The Rock n Roll Curmudgeon Rides Again
The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series: A Totally Subjective Retrospective (Part3)
Here’s where the fun begins!
Coming in at numbers 9,8,7,6 (respectively but totally interchangeable) are The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue, The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966, and The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete.
Even the casual Dylan head is somewhat aware of the crimes, misdemeanors, and passions revolving around Dylan as 1974 slid into autumn and autumn in winter. Recorded in just six days, four in New York, September 16-19, and two in Minneapolis, December 27 & 30th,
Blood On The Tracks (Columbia, 1975) remains a timeless, resilient masterpiece.
The loud, grueling, and impersonal monthlong tour with the Band earlier in ’74 (I was at MSG, January 31, afternoon show) may have raked in the dough but it left Dylan searching.
His marriage dissolving. A new affair was afoot. His concept of time — how it could be defied and manipulated for creative ideals — had shifted while studying with painter Norman Raeben. After the stark, acoustic recordings in Columbia’s hallowed Studio A, (which circulated among collectors and still holds reverence as The New York Sessions) Dylan had a change of heart and returned home to Minnesota to rethink and re-record.
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So maybe it’s all revealed on the six discs of The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks but we’re talking Dylan so you never really know. Remixed to shed some of the studio sonics added to the tracks, it is still startling to hear these early and often definitive takes of “Buckets of Rain,” “Up To Me,” “Shelter from the Storm,” and a cataclysmic “Idiot Wind” that to this day still has people lined up on either side of the solo version or the Minnesota rocked up version which made the final cut. Same can be said for “Tangled Up in Blue.” As for the five Minnesota songs (the remaining “You’re a Big Girl Now,” “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts,” and “If You See Her, Say Hello”) sadly the rehearsals and session tapes are somewhere lost in time and all we have are the working master tapes included here.
Though a compilation of performances from November 75 through January 76, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue follows Dylan’s rollicking muse through New England armed not only with the songs from Blood On The Tracks but also from the then unreleased Desire (Columbia, 1976). That album, recorded in July and August 1975, comes to life with the gypsy caravan including, but not limited to Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Allen Ginsberg, Roger McQuinn, T. Bone Burnett, Mick Ronson, Rob Stoner, Scarlet Rivera, Howie Wyeth, and a boisterous roster of others.
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Authors boast: I was fortunate enough to have been witness to two of these unforgettable shows, the first in New Haven, 11/13 (afternoon performance where he first performed “Tangled Up In Blue”) and the second in Hartford, 11/24 with Joni, Rambling Jack Elliot, and Rick Danko.
Authors note/recommendation: Though not considered part of the Bootleg Series proper, the 14 disc box set The Rolling Thunder Revue Live 1975 is absolutely essential to the immersive process of this period.
It should come as no surprise, as one listens spellbound to the 18 disc deluxe version Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 and the 6 disc Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes that Dylan (knowingly, unknowingly take your pick) charts the course of contemporary music then tears the maps and charts again. Rock n roll goes ballistic during the sessions for Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde then goes country, alternative, outlaw, and Americana with the hallowed hollers found on Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete. In real time, it’s a swirling fourteen-month ride that, lest we forget or be found remiss, begins with the folk/rock crossover sessions for Bringing It All Back Home.
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Maybe it’s OCD on my part but these sets are truly fly-on-the-wall stuff. The bulk of discs 3 & 4 of The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 dedicated wholly to the sessions for “Like A Rolling Stone.” The breakdowns, false starts, near misses, final take to a song that resonates as much through the generations as it did then when released to an unknowing public on July 20th, 1965. The amphetamine inspiration never stops as the fascinating evolutions of “Desolation Row,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Positively Fourth Street,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Visions of Joanna,” attest.
The unrestrained lunacy of “Leopard Skin PiIl Box Hat” and “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” serve as arbiters to the jangled lost masterpieces attempted over and over without fruition, namely: “She’s Your Lover Now,” “Sitting On a Barbed Wire Fence,” “I’ll Keep It With Mine.” Recorded in May ’65 during the filming of the uber doc, Don’ Look Back, an early version of the traditional, “Young But Daily Growing” would, months later, be resurrected during the Basement Tape sessions.
Authors note/recommendation: Another set not considered part of the Bootleg Series per say, the 36 CD box set Bob Dylan Live 1966 does add conclusively to the concussive effect of those game changing fourteen months. Treat yourself if your retirement account permits.
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Noted author, Dylan prober, and cultural historian, Greil Marcus, first labelled the Basement Tapes as an Invisible Republic, grounded in the great Gothic dramas of American traditional and roots music. Clinton Heylin, in his book The Recording Sessions, posits the songs from the West Saugerties basement Dylan’s greatest collection of songs. (Hyperbole aside, perhaps that greatest collection of songs was just discussed within The Cutting Edge 1965–1966) Again, it’s Dylan and everyone has a say. Let’s leave it at that.
But let’s admit that listening to the Basement Tapes fifty-six years after the fact it is still an incredibly open, intimate experience. Originally meant to record some demos for Dylan’s publishing company, the music comes at you from a far away place, a very far away time. If you were a musical novice at the time (as most of us were) you might have sworn these guys were writing one great song after another, when in fact, Dylan, Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manuel, (Levon Helm rejoins his mates a few months later in the recording process) were covering ancient ballads and shanties as well as music from Clarence Williams, Hank Williams, AP Carter, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger, Ian Tyson, Eric Von Schmidt, etc..
They were in the midst of a creative frenzy as well, as if digging through the past revealed new
forms, new melodies, new ways to communicate. “Tears of Rage,” “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” “I Shall Be Released,” “This Wheel’s On Fire,” the still unfinished “Sign On the Cross,” as well as hallucinatory and enigmatic ramblings such as “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread,” “Quinn the Eskimo,” and “Million Dollar Bash.” The breadth of the Basement Tapes is now, as it was in real time, a truly remarkable achievement, not just for the active participants, but for the music to come.
So let’s bring this installment in for a landing, shall we. I’ve held your attentive gaze long enough and thank you for that. Two more installments lie ahead . . .
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Mike Jurkovic is a prolific poet, writer and reviewer and a frequent contributor to Lightwood. He heads CAPS (Calling All Poets) a reading series live and on zoom and CAPS small press. Read more of this writing by going to our Search Button and entering his name.
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