Category Archives: Bob Dylan

Audio: Frank Sinatra & Bob Dylan Sing the Songs From ‘Shadows In The Night’

Now that we know the songs that will be on Bob Dylan’s next album, Shadows In The Night, all of which are best known for Frank Sinatra’s recordings of them in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. I thought it would be fun to hear Sinatra’s versions, along with versions of three of them by Dylan.

In addition to Dylan’s version of “Full Moon And Empty Arms,” which was officially made available online last May, I’ve included a live version of “Stay With Me” from one of the Beacon Theater shows, and two versions of “That Lucky Old Sun,” one with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers backing Dylan.

In a statement Bob Dylan said this about the upcoming album: “It was a real privilege to make this album. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time but was never brave enough to approach 30-piece complicated arrangements and refine them down for a 5-piece band. That’s the key to all these performances. We knew these songs extremely well. It was all done live. Maybe one or two takes. No overdubbing. No vocal booths. No headphones. No separate tracking, and, for the most part, mixed as it was recorded. I don’t see myself as covering these songs in any way. They’ve been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day.”

Enjoy.

Frank Sinatra, “I’m A Fool To Love You”:

Frank Sinatra, “The Night We Called It A Day”:

Frank Sinatra, “Stay WIth Me”:

Bob Dylan, “Stay With Me,” live at the Beacon Theater, NYC, Nov. 29, 2014:

Frank Sinatra, “Autumn Leaves”:

Frank Sinatra, “Why Try To Change Me Now”:

Frank Sinatra, “Some Enchanted Evening”:

Frank Sinatra, “Full Moon And Empty Arms”:

Bob Dylan, “Full Moon And Empty Arms”:

Frank Sinatra, “Where Are You?:

Frank Sinatra, “What’ll I Do”:

Frank Sinatra, “That Lucky Old Sun”:

Bob Dylan & Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, live, True Confessions Tour, 1986:

That Lucky Old Sun by Bob Dylan and Tom Petty on Grooveshark

Bob Dylan, “That Lucky Old Sun,” live, Irvine Meadows Amphitheate, Irvine, CA, June 29, 2000:

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]

Video: The Story Of Bob Dylan’s ‘Basement Tapes’ – 24 Minute Mini-Documentary

This is excellent. Greil Marcus, Sid Griffin and others tell the story of Bob Dylan’s “Basement Tapes.”

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]

Audio/Video: Bob Dylan at the Beacon – ‘Pay In Blood,’ ‘Early Roman Kings’ & 6 More

Murky, but it is Dylan.

Bob Dylan performed in New York at the Beacon Theater over the course of the last week or so.

Here are audio/video files from a few shows. The audio is quite good.

Enjoy.

“Beyond Here Lies Nothing,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

Another fan video.

“Beyond Here Lies Nothing,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Early Roman Kings,” Nov. 29, 2014 show (note that the video itself is mislabeled):

“Waiting For You” (excerpt), Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Pay In Blood,” Dec. 2014 show:

“Tangled Up In Blue,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Love Sick,” Dec. 2014 show:

“Simple Twist Of Fate,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

Another fan video:

“Simple Twist Of Fate,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Forgetful Heart,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Long And Wasted Years”:

“Blowin’ In The Wind,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Blowin’ In The Wind,” Dec. 2, 2013 show:

“Stay With Me,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Stay With Me,” December 3, 2014 show:

Audio: PJ Harvey’s Version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Highway 61 Revisited’

Cool version of “Highway 61 Revisited” off PJ Harvey’s second album, Rid Of Me.

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]

Audio: Hear American Music Club Cover Bob Dylan’s ‘Queen Jane Approximately’

In 2005 Uncut magazine included a CD, Highway 61 Revisited Revisited, of Bob Dylan covers with one of their issues, and one of those covers, “Queen Jane Approximately,” was by the great San Francisco band, American Music Club.

Check it out:

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]

Video: Watch Bob Dylan’s Classic Dec. 3, 1965 San Francisco Press Conference

Forty-nine years ago, on Friday, December 3, 1965, this Bob Dylan press conference was recorded at KQED’s studios in San Francisco.

The press conference happened at a key point in Dylan’s career. He was now a rock star. “Like A Rolling Stone” was a hit and had been on the radio the past summer into fall. Highway 61 Revisited had been released three months earlier, in August.

Dylan was in the Bay Area to perform for two nights — Dec. 3 and Dec. 4 — at the Berkeley Community Theater.

The man who brings Dylan out is Ralph J. Gleason, who at the time was the jazz and pop critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, and a fan of Dylan. Gleason wrote this cover story for Ramparts magazine. It ran in the March 1966 issue.

There’s some great details about the press conference here, plus photos.

Bob Dylan press conference, part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]

Santa Cruz Sentinel Digs ‘True Love Scars’ – ‘I was trying to take the rock & roll of that time and get it on the page’

This article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel about my novel, True Love Scars, was published recently.

I think the article does a great job of conveying some of what the book is about.

Writes journalist Wallace Baine:

The period of the early 1970s isn’t just a setting for Michael Goldberg’s new novel “True Love Scars.” It’s the orientation for everything in the book, the language, the tone, the references, the narrative.

“I was trying to get at the experience of being young in that time period,” said UC Santa Cruz grad Goldberg, a long-time writer for Rolling Stone. “Not just the drugs and the sex, but the deeper stuff, trying to figure out who you are in the world. I was trying to take the rock & roll of that time and get it on the page.”

The result is an unusual story, fueled by a prose designed to evoke the rambunctious, radical music of the era, with a rhythm and poetic sensibility much more like the rock records of the time than many other novels.

And at the end of the story:

[Goldberg] talks about one scene in the book taking place on the houseboats of Sausalito. “I was listening to the Stones’ (1971 album) ‘Sticky Fingers’ over and over again while I was writing that, really trying to get the mood of that album on the page. I wanted the chapter to feel like what it was like to listen to some of those songs in that period.

“Frankly, I think the ‘sound’ of the narration is quite original. The big idea that I kept in mind as I wrote was that anything goes, that this was as if a 24-year-old and his friend went to a bar in 1975, had a few drinks and then the 24-year-old turned to his friend and said, ‘Let me tell you how my heart was broken…’”

To read the rest of the story, head here.

I’ll be doing a very special reading in the Bay Area on Dec. 13 at 3 pm. As I read, Grammy-winning experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser will improvise on guitar.

The event, titled “a post-beat happening – words + guitar,” will take place at Down Home Music in El Cerrito, CA. Be there!

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]

Dylan Expert Greil Marcus’ Column Has Moved Online Again – Read It Now!

Greil Marcus

Noted Dylan expert Greil Marcus has been writing his “Real Life Top 10” column since the ’70s, when it ran monthly in New West magazine.

The column has appeared in a variety of publications since then including Artforum, Salon, and most recently, The Believer.

Although I was able to reprint older columns at Addicted To Noise during the late ’90s and early 2000s, it wasn’t until Salon picked the column up in the mid-2000s that new columns appeared online each month.

And once Greil located it at The Believer, it was only available in print.

Well now that’s changed, and the column is currently available for all to read online each month at the Barnes & Noble Review.

A new column just went online here.

Marcus is the author many books including The Old, Weird America: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads and Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010. His most recent book is The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs.

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]

Video: Bob Dylan at the Academy Of Music, Philly 2014 – “She Belongs To Me,’ ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’ & More

Bob Dylan and band in Philadelphia.

Bob Dylan is in the midst of a three-night run at the Academy Of Music in Philadelphia. These performances are from the November 21, 2014 show.

“She Belongs To Me”:

“Duquesne Whistle”:

“Simple Twist Of Fate”:

“Blowin’ In The Wind”:

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]

Audio: Stream The Veronicas’ New Song, ‘Born Bob Dylan’

On The Veronicas’ new self-titled album, released this past week, is a song called “Born Bob Dylan.”

The Veronicas are identical twin sisters Lisa Origliasso and Jessica Origliasso.

They’re from Brisbane, Australia, and based on this song, they’re got a bombastic pop sound.

Their third album has been released by Sony, which, of course, owns the label Dylan records for, Columbia.

Musically, this song has nothing in common with Dylan, but I think the sincerity of the lyrics is cool.

“Born Bob Dylan” lyrics:

If I don’t say anything it’s wrong
If I said it wouldn’t come out right
It’s been keeping me up all night
Half my life I’ve been told to shut up
So how am I gonna open up?
Wish you could just read my mind

If I shared all of me
Would you run away?
If I sugarcoat what I had to say in poetry
Would it make you stay?

I wish I was born bob dylan
Had all the words to speak my feelings
I wish I stood up like rosa parks
And follow my heart and free the truth
Even if I stood alone
I didn’t know how it was gonna go
Even if the water was cold
I’d take a deep breath and get it off my chest

I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan

They say either way you win
If you’re feeling it right gotta hold it in
What is meant to be will be
But all the wisdom doesn’t help me now
I’m scared and I gotta find out how to speak my mind
If metaphors are frozen
I’m still making mine
I hope you know what I mean when I’m mad at me
Cause I don’t see what I’m in when I’m caught in between
I’m afraid the real you is alluring me

I wish I was born bob dylan
Had all the words to speak my feelings
I wish I stood up like rosa parks
And follow my heart and free the truth
Even if I stood alone
I didn’t know how it was gonna go
Even if the water was cold
I’d take a deep breath and get it off my chest

I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan

With you I’m ripped wide open at the seams
I’m not that tough
But you could hear the song inside of me
But it’s not enough
All the things I wanna say to you
Read it on my face

I wish I was born bob dylan
Had all the words to speak my feelings
I wish I stood up like rosa parks
And follow my heart and free the truth
Even if I stood alone
I didn’t know how it was gonna go
Even if the water was cold
I’d take a deep breath and get it off my chest

I wish I was born bob dylan
Even if I stood alone
Didn’t know how it was gonna go
Gotta get it off my chest
And hope for the best

I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan

I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan
I wish I was born bob dylan

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]