That’s What I Like: Bob Dylan

[Note: in honor of Bob’s 70th birthday, I change my “Favorite Songs” list from 30 to 70.]

It’s my thought that, after 45 years, everybody who loves Bob Dylan has their own Bob Dylan. By which I mean, once you’ve fallen in love with Bob’s music, your relationship to it is different than anybody else’s.

So rather than some kind of overview of details that you’ve heard a zillion times before and/or don’t really care about, here are are some snippets of how my ongoing love of Bob’s music, etc. has intersected with my life for the past 30 or so years. 30 more, please!

• At some point in the mid-1980s, I discovered that the Henry Madden Library at Fresno State had a vinyl copy of infamous “Royal Albert Hall” bootleg. Why they had it, I don’t know. I do know that there were a couple of other boots there, including The Rolling Stones Live’R Than You’ll Ever Be. In any event, I recorded it to cassette a couple of times, and spent the next few years trying to figure out how to, uh, liberate it from its involuntary servitude. I often wondered how those boots ended up in the Library and, just now, I did an online search of the Henry Madden Library to see if it’s still there. Apparently not. Good. Perhaps it was played to death.
• My brother Joseph turned me on to Bob Dylan. He was the original Dylan freak in our household, and I first grew to love Bob’s songs not as much through the original records, but rather through Joe’s interpretation of songs like “I Don’t Believe You” and “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry.” He would often sit in his room and play them on an acoustic guitar, and I would wander in and bang out primitive percussion on the back of a broken old acoustic.
• Some Dylan songs that I think are incredibly overrated and/or don’t really need to hear again:
  1. “I Shall Be Released”
  2. “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”
  3. “Joey”
  4. “They Killed Him”
  5. “Ballad of a Thin Man”
  6. “Masters of War”
  7. “Disease of Conceit”
  8. “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”
• That Victoria’s Secret commercial? Hilarious, not scandalous. Same goes for his cameo on, er, Dharma & Greg.
• Mid-1980s again. This time in the KFSR office, Kirk & I are listening to the promo copy of (I think) Infidels, and I couldn’t help but think that I was part of a grand tradition of college students stretching back two decades who couldn’t wait to get their hands on the new Dylan album. I’m betting that tradition has now stretched forward two decades as well.
• Q. How awesome is it that Modern Times debuted at #1? A. Pretty fracking awesome! His first #1 in 30 years. How often does any artist — pick a field, any field — who pretty much changed the world when he was 25 is still doing work that ranks with his best at 65? And how often do people get that fact and actually purchase the art in droves?
• I think it was in the late 1970s or early 1980s when I saw my first excerpts of the live 1966 footage — Dylan screaming through his hands, all around the mic while The Hawks just kept getting higher and higher behind him. It was from some rock history documentary, and wow. You know. Wow. I desperately wanted more, and eventually got my hands on an 764,987th generation bootleg video cassette of Eat The Document. Of course, that wasn’t enough, either, even though this boot had the full version of the infamous limo ride with John Lennon where a clearly fracked-up Bob annoys the shit out of John. Anyways, the No Direction Home DVD had a couple of full songs from this tour as extras. Still not enough.
• My original “Best-of” Bob Dylan cassette compiliation was made on May 8, 1989, and it took up five full C-90s. It also didn’t include Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home which shared a C-90 or Blood on the Tracks, which fit pefectly on a C-60, if you added “Up to Me” at the end where it belonged. OK, so that was eight cassettes. In 2002, that grew to ten 80-minute CD-Rs, and who knows how many .mp3z the next one will be.
• I’ve seen Dylan in concert four times:
  1. November 1980 — The Warfield, San Francisco: This was the first of his post-gospel tours.
  2. June 1986 — Greek Theatre, Berkeley: with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
  3. July 1987 — Alameda County Coliseum, Oakland: with the Grateful Dead.
  4. May 1995 — Community Theatre, Berkeley

  The nadir was the Dead show in Oakland. It goes without saying that those stadium shows are pretty brutal during the best of times, and it seemed like Bob couldn’t care less. However, I did get a really cool T-Shirt with an iconic mid-60s headshot of Bob. Somehow, Joseph ended up with that T-Shirt. I’m assuming that it shrunk and I didn’t.

• Late 1980s: an recently exed-girlfriend walked up to me and breathlessly declared this: “My new boyfriend has long hair, a beard and he likes Bob Dylan and Woody Allen.”
• I had a cat named “Zimmerman.”
• It was during one of those awesome mid-1990s record swaps at USF — maybe even the one where I met Keith Knight — where I found all five discs of The Genuine Basement Tapes. Even after 15 years of the Bootleg Series, there is still enough unreleased stuff on those to rival anything he’s ever put out. Hint, Hint.
• If pressed, I will name these as my favorite Dylan albums where he recorded all of the songs at pretty much the same time:
  1. Bootleg Series 4: Live in Manchester 1966 (The Electric Disc)
  2. Blood on the Tracks
  3. Blonde on Blonde
  4. Highway 61 Revisited
  5. The Genuine Basement Tapes
  6. “Love and Theft”
  7. Bringing It All Back Home
  8. John Wesley Harding
  9. World Gone Wrong
  10. Time Out of Mind
  11. Planet Waves
• Here are my essential Dylan compilations:
  1. Bootleg Series 1-3
  2. Bootleg Series 7: No Direction Home
  3. Biograph
  4. Bootleg Series 8: Tell-Tale Signs
• I first got online in the spring of 1993 via the now-defunct Prodigy. P*! After poking around for a bit, I ended up joining — and for a couple of years, until I discovered Netscape, contributing a lot to — a couple of online communities. One was centered around The Replacements, and the other was centered around Bob Dylan. The Replacements boards were essentially my indie-rock peer group, only spread across the country: we were all pretty much the same age and had similar experiences and outlooks.

  The Dylan boards were more heterogenous: the age group ranged from 16 to 66, and there were tremendous arguments over things like politics and religion and music. The only thing that everybody agreed upon was Bob Dylan. And in the early 1990s — when a lot of people, especially the Baby Boomers — thought he was washed up, there was even a lot of disagreement on him.

• Rox is not a Dylan fan. It’s that whole voice thing. She tolerates him for my sake, knowing that it’s one of the many many prices she has to pay for marrying me. So I was pretty surprised when she said that she liked “Things Have Changed” as we were watching Wonder Boys. The lesson here: no one is immune.
• For one of my classes at Fresno State — I think it was something like “American Popular Culture of the 20th Century,” I actually got to write a term paper on Bob Dylan. Kirk was in that class with me, and he got to write his on Woody Allen. I felt like I was getting away with something, or maybe it was because I’d stopped going to the class, knowing that most of the grade was based on the term paper.
• The liner notes in World Gone Wrong are awesome — despite the fact that it was the second album in a row of decades-old covers, those liner notes alone suggested that he hadn’t fully lost contact with his muse. I love the part about the Never-Ending Tour.
• This could literally go on forever. The Never-Ending Post!
• I think that if you look at Masked and Anonymous as a piss-take, as opposed to some kind of grand statement, you’ll realize that the haters are wrong. It’s the visual equivalent to the World Gone Wrong liner notes. Or maybe it’s about happened to the guy in Don’t Look Back had he not had the motorcycle accident.
• Of all of the Bob Dylan parodies over the years, and there have been so many that the RIAA oughta launch an investigation, my very favorite is “Song For Julie Newmar” by The Cat Burglars. Just for the chorus:
  

  How does it feel?
  To be a cat
  To be stared at
  To be far from flat
  To be caught by a bat
  2F3567
  Like a Batman villian
  Like a Batman villian

• The above, BTW, was an inside joke, as is this: “Bob Dylan. Boooob Dylan. Bob. Dylan. Bob Dylan.”
• Only one song from the 1966 tour was officially released in 1966: on the B-Side of the “I Want You” single, they put “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” recorded live in Liverpool. It’s never been released on an album in the U.S.A., though I think it’s part of those rarities that iTunes is currently hawking. It’s amazing: Garth Hudson’s organ sounds like Christmas lights blinking in the fog. Anyways, somehow a copy of that 45 made it to the jukebox in the Olympic Tavern (now Club Fred) in Fresno. Whenever one of my bands played there, I made sure to put it on prior to soundcheck and prior to when we hit the stage. I kept waiting for “holy shit” reactions but it never got any.
• “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Bob Dylan has been recontextualizing riffs and melodies and words for his entire career. And yet, from “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” through “Girl From the North Country” to “The Levee’s Gonna Break,” once it’s filtered through him, it comes out like Dylan, doesn’t it?
• There are nearly as many Bob Dylan books are there are Bob Dylan songs. As a matter of fact, because of the success of Greil Marcus book about “Like a Rolling Stone,” each song will eventually have its own book. Out of all of the ones that I’ve read, my favorite is Clinton Heylin’s Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions [1960 -1994]. One one level, it is exactly what it sounds like — a listing of every song that Bob’s ever recorded, who played on it, and which album it was recorded for. On the other hand, given the ongoing treasure trove of bootlegs, it’s also a fascinating look at Dylan’s process. And Heylin — who’s been able to monetize his Dylan obsession, and is as opinionated as they come — is a hoot. The only problem, of course, is that it’s now ten years out of date. We need a new edition!
• I think that my favorite music video — by anyone — is for “Jokerman.” I don’t know why, I just know that I’ve loved it ever since we taped it from — I think — USA Network’s “Nightflight.” It almost had to be, because they sure as shit wouldn’t have played it on MTV.
• Compared to some of the people out there — the ones who’ve been following his every move for years and have created elaborate organizations and websites — I don’t think that I would consider myself a mega-fan, at all.
• These were my favorite Bob Dylan songs when I decided to make a list of my favorite Bob Dylan songs. I have no doubt whatsoever that I missed several. This is roughly in order of preference. (Updated on May 15, 2011.)
  1. “Visions of Johanna” – Blonde on Blonde (but also the Bootleg Series 7 version. Whew!)
  2. “Tangled Up in Blue” – Bootleg Series 2 (but really, any version of this amazing, changeable tune)
  3. “Jokerman” – Infidels
  4. “Up to Me” – Biograph (If this had ended Blood on the Tracks, it would have been my favorite album by anyone.)
  5. “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” – Live in Manchester 1966
  6. “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry” – Highway 61 Revisited
  7. “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” – Live in Manchester 1966
  8. “Isis” – Desire
  9. “Shelter From the Storm (Live)” – Hard Rain (In a lifetime of great singing, he’s never topped the way he sang “And they gave me a lethal doossseeee!!” on this version)
  10. “Cold Irons Bound (Bonnaroo 2004)” – Bootleg Series Vol 8 (from the “Deluxe” Version)
  11. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” – Bringing It All Back Home
  12. “Drifter’s Escape” – John Wesley Harding
  13. “Like A Rolling Stone” – Highway 61 Revisited
  14. “Girl From the North Country” – Live in New Orleans 1981 (from the Child’s Balloon bootleg, one of my favorites)
  15. “Delia” – World Gone Wrong
  16. “She’s Your Lover Now” – Bootleg Series 2
  17. “Not Dark Yet” – Time Out Of Mind
  18. “High Water (For Charlie Patton)” – “Love and Theft”
  19. “Blind Willie McTell” – Bootleg Series 3
  20. “I’ll Remember You” – Live in Australia 1986 (from the Hard to Handle video)
  21. “Tell Me, Momma” – Live in Manchester 1966
  22. “(Stuck Inside of Mobile With The) Memphis Blues Again” – Blonde on Blonde
  23. “Mississippi” – “Love and Theft”
  24. “You’re a Big Girl Now” – Blood on the Tracks
  25. “The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar” – Shot of Love (no one remembers that this was originally a b-side)
  26. “I’m Not There (1956)” – I’m Not There Soundtrack
  27. “Most of the Time” – Oh Mercy
  28. “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” – Blonde on Blonde
  29. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” – Bringing It All Back Home
  30. “Precious Angel” – Slow Train Coming
  31. “Farewell, Angelina” – Bootleg Series 2
  32. “Sugar Baby” – “Love and Theft”
  33. “Goin’ To Acapulco” – The Basement Tapes
  34. “Positively 4th Street” – Biograph
  35. “Walking Down The Line” – Bootleg Series 1
  36. “Things Have Changed” – Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol 3
  37. “Idiot Wind” – Blood on the Tracks
  38. “Tombstone Blues” – Highway 61 Revisited
  39. “It Ain’t Me, Babe” – Another Side of Bob Dylan
  40. “All Along The Watchtower” – John Wesley Harding
  41. “It’s Hell-Time Man” – Band of the Hand Soundtrack
  42. “Please Mrs. Henry” – The Basement Tapes
  43. “Brownsville Girl” – Knocked Out Loaded
  44. “Dirty World” – Traveling Wilburys Vol 1
  45. “I’ll Keep It With Mine” – Bootleg Series Vol 2
  46. “World Gone Wrong” – World Gone Wrong
  47. “We’d Better Talk This Over” – Street Legal
  48. “Every Grain of Sand” – Shot of Love
  49. “Absolutely Sweet Marie” – Blonde on Blonde
  50. “Love Minus Zero / No Return” – Bringing It All Back Home
  51. “When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky” – Bootleg Series Vol 3
  52. “Day of the Locusts” – New Morning
  53. “Hurricane” – Desire
  54. “Something There Is About You” – Planet Waves
  55. “I’ll Keep It With Mine” – Bootleg Series Vol 2
  56. “When He Returns” – Slow Train Coming
  57. “Desolation Row” – Highway 61 Revisited
  58. “Series of Dreams” – Bootleg Series Vol 3
  59. “Po’ Boy” – “Love & Theft”
  60. “Never Say Goodbye” – Planet Waves
  61. “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” – Pat Garret & Billy The Kid
  62. “In The Garden (Live)” – Live in New Orleans 1981
  63. “Baby Stop Crying” – Street Legal
  64. “Workingman’s Blues #2” – Modern Times
  65. “Highlands” – Time Out of Mind
  66. “Broke Down Engine” – World Gone Wrong
  67. “One Man’s Loss” – The Genuine Basement Tapes
  68. “New Morning” – New Morning
  69. “God Knows” – Under the Red Sky
  70. “Mr. Tambourine Man” – Bringing It All Back Home
• I still hate when he is described as “Folksinger Bob Dylan.” Seems so limiting.