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:
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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.]
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:
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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.]
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.
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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 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”:
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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 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
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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.]
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.
Here’s a promo video about the Whitmark Demos.
Bob Dylan – “The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964” from Columbia Records on Vimeo.
More info here.
This review ran in The Guardian.
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.]
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.]
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.
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.
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.]
