Episode 37: Bob Dylan and the Beatles in the 1960s

The other week I received a message asking me if I’d consider doing an episode about Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Ringo Starr had just been to see Dylan live in concert at the Beacon Theatre in NYC, and as I was thinking about it, the idea for this episode took shape pretty rapidly.

Fun fact: long before I was a Bob Dylan fan, I was a nine year old Beatles geek who wouldn’t shut up about her favourite musicians. Some things don’t change…

So in this hour, we examine the different roles the Beatles and Bob Dylan played in popular culture at the beginning of the 60s, and we’ll discuss the fateful meeting at a hotel in New York, where Dylan introduced the Beatles to cannabis, and singlehandedly changed the trajectory of music. Or did he?

The music in this hour reflects some of the ways in which these seminal artists influenced one another and served as artistic foils throughout their respective careers.

Please note that I’ve decided to narrow this episode down to just the decade of the 1960s. There is a lot more to be said about Dylan’s friendship and rivalry with the individual members after the band broke up. I’m saving that for another episode, so there will be a Part 2!

The clips that I played in the episode of Starr and McCartney talking about their meeting with Bob Dylan come from the Beatles Anthology documentary. Here’s a longer clip where all four are talking about their relationship with Bob Dylan.

Here’s the beautiful George Harrison cover of Dylan’s Mama You Been On My Mind.

Here’s the Beatles jamming to Rainy Day Women No 12&35 - what a perfect song to cover by the artist that introduced the to marijuana.

Also, here’s a cool version of Bob Dylan playing the Beatles song Come Together at a 1985 rehearsal!

Playlist:

1. Corrina Corrina - Bob Dylan

2. My Back Pages - Bob Dylan

3. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away - The Beatles

4. Norwegian Wood - The Beatles

5. Fourth Time Around - Bob Dylan

6. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine - Bob Dylan

7. Yer Blues - The Beatles

8. Things We Said Today - Bob Dylan (Beatles cover)

Full disclaimer: the image I used for this episode seems to be photoshopped. I just really wanted it to be real, so I might keep it up there anyway, but just so you know, it’s not an actual photo of Dylan and Lennon together!

Episode 36: The Emotional World Of Blood On The Tracks

In the third episode since the release of More Blood, More Tracks we take a step back and reflect on the songs themselves and what they tell us about the emotional world of the album Blood On The Tracks.

As Laura talks about the themes and motifs that run through the lyrics, we explore the way Dylan evokes intimacy and heartbreak on one of his finest collections of songs. We discover the subtle interplay between different songs on the record, and the way emotions shift, reflect, and echo one another, from track to bloody track.

Playlist:

1. Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Take 1)

2. Buckets Of Rain (Take 4, Remake 2)

3. You're A Big Girl Now (Take 2, Remake)

4. If You See Her, Say Hello (Remixed Minneapolis version)

5. Up To Me (Take 2, Remake)

Episode 35: More Blood, More Tracks Pt. II

This week’s episode is Part II of the discussion surrounding the recently released Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks!

In this hour, Laura muses what role exactly Anton Chekhov might have played in the creation of Blood On The Tracks, and what that tells us about the reaction to this release in the media.

The majority of the episode is dedicated to exploring the executive decisions made in the creation of this Bootleg Series. It’s getting a bit nerdy, as we explore muted bass mistakes, vocal edits, and wonder why the hell the Dylan camp doesn’t want to release the test pressing version of Idiot Wind??

Playlist:

1. Shelter From The Storm (album version, snippet)

2. Shelter From The Storm (MBMT, Take 4)

3. Idiot Wind (Bootleg Series 1-3 version, snippet)

4. Idiot Wind (MBMT, Take 6, snippet)

5. Idiot Wind (MBMT, Take 6, snippet)

6. Idiot Wind (MBMT Take 4, Remake with Organ Overdub)

7. Meet Me In The Morning (Take 1, Remake)

Episode 34: More Blood, More Tracks Pt. I

This week Laura dives into More Blood, More Tracks, the highly anticipated Vol. 14 in Bob Dylan’s ongoing Bootleg Series, which was released at the beginning of November! The collection is entirely dedicated to the recording sessions of Dylan’s seminal 1975 album Blood On The Tracks, with particular focus on the sessions Dylan initially recorded in New York over the course of four days, before he decided to re-record half the record in Minneapolis a few months later.

For decades, fans have been circulating a bootleg version of the album’s test pressing comprised of only tracks from the New York Sessions, speculating what could have led Dylan to reconsider the album’s aesthetic.

In this hour, Laura talks about the allure of the New York Sessions, while also trying to discern what’s behind the seemingly frequent criticism of the Minneapolis takes among Dylan fans. We also explore the record’s status as one of the most famous “confessional” songwriter albums, as well as the fascination with Dylan’s real-life heartbreak and its impact on the songs.

The episodes includes a shortened version of a great Dylan quote regarding what his songs are about from a 1985 interview with Bill Flanagan. The full exchange, which is relevant to the discussion of meaning in songs, went like this:

BILL FLANAGAN: “Anything you’ve ever tried to write about and been unable to do?”

BOB DYLAN: “Yeah. Anything I try to write about, I can’t do it. If I try to write about something - "I want to write about horses" or "I want to write about Central Park" or "I want to write about the Cocaine industry" - I can’t get anywhere with that. I have to always take it out. It’s like that "Hurricane" song. I wanted to write a song about Hurricane Carter, I wanted to spread the message. It really doesn’t come out about Hurricane. Really, the essence of it is never what it’s about. It’s really about you. Unless you’re standing in somebody else’s shoes you just don’t know what it feels like. You don’t know what it’s about.

You can go to a movie and say, "What’s this about?" A movie is something that gives the illusion of stopping time. You go someplace and you sit there for a while. you’re looking at something. You’re trapped. It’s all happening in your brain and it seems like nothing else is going on in the world. Time has stopped. The world could be coming to an end outside, but for you time has stopped. Then someone says, "What was it about?" "Well, I don’t know. It was about two guys who were after the same girl." Or, "It was about the Russian Revolution." Well, yeah, that was what it was about, but that wasn’t *it*. That’s not what made you stay there and stare at the screen, at a light on the wall. In another way you could say, "What’s life about?" It’s just going by like a movie all the time. It doesn’t matter if you’re here for a hundred years, it still goes by. You can’t stop it.

So you can’t say what it’s about. But what you can do is try to give the illusion of the moment of it. And even that’s not what it’s about. That’s just proof that you existed.

What’s anything about? It’s not about anything. It is what it is.”

—

The entire interview is interesting and can be found here.

Playlist:

1. Simple Twist Of Fate (Take 1A)

2. Tangled Up In Blue (SNIPPET - remixed Minneapolis version)

3. Tangled Up In Blue (Take 3, Remake 3)

4. Call Letter Blues (Take 1)

5. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 5)

Episode 33: Mondo Scripto

This week, we dive into Bob Dylan’s Mondo Scripto, the new exhibition of Dylan’s artworks currently on show at London’s Halcyon Gallery. In an exclusive interview, Laura speaks with Paul Green, the gallery’s president and founder, about the exhibition, the history of Green’s working relationship with Dylan, and the importance of Bob Dylan as a post-war American visual artist. Green also shares some interesting news about a huge Dylan career retrospective coming to China next year.

Mondo Scripto features Dylan’s handwritten lyrics to roughly 60 of his most popular songs, accompanied by graphite drawings that serve as illustrations to the words. Some pieces appear in Dylan’s own ironwork frames. Though Dylan has worked as a visual artist for much of his career, and we’ve seen his paintings appear on album covers such as Self Portrait, Planet Waves, and The Band’s Music From Big Pink, Mondo Scripto is the first exhibition in which the words of Dylan’s songs and his visual art appear in direct juxtaposition. However, as is often the case with Dylan, things are not what they seem, and mysteries abound.

The interaction of writing and visual art has long been a hallmark of Dylan’s work, from the vivid imagery of his 60s songs, to his deep associations with films and filmmaking throughout the decades. Dylan has also credited the painting lessons he took with Norman Raeben as the source for a new-found writing style which he was able to explore on his seminal 1975 album Blood On The Tracks.

The Mondo Scripto exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery runs through to the end of November and is free of charge. If you can’t make it to New Bond Street to see the exhibition yourself, it’s worth buying the exhibition catalogue, which includes reproductions of each piece. However, since the exhibition includes multiple versions of certain songs, there are some variations that aren’t found in the catalogue. That is the case with “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”, which Laura talks about in the episode. If you’re interested in reading the lyrics to that version in full, you can look at them here (and here’s the drawing that goes along with it).

“Tangled Up In Blue” is another song that Dylan has revisited multiple times over the years. In the episode, Laura plays a version with re-written lyrics from the 1984 concert album Real Live, but if you’re interested in reading the version of the lyrics included in Mondo Scripto, you can see them here (1, 2, 3). For better quality images and more information, please see the exhibition catalogue, or go and see Mondo Scripto for yourself at the Halcyon Gallery in London.

Here’s the link to the article by Scott Warmuth on Dylan’s exhibition, The Beaten Path.

Playlist:

1. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

2. Shelter From The Storm (live at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC, 19 October 1994)

3. Tangled Up In Blue (Real Live)