “a rebel with a cause.” Moreover, his first major composition, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” served notice that this was no cookie-cutter recording artist. About this time, Dylan signed a seven-year management contract with Albert Grossman, who soon replaced Hammond with another Columbia producer, Tom Wilson.

In April 1963 Dylan played his first major New York City concert, at Town Hall. In May, when he was forbidden to perform “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” on Ed Sullivan’s popular television program, he literally walked out on a golden opportunity. That summer, championed by folk music’s doyenne,Joan Baez, Dylan made his first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival and was virtually crowned the king of folk music. The prophetic title song of his next album, The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964), provided an instant anthem.

Millions jumped on the bandwagon when the mainstream folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary reached number two on the Billboard pop singles chart in mid-1963 with their version of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Dylan was perceived as a singer of protest songs, a politically charged artist with a whole other agenda. (Unlike Elvis Presley, there would be no film of Dylan singing “Rock-a-Hula Baby” surrounded by bikini-clad women.) Dylan spawned imitators at coffeehouses and record labels everywhere. At the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, while previewing songs from Another Side of Bob Dylan, he confounded his core audience by performing songs of a personal nature rather than his signature protest repertoire. Although his new lyrics were as challenging as his earlier compositions, a backlash from purist folk fans began and continued for three years as Dylan defied convention at every turn.

On his next album, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), electric instruments were openly brandished—a violation of folk dogma—and only two protest songs were included. The folk rock group the Byrds covered “Mr. Tambourine Man” from that album, adding electric 12-string guitar and three-part harmony vocals, and took it to number one on the singles chart. Other rock artists were soon pilfering the Dylan songbook and joining the juggernaut. As Dylan’s mainstream audience increased rapidly, his purist folk fans fell off in droves. The maelstrom that engulfed Dylan is captured in Don’t Look Back(1967), the telling documentary of his 1965 tour of Britain, directed by D.A. Pennebaker.

In June 1965, consorting with “hardened” rock musicians and in kinship with the Byrds, Dylan recorded his most ascendant song yet, “Like a Rolling Stone.” Devoid of obvious protest references, set against a rough-hewn, twangy rock underpinning, and fronted by a snarling vocal that lashed out at all those who questioned his legitimacy, “Like a Rolling Stone” spoke to yet a new set of listeners and reached number two on theBillboard chart. It was the final link in the chain. The world fell at Dylan’s feet. And the album containing the hit single, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), further vindicated his abdication of the protest throne.

At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan bravely showcased his electric sound, backed primarily by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. After an inappropriately short 15-minute set, Dylan left the stage to a hail of booing—mostly a response to the headliner’s unexpectedly abbreviated performance rather than to his electrification. He returned for a two-song acoustic encore. Nonetheless, reams were written about his electric betrayal and banishment from the folk circle. By the time of his next public appearance, at the Forest Hills (New York) Tennis Stadium a month later, the audience had been “instructed” by the press how to react. After a well-received acoustic opening set, Dylan was joined by his new backing band (Al Kooper on keyboards, Harvey Brooks on bass, and, from the Hawks, Canadian guitarist Robbie Robertson and drummer Levon Helm). Dylan and the band were booed throughout the performance; incongruously, the audience sang along with “Like a Rolling Stone,” the number two song in the United States that week, and then booed at its conclusion.

Backed by Robertson, Helm, and the rest of the Hawks (Rick Danko on bass, Richard Manuel on piano, and Garth Hudson on organ and saxophone), Dylan toured incessantly in 1965 and 1966, always playing to sold-out, agitated audiences. On November 22, 1965, Dylan married Sara Lowndes. They split their time between a townhouse in Greenwich Village and a country estate in Woodstock, New York.

In February 1966, at the suggestion of his new producer, Bob Johnston, Dylan recorded at Columbia’sNashville, Tennessee, studios, along with Kooper, Robertson, and the cream of Nashville’s play-for-pay musicians. A week’s worth of marathon 20-hour sessions produced a double album that was more polished than the raw, almost punklike Highway 61 Revisited. Containing some of Dylan’s finest work,Blonde on Blonde peaked at number nine in Billboard, was critically acclaimed, and pushed Dylan to the zenith of his popularity. He toured Europe with the Hawks (soon to reemerge as the Band) until the summer of 1966, when a motorcycle accident in Woodstock brought his amazing seven-year momentum to an abrupt halt. Citing a serious neck injury, he retreated to his home in Woodstock and virtually disappeared for two years.

During his recuperation, Dylan edited film footage from his 1966 European tour that was to be shown on television but instead surfaced years later as the seldom-screened film Eat the Document. In 1998 some of the audio recordings from the film, including portions of Dylan’s performance at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England, were released as the album Live 1966.

In 1967 the Band moved to Woodstock to be closer to Dylan. Occasionally they coaxed him into the basement studio of their communal home to play music together, and recordings from these sessions ultimately became the double album The Basement Tapes (1975). In early 1968 Columbia released a stripped-down album of new Dylan songs titled John Wesley Harding. At least partly because of public curiosity about Dylan’s seclusion, it reached number two on the Billboard album chart (eight places higher than Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, released in 1967).

In January 1968 Dylan made his first postaccident appearance at a memorial concert for Woody Guthrie in New York City. His image had changed; with shorter hair, spectacles, and a neglected beard, he resembled a rabbinical student. At this point Dylan adopted the stance he held for the rest of his career: sidestepping the desires of the critics, he went in any direction but those called for in print. When his audience and critics were convinced that his muse had left him, Dylan would deliver an album at full strength, only to withdraw again.

Dylan returned to Tennessee to record Nashville Skyline (1969), which helped launch an entirely new genre, country rock. It charted at number three, but, owing to the comparative simplicity of its lyrics, people questioned whether Dylan remained a cutting-edge artist. Meanwhile, rock’s first bootleg album, The Great White Wonder—containing unreleased, “liberated” Dylan recordings—appeared in independent record stores. Its distribution methods were shrouded in secrecy (certainly Columbia, whose contract with Dylan the album violated, was not involved).

Over the next quarter century Dylan continued to record, toured sporadically, and was widely honoured, though his impact was never as great or as immediate as it had been in the 1960s. In 1970 Princeton (New Jersey) University awarded him an honorary doctorate of music. His first book,Tarantula, a collection of unconnected writings, met with critical indifference when it was unceremoniously published in 1971, five years after its completion. In August 1971 Dylan made a rare appearance at a benefit concert that former Beatle George Harrison had organized for the newly independent nation of Bangladesh. At the end of the year, Dylan purchased a house in Malibu, California; he had already left Woodstock for New York City in 1969.

In 1973 he appeared in director Sam Peckinpah’s film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and contributed to the sound track, including “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Writings and Drawings, an anthology of his lyrics and poetry, was published the next year. In 1974 he toured for the first time in eight years, reconvening with the Band (by this time popular artists in their own right). Before the Flood, the album documenting that tour, reached number three.

Released in January 1975, Dylan’s next studio album, Blood on the Tracks, was a return to lyrical form. It topped the Billboard album chart, as did Desire, released one year later. In 1975 and 1976 Dylan barnstormed North America with a gypsylike touring company, announcing shows in radio interviews only hours before appearing. Filmed and recorded, the Rolling Thunder Revue—including Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Roger McGuinn—came to motion-picture screens in 1978 as part of the four-hour-long, Dylan-edited Renaldo and Clara.

Lowndes and Dylan divorced in 1977. They had four children, including son Jakob, whose band the Wallflowers experienced pop success in the 1990s. Dylan was also stepfather to a child from Lowndes’s previous marriage. In 1978 Dylan mounted a yearlong world tour and released a studio album, Street-Legal, and a live album, Bob Dylan at Budokan. In a dramatic turnabout, he converted to Christianity in 1979 and for three years recorded and performed only religious material, preaching between songs at live shows. Critics and listeners were, once again, confounded. Nonetheless, Dylan received a Grammy Award in 1980 for best male rock vocal performance with his “gospel” song “Gotta Serve Somebody.”

By 1982, when Dylan was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, his open zeal for Christianity was waning. In 1985 he participated in the all-star charity recording “We Are the World,” organized by Quincy Jones, and published his third book, Lyrics: 1962–1985. Dylan toured again in 1986–87, backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and in 1987 he costarred in the film Hearts of Fire. A year later he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Traveling Wilburys (Dylan, Petty, Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison) formed at his house in Malibu and released their first album.

In 1989 Dylan once again returned to form with Oh Mercy, produced byDaniel Lanois. When Life magazine published a list of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century in 1990, Dylan was included, and in 1991 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy. In 1992 Columbia Records celebrated the 30th anniversary of Dylan’s signing with a star-studded concert in New York City. Later this event was released as a double album and video. As part of Bill Clinton’s inauguration as U.S. president in 1993, Dylan sang “Chimes of Freedom” in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

As the 1990s drew to a close, Dylan, who was called the greatest poet of the second half of the 20th century by Allen Ginsberg, performed for the pope at the Vatican, was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, received a Kennedy Center Honor, and was made Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters (the highest cultural award presented by the French government). In 1998, in a comeback of sorts, he won three Grammy Awards—including album of the year—for Time Out of Mind (1997). In 2000 he was honoured with a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for best original song for “Things Have Changed,” from the film Wonder Boys. Another Grammy (for best contemporary folk album) came Dylan’s way in 2002, for Love and Theft (2001).

In 2003 he cowrote and starred in the film Masked & Anonymous and began favouring keyboards over guitar in live appearances. The next year he released what portended to be the first in a series of autobiographies, Chronicles: Volume 1. In 2005 No Direction Home, a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese, appeared on television. Four hours long, yet covering Dylan’s career only up to 1967, it was widely hailed by critics. A sound track album that included 26 previously unreleased tracks came out before the documentary aired. In 2006 Dylan turned his attention to satellite radio as the host of the weekly Theme Time Radio Hour and released Modern Times, which won a Grammy Award for best contemporary folk album. Dylan also received an award for best solo rock vocal performance for “Someday Baby.”

In presenting to Dylan Spain’s Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts in 2007, the jury called him a “living myth in the history of popular music and a light for a generation that dreamed of changing the world,” and in 2008 the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded him a special citation for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture.” In 2009 Dylan released Together Through Life, which debuted at the top of the British and American album charts. He was still actively performing as he entered his 70s, and his 35th studio album, the rootsy Tempest (2012), found him as vigorous as ever. Dylan was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

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Bob Dylan’s Whole Life in 30 Minutes

In a rambling, comprehensive and surprisingly biting speech, Bob Dylan gave a half-hour speech of a lifetime on Friday. Here’s what he had to say.

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Last Friday night, in a remarkable speech that ran more than 30 minutes and was the talk of the industry over Grammy weekend, music legend Bob Dylan offered deeply personal thanks to a career-spanning chorus of friends and fellow musicians, colorfully smacked down a few others along the way, eviscerated decades of music critics’ complaints about his voice and his enigmatic nature, and stunned many by revealing the musical inspirations behind some of his most well-known songs.

In a rambling ode that crisscrossed a century of American music, Dylan delighted an audience of 3,000 musicians and industry veterans gathered in Los Angeles to honor him as Musicares’ 2015 Person of the Year. Musicares is the non-profit arm of the Grammys that aids impoverished musicians during times of financial and medical crisis.

The speech capped a star-studded musical tribute to Dylan, 73, by a wide variety of artists whom he handpicked to interpret his songs. The show, which was not broadcast, reportedly included performances by Beck (“Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat”); Jackson Browne (“Blind Willie McTell”); Bruce Springsteen (“Knocking on Heaven’s Door”); Neil Young (“Blowin’ In the Wind”); Jack White (“One More Cup of Coffee”); Crosby, Stills and Nash (“Girl From the North Country”); Tom Jones (“What Good Am I?”); Willie Nelson (“Senor”) and Los Lobos (“On a Night Like This”). This piece is based on a transcript of the speech published by Rolling Stone.

The diversity of the lineup proved to highlight a key theme in Dylan’s subsequent speech, in which he offered surprisingly tender thanks to Peter, Paul and Mary, who turned “Blowin’ In the Wind” into a hit song and—Dylan explained—taught him a lot about the mutability of a song, and how reinterpretation can open up myriad new possibilities in a song.

“[I] have to mention some of the early artists, who recorded my songs very, very early, without having to be asked,” Dylan told the audience. “Just something that they felt was right for them. I’ve got to say thank you to Peter, Paul and Mary, who I knew all separately before they became a group. I didn’t even think of myself as writing songs for others to sing but it was starting to happen and it couldn’t have happened to—or with—a better group,” he said.

“They took a song of mine that… was buried on one of my records and turned it into a hit song. Not that way that I would have done it,” Dylan intoned in his inimitable style. “They straightened it out.”

The artist also offered a surprisingly sweet appreciation for other sugary 1960s pop groups like The Turtles, The Byrds and Sonny & Cher, who also turned early Dylan songs into top pop hits. He poked fun at both the bands and himself.

In 2004, Dylan baffled virtually everyone when he appeared in a “Victoria’s Secret” television commercial with angel Adriana Lima and others, allowing the lingerie company to license his song “Love Sick.” The unexpected move prompted now-familiar outrage at Dylan for “selling out,” with one writer ruefully noting that “forty years ago, [Dylan’s] motto was ‘Money doesn’t talk, it swears.’ Today, it’s ‘stretch-lined demi-bra with lace.’”“Their versions of the songs were like commercials,” he explained, to laughter in the audience. “But I didn’t really mind that because 50 years later my songs were being used in the commercials. So that was good, too. I was glad it happened, and I was glad they’d done it.”

After thanking his earliest interpreters, Dylan firmly placed his own career within a contrasting lineage of American music. It all grew out of the folk songwriting tradition, Dylan said, and his work was embodied by the songs of his true heroes. There was Sun Studios’ legendary sound man Sam Phillips, he said, who discovered Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. He called Nina Simone an “overwhelming artist” who “validated everything I was about” when she recorded his songs. He wished the Staples Singers had done the same. He cited Joan Baez as “a woman of devastating honesty” and Johnny Cash as “a hero of mine.”

Dylan recounted the famous March 1964 letter to the editor that Cash, already a country legend at 32, wrote to Sing Out! magazine, a highly-influential folk magazine which had published a complaint-filled “open letter” to Dylan. Sing Out! was, to 1960s folk purists, roughly what the New Yorker is to many self-styled urban intellectuals. The magazine’s broadside accused Dylan, 23, of going Hollywood and abandoning his roots in strictly traditional folk music.

Cash, who had never met Dylan at that point, penned a powerful defense of the young artist that concluded, memorably, with “SHUT UP and let him sing!”

Years later, in a full-page ad in a 1998 Billboard magazine, Cash and producer Rick Rubin would again slam the Nashville establishment scene, which had similarly shunned the country legend late in his career.

Dylan spoke reverently of Cash in his speech on Friday night, infusing his tribute with prose that evoked the Bible, the book that had proven perhaps most precious to both men throughout their careers.

“Johnny was an intense character,” Dylan said in his speech. “And he saw that people were putting me down playing electric music, and he posted a letter to magazines scolding people, telling them to shut up and let him sing. In Johnny Cash’s world—hardcore Southern drama—that kind of thing didn’t exist. Nobody told anybody what to sing or what not to sing. I’m always going to thank him for that. Johnny Cash was a giant of a man—the man in black. And I’ll cherish the friendship we had until the day there is no more days.”

Then, Dylan did something extraordinary: He began to demonstrate preciselyhow some of the hundreds of songs he heard and sang as a young folk artist would beget some of his own most legendary lyrics.

It was Cash’s groundbreaking ballad “How High’s The Water, Mama?” with its signature narrative refrain that inspired Dylan’s own groundbreaker “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).”

“I wrote [“It’s Alright”] with that [“How High”] reverberating in my head,” Dylan said, astonishing some audience members. “I still ask, ‘How high’s the water, mama?’”

He went on to tie “John Henry” to “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key to the Highway” to “Highway 61,” and “Deep Ellum Blues” to “Just Like Tom Thumb Blues.”

The revelations called to mind charges in recent years that some of his lyrics and parts of his memoir, “Chronicles,” were plagiarized. Dylan’s songwriting technique was rather vigorously defended by literary scholars last summer when the issue reemerged.

“These songs didn’t come out of thin air. I didn’t just make them up out of whole cloth—there was a precedent. For three or four years all I listened to were folk songs. I went to sleep singing folk songs. If you sang ‘John Henry’ as many times as me,” he said, and then quoted a stanza from the traditional folk song, “If you’d have sung that song as many times as I did—you’d have written ‘How many roads must a man walk down?’ too.”

Dylan went on to quote lines from Big Bill Broonzy’s blues hit “Key to the Highway” that he said begat his own “Highway 61,” thrilling music aficionados.

He said he’d sung so many folk songs that began with a variation of “come all ye” that it began to bleed into his own songs, including “Come gather ‘round people/wherever you roam” from “The Times They Are A-Changing.”

“You’d have written them too,” he insisted.

“There’s nothing secret about it. You just do it subliminally and unconsciously. All these songs are connected,” he said.

“Don’t be fooled. I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way. I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. Some got angered, others loved them.”

For all of his appreciation for his predecessors and colleagues, Dylan took a few amusing swipes at some who he said didn’t like or get his songs. This included, strangely, country star Merle Haggard and Tom T. Hall, a vanilla country songwriter responsible for the 1968 pop hit “Harper Valley PTA.”

Then Dylan set off on a lyrical riff that just begs for a song of its own: “Tom loves little baby ducks, slow moving trains and rain. He loves old pickup trains and little country streams. Sleeping without dreams. Bourbon in a glass. Coffee in a cup. Tomatoes on the vine, and onions.”

His individual targets may have seemed random, but his ire was focused squarely on the Nashville music establishment of the 1960s and 1970s (and beyond). His comments channeled decades of tension between Nashville’s record industry executives and radio DJs, and renegade artists like Nelson, Cash and Dylan—who for years felt shut out from all important country radio play.

Dylan recalled listening to a Hall song on the radio while he was in Nashville recording an album.

“He was talking about all the things he loves—an everyman kind of song, trying to connect with people,” Dylan said. “Trying to make you think he’s just like you and you’re just like him. We all love the same things and we’re all in this together,” he said, tongue firmly in cheek.

The bard’s harshest rebukes were reserved for the press.

“Critics have always been on my tail since day one. Seems like they’ve always given me special treatment. Some of the music critics say I can’t sing. I croak. Sound like a frog. Why don’t these same critics say similar things about Tom Waits? They say my voice is shot. That I have no voice. Why don’t they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get special treatment? Critics say I can’t carry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Really? I’ve never heard that said about Lou Reed. Why does he get to go scot-free? What have I done to deserve this special treatment? Why me, Lord?

“Talk about slurred words and no diction. Why don’t they say those same things about them?”

“Why me, Lord?” Dylan said. It’s a refrain he would repeat, chorus-like, several times throughout the speech—a subtle nod to Kris Kristofferson, who wrote a song of the same name.

At the close of his speech, Dylan lavishly thanked Musicares and talked about how the worthy organization had come to his friend Billy Lee Riley’s aid when the rockabilly pioneer died impoverished five years ago. He suggested in no uncertain terms that Riley was well-deserving of the honor, even posthumously.

“He did it with style and grace,” Dylan said. “You won’t find him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s not there. Metallica is. Abba is. Mamas and the Papas—I know they’re in there. Jefferson Airplane, Alice Cooper, Steely Dan—I’ve got nothing against them. Soft rock, hard rock, psychedelic pop. I got nothing against any of that stuff, but after all, it is called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Billy Lee Riley is not there,” Dylan said. “Yet.”

The last time Dylan publicly suggested a course of action, Farm Aid was born.

In the years ahead, maybe even the months, look for Riley to find his way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When Bob Dylan talks, the world listens.

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Watch Bob Dylan’s Willfully Strange Performance On David Letterman’s Penultimate Show

David Letterman’s last-ever Late Show will air tonight. But if Letterman somehow doesn’t make it to work today, last night’s show was a pretty good one to go out on. The episode had appearances from a couple of American legends who also happen to be perverse old kooks. Bill Murray, maybe Letterman’s favorite guest ever, showed up covered in cake, which just makes sense. And then, as the musical guest, Bob Dylan made his firstLetterman appearance since 1993. (It might’ve also been his first late-night TV performance in general since then? Dylan just doesn’t do late-night TV.) Dylan’s performance was the sort of theatrical oddness we’ve come to expect from the man at this stage of his life. After Letterman called him “the greatest songwriter of modern times,” Dylan proceeded to sing a song he didn’t write: The old standard “The Night We Called It A Day,” from his new Sinatra tribute album Shadows In The Night. The performance felt meandering and off, as recent-vintage Dylan performances do. And when Letterman came out to share the stage with Dylan at the end, Dylan pretty much glared at Letterman, looking like a disapproving grandma. It was all tremendously entertaining, and you can watch it below.

There are no announced guests for tonight’s show, so I guess you’ll just have to watch instead of waiting for the next-morning YouTubes.

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WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WHEN DYLAN PLAYED THE LES CRANE SHOW

We try to be as accurate as possible with our articles at Gaslight Records, but given the events we cover occurred at least 20 years before most of our writers were born, it can sometimes prove difficult to get every detail correct.

Luckily, there are people around who were actually present for the events in question and have continued to study them over the past 50 years. 

Peter Stone Brown is a singer-songwriter who has appeared on bills with artists such as Lucinda Williams and Roger McGuinn. He is also a freelance writer who, over the past 40 or so years, has interviewed Rick Danko, Al Kooper, Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, John Lee Hooker, Arlo Guthrie, Muddy Waters and Levon Helm.

Brown experienced firsthand many of the events we talk about at Gaslight Records, and as a Dylanologist, he is somewhat of an authority on all things Bob Dylan.

So when Brown got in touch to correct a mistake we made in an article last week, we replied, "you should write about it for us then."

Read some of Brown's other work here...

We feel privileged to be able to publish Peter's account of watching Dylan on the Les Crane Show.

Enjoy.

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Last Monday there was an article posted here on Gaslight Records-- "Bob Dylan Writing 'Like A Rolling Stone'" -- in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the song being recorded. The premise of the article, which dealt with the mixed reception of Dylan’s latest and still very new album Bringing It All Back Home, was a bit off the mark, especially the part concerning TV host Les Crane.

In this article, Sam Pethers wrote:

“The general feeling toward Dylan's new work was well capitulated during an interview on the Les Crane Show in February 1965. In talking about Dylan's songwriting skills, Crane said, "For those out in the audience that might not know all of the songs you've written just name a few of the big ones." Dylan reluctantly replied, "Ohhhh, Subterranean Homesick Blues", to which Crane quickly interjected, "That ain't one of the big ones, how 'bout "Blowin' In The Wind"". The mention of "Blowin' In The Wind" received an ovation from the audience.”

Perhaps Sam based his writing on a transcript of the show as opposed to the audio recording (sadly, a video of this show does not seem to exist).

Listen below to the full interview.

LISTEN:

LES CRANE SHOW INTERVIEWBob Dylan

1965

00:00 / 14:48

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  LES CRANE SHOW INTERVIEW

  Bob Dylan1965

Dylan appeared on the Les Crane Show -- ABC’s answer to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson—broadcast from New York City on February 17, 1965. At the time of the show, no one, including Les Crane, knew of the existence of the song “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” A 45 rpm single of the song with “She Belongs To Me” (b side) would be released a couple of weeks later at the beginning of March, followed by the release of the album a few weeks after that.

I was lucky enough to watch the Les Crane Show the night Dylan was on. Dylan was rarely on TV back then, a practice he’s continued throughout his career. While there were other guests that night on the show, Dylan was the main guest. He sang two songs, debuting "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" at the beginning of the show, followed by "It's Alright Ma, (I'm Only Bleeding)" at the end, which Dylan had been performing during his concerts the previous autumn. On both songs, Dylan was accompanied by guitarist Bruce Langhorne, who was part of the New York City folk music scene, and previously had backed Dylan on "Corrina Corrina" onFreewheelin’. Langhorne played an acoustic Martin guitar, but he had a pickup in the guitar that provided an electric sound. Excepting duets, and a couple of very early appearances, Dylan always played solo. The show also revealed a new look for Dylan. Up to that point, Dylan’s concert attire was a suede jacket and blue jeans. OnLes Crane, he appeared wearing a suit--probably the same one he would wear on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home--and a white shirt with a snapped tab collar.

The rendition of "It’s All Over Now Baby Blue" joined two other songs in sounding suspiciously like rock and roll numbers: "I Don’t Believe You" and "It Ain't Me Babe" from Another Side of Bob Dylan, which was only six months old at the time of theLes Crane Show appearance.

After the first song, Dylan did something that never happened before or since: he sat down and talked, staying onstage the entire show. He was hysterically funny, and Les Crane played right along with him. So when Les Crane was trying to let his audience know who Bob Dylan was and what songs he had written, and Dylan said, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," which was right in line with other comments Dylan had made during the night, Crane just figured it was another joke. But no one knew Dylan wasn't kidding until a few weeks later when his new look and sound would be promoted in record stores across the US in the biggest campaign Columbia Records had launched so far. The campaign featured Dylan holding a Fender Stratocaster and wearing his iconic suit and shades. The image slogan read either, "No one sings Dylan like Dylan", or "Bob Dylan brings it all back home on Columbia Records."

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BOB DYLAN WRITING "LIKE A ROLLING STONE"

June 15th, 1965 - Bob Dylan arrived in New York City after a month of touring in Europe. Dylan had been very well received during his recent tours of the UK, US and Canada despite his album Bringing It All Back Home receiving mixed reviews.

The general feeling toward Dylan's new work was well captured during an interview on the Les Crane Show in February 1965. In talking about Dylan's songwriting skills, Crane said, "For those out in the audience that might not know all of the songs you've written just name a few of the big ones." Dylan reluctantly replied, "Ohhhh, Subterranean Homesick Blues", to which Crane quickly interjected, "That ain't one of the big ones, how 'bout "Blowin' In The Wind"". The mention of "Blowin' In The Wind" received an ovation from the audience.

The negative response to Dylan's new sound reportedly drove him to the brink of walking away from music altogether. In a 1966 interview with Playboy Magazine Dylan said, "Last spring I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it was a very draggy situation..."

In all likelihood Dylan returned from his tour of Europe in early June 1965 and headed straight for Woodstock N.Y. where he began writing lyrics to a new song. He later described the lyrics he was writing as "this long piece of vomit, 20 pages long, and out of it I took "Like a Rolling Stone" and made it as a single. And I'd never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that that was what I should do ... After writing that I wasn't interested in writing a novel, or a play. I just had too much, I want to write songs."

Dylan quickly started putting together musicians to record "Like A Rolling Stone". He invited blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield to his house in Woodstock, later saying, "When it was time to record my record I couldn't think of anybody but him [Mike Bloomfield]".

Dylan and Bloomfield during the "Like A Rolling Stone" sessions.

Bloomfield retold the story of arriving at Dylan's Woodstock house: "The first thing I heard was "Like a Rolling Stone". I figured he wanted blues, string bending, because that's what I do. He said, 'Hey, man, I don't want any of that B.B. King stuff'. So, OK, I really fell apart. What the heck does he want? We messed around with the song. I played the way that he dug, and he said it was groovy."

Dylan during the "Like A Rolling Stone" recording session.

At some point in early June, Dylan visited the Roger Smith Hotel in Washington D.C.--located just around the corner from The White House--where he continued refining the lyrics to "Like A Rolling Stone" ahead of his recording session at Columbia Studios in NYC. During his stay in D.C. Dylan wrote the near finalised lyrics for "Rolling Stone" on four pieces of Roger Smith Hotel letterhead paper. These pieces of paper sold at a Sotheby's Auction in 2014 for two million US dollars.

The Sotheby's Auction in 2014 dated the lyric sheets to June 15th-16th. However, given that the song was recorded on these days it is more likely they were penned earlier. The lyrics Dylan wrote while in D.C had alternate chorus lines, including, "like a dog without a bone,", "it ain't quite real", "does it feel real", "shut up and deal", and "get down an' kneel".

Listen below to the original piano demo version of "Like A Rolling Stone" that Dylan played for the session musicians on June 15th,1965 at Columbia Studio A--799 Seventh Avenue, New York City.

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