Fifty-two years ago, in November of 1962, Bob Dylan recorded a number of demos at the office of Broadside magazine, and for Whitmark Music, his music publishers, at their office.
The Whitmark Demos were officially released on The Whitmark Demos 1962 – 1964: The Bootleg Series Vol. 9. Some of the Broadside recordings have been released as well.
Below you can listen to some of the songs that Dylan demoed in November of 1962. I highly recommend that you purchase a copy of The Whitmark Demos 1962 – 1964: The Bootleg Series Vol. 9, which includes 47 demos recorded during 1962, 1963 and 1964.
“Long Ago, Far Away”:
“I’d Hate To Be You On That Dreadful Day”:
“Oxford Town”:
“Paths Of Victory”:
“Walkin’ Down the Line”:
“Ye Playboys And Playgirls”:
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[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.]
As I posted last week, I did an interview with Brian Wise on Triple R radio in Australia about Bob Dylan and the Basement Tapes.
I talk about the background and context in which the Basement Tapes sessions occurred, and why they’re important. Following my interview is an interview with T Bone Burnett.
The interviews aired this past Saturday, but now they’re available on-demand.
You can now stream all of it right now online at Triple R radio right here.
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[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.]
On June 10, 1988, Bob Dylan and his band performed at the Greek Theater, University of California, Berkeley, California.
They were joined by Neil Young on wild electric guitar.
The band consisted of: Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar), Neil Young (guitar), G. E. Smith (guitar), Kenny Aaronson (bass), Christopher Parker (drums).
These first songs are without Neil Young.
“Joey”:
“Absolutely Sweet Marie”:
“Tangled Up In Blue”:
Neil Young joins Dylan for these songs except “Rank Strangers To Me”:
“It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry”:
“In The Garden”:
“Gates Of Eden”:
“Like A Rolling Stone”:
“Rank Strangers To Me”:
“Everybody’s Moving'”:
“Maggie’s Farm”:
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[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.]
Last night (Nov. 13, 2014) the band T Bone Burnett put together to turn a bunch of lyrics Bob Dylan wrote in 1967 while recording the Basement Tapes in upstate New York into an album, performed songs from the new album, Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Los Angeles.
That band, dubbed The New Basement Tapes, consists of Marcus Mumford, Elvis Costello, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Rhiannon Giddens. For the show, they were augmented on a few songs by the three women of Haim, and Johnny Depp.
Rhiannon Giddens and the Haim sisters.
Here you can see them perform “Kansas City,” with Marcus Mumford on lead vocal, “Duncan and Jimmy” with Rhiannon Giddens singing, “Card Shark, with Taylor Goldsmith taking the lead and some of “Married To M Hack,” which Elvis Costello sings.
“Kansas City”:
“Duncan and Jimmy”:
“Card Shark”:
“Married To My Hack” (partial):
Plus here they are with Elvis on vocals singing “Lost On The River” on Jimmy Fallon. This aired on NBC on November 10th, 2014.
And here’s Marcus Mumford taking the lead on “Kansas City” on Ellen today.
Setlist:
Down on the Bottom – Jim James vocals
Spanish Mary – Rhiannon Giddens vocals
Liberty Street – Rhiannon Giddens vocals
Married to My Hack – Elvis Costello vocals
The Whistle is Blowing – Marcus Mumford vocals with Haim on backing
vocals
Diamond Ring – Taylor Goldsmith vocals
Nothing to It – Jim James vocals
Lost on the River – Elvis Costello vocals
Florida Key – Taylor Goldsmith vocals
Stranger – Marcus Mumford vocals
Hidee Hidee Hidee Ho – Rhiannon Giddens vocals
Hidee Hidee Hidee Ho (alternate version) – Jim James vocals
“Unreleased track” – Elvis Costello
Kansas City – Marcus Mumford Vocals with Johnny Depp on guitar and Haim
on back-up vocals
Duncan and Jimmy – Rhiannon Giddens vocals with Johnny Depp on guitar
and Danielle Haim on shakers
– Encore break –
When I Get My Hands on You – Marcus Mumford vocals
Lost on the River – Rhiannon Giddens
Card Shark (unamplified) – Taylor Goldsmith vocals
Quick Like a Flash – Jim James vocals
Golden Tom – Silver Judas – Elvis Costello vocals
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[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.]
Bob Dylan and band performing “Desolation Row” at the Assago Forum in Milan, Italy, November 14, 2011:
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[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.]
I’ll be discussing the Basement Tapes with DJ Brian Wise on his Melbourne, Australia radio show, Off The Record, on Triple R radio at 9:45 Australian time.
If you miss the live broadcast, the show will be available on-demand a few days after it airs and I’ll be doing a post about that with a link to the stream.
But listen live, it’s more fun.
I’ll talk about why the Basement Tapes are important, the context for their creation and more.
Following me Brian Wise will interview T Bone Burnett about the Basement Tapes and the New Basement Tapes album Burnett produced with Elvis Costello, Jim James ad others. Should make for a great show if you care about Bob Dylan.
Since the show is broadcast in Australia, those of us in the U.S. should tune in on Friday November 14 in the afternoon at 2:45 pm, and if you’re elsewhere in the world, you can figure out when to tune in easy enough. Use this time zone converter.
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[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.]
The new issue of Rolling Stone features a fascinating cover story by David Browne about the Basement Tapes.
Here are seven things I learned from the story that I didn’t know before I read it.
1) In late 1967 Garth Hudson gave a pine box full of the seven inch reel-to-reel tapes he’d made of the recordings Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Hudson had made during the previous six months or so to Dylan’s manager’s wife, Sally Grossman, for safekeeping. “Garth said I was to guard these tapes because he was going away for a while,”Sally Grossman told Rolling Stone.
One of the Basement tapes.
2) Some of the musicians who made the tapes, and some of their friends who heard some of the songs didn’t get it — including Bob Dylan.
“I never really liked the Basement Tales,” Dylan told Rolling Stone in 1984.”I wouldn’t have put them out.”
“We would do these songs and fall on the floor laughing,” Robbie Robertson said in 1998.
“Frankly, I didn’t quite get it at the time because it was a bunch of guys messing around,” Happy Traum told Rolling Stone.
As for Sally Grossman, it’s hard to figure out what she thought.
“It sounded like throwaway stuff. Nonsense stuff. Bob and the guys were hanging out, playing and having fun,” Grossman recently told the British paper, the Observer. “The titles alone are enough of a clue. The Mighty Quinn, Mrs Henry, Lo & Behold! Bob wasn’t playing the songs live. The Band wasn’t. They weren’t thinking these were songs for release.”
But Grossman told Rolling Stone that when she listened to some of the tapes Hudson left with her including “Lo & Behold!” and “Quinn the Eskimo,” “They were great.”
“Lo and Behold!”:
3) Before the motorcycle accident, when Dylan was spending time at the Hotel Chelsea in New York, partying with Robertson and Edie Sedgwick, there was one party where he wore black-and-white striped pajama bottoms and a red, brown and gold polka-dot top.
4) The Big Pink house — where members of what would become The Band lived, and where the Basement Tapes were recorded — rented for $125 a month.
5) One reason why Dylan stopped the sessions in the “Red Room” of his own house (a room with burgundy walls) and moved to Big Pink was to get away from the wife and kids. “It was his house,” Hudson told Rolling Stone. Dylan probably didn’t want his young kids to be around a bunch of pot smoking musicians.
6) Donald Fagen of Steely Dan fame now lives in the 11-room house in the Byrdcliffe Colony where Dylan once lived.
Garth Hudson back in the basement, 2014.
7) Canadian music archivist and producer Jan Haust, who worked on getting the just released Basement Tapes Complete to sound as good as possible, bought the actual seven inch reels from Garth Hudson for around $30,000, a source told Rolling Stone. “I have an arrangement with Garth Hudson, and we’ll just leave it at that,” Haust told Rolling Stone.
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[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.]
Amos Lee and the Forest Rangers cover Bob Dylan’s “Boots Of Spanish Leather” on the latest episode of “Sons Of Anarchy.”
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[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.]
Producer and writer Larry Charles (“Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Borat”) provides insight into Bob Dylan’s creative process during this amazing interview from the “You Made It Weird.”
Charles co-write the 2003 movie “Masked and Anonymous” with Dylan.
Rolling Stone has a good story based on this clip. Read it here.
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[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.]
Cool photo of Brian Jones and Bob Dylan at a record release party for the Young Rascals at the Phone Booth nightclub in New York, November, 1965.
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[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.]
