Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

Dylan closed a few California shows covering "Friend of the Devil" last year.

According to the Heylin book, Dylan kept asking guests to his home, after he'd pop a shittily recorded tape of the Dylan/Dead mix in a player, "What do you think? I think it needs more bass."

yes I saw him cover that last year!! xp

(in Oregon$

what artist has actually sounded great doing a guest spot with the Dead? (partly meant rhetorically, but also I'm genuinely curious in case I missed something)

I'd vote Branford Marsalis

I've mentioned this before, but when I interviewed Marsalis he talked about how the other two saxophonists who guested with the Dead, David Murray and Ornette Coleman, didn't actually listen to the Dead in his opinion — they just walked onstage and did their thing, treating the band as a backdrop, and he went out of his way to listen and to work his way into their music. Now part of that is just him tugging himself, I mean, David Murray recorded an entire album of Dead songs, but I can kind of hear what he means, I mean, Ornette was gonna Ornette no matter the circumstance.

Yeah Branford was great, hard to argue with that. I feel like the easiest way to meld into the Dead was by either being another guitar player to swirl in the mix (John Cipollina, Santana, etc.) or percussion (Airto Moreira).

But hey, I also like the Ken Nordine drop-in, so what do I know?

iirc, Murray had been a Dead head since the '70s. In the bits I've heard, he struck me as more effective with the Dead than Marsalis, largely because he knew exactly where to poke and prod, while Marsalis was more of a follower. Ornette saw them at least once, and brought Cecil Taylor with him, and based on the recordings I've heard, that was the extent of his pre-guest-spot Dead listening. Like unperson said, Ornette's gonna do his thing, and while he might not be ignoring the context, he's also not necessarily going to meet it halfway if he doesn't feel like it.

garcia plays on that ornette album.

Re: the Dylan/Dead album, I think the surviving members of the Grateful Dead have talked about this, but IIRC Dylan seemed to have more pull (or maybe even final say) when it came to selecting the tracks, and they thought he picked what were probably the ones they would have avoided. It was a weird anecdote - I think they already knew what they wanted, or at least hoped to release, and then they got called over to Dylan's home where he's clearly been drinking and then Dylan proceeds to play them the takes he wants on the album, NONE of which they like but they can't do anything about it.

Allegedly there's a good boot that captures the best of those shows.

Here's one!

http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2018/05/dylan-dead-jerry-garcias-original-mix.html

Also I found this elsewhere:

“It was as if we'd never practiced,” said the Dead's Bob Weir of the first show on the '87 tour.

Repeatedly Dylan would forget the words to his songs, play in the wrong key, have drunk too much . . .

When it came to cobbling together an album from live recordings there wasn't much worth considering but – against the wishes of the Dead – Dylan willfully insisted on some songs from very inferior shows.

Repeatedly Dylan would forget the words to his songs, play in the wrong key, have drunk too much . . .

To be fair, Bob's bands up to that point (and after that point) had to be ready for anything. If Bob played a song in a different key from the previous night, his band was expected to (and did) pick up on that and follow immediately (not that no one panicked -- see Ian McLagan's autobiography All The Rage). When he played with Petty and the Heartbreakers, he knew their scene was one that required rehearsals -- they don't really do off-the-cuff. With the Dead, he seems like he built them up in his imagination as a band that could follow anyone anywhere at any moment, and thought throwing curveballs like key changes were surely no big deal to this seasoned band of improvisers. And/or he was just hammered.

It's been a long time since I've read Chronicles; but isn't there a whole chapter about how nothing was working for him when he was playing with the Dead, he just couldn't perform, etc.; and then he somehow stumbled on a whole new approach to guitar playing? I forget the details...

YES - cut and paste from another article online:

In his 2004 memoir, Dylan wrote about how the Dead pushed him to play songs he hadn’t done in decades.

“If I had known this to begin with, I might not have taken the dates,” he wrote. “I had no feelings for any of these songs and didn’t know how I could sing them with any intent. A lot of them might have only been sung once anyway, the time they’d been recorded. There were so many that I couldn’t tell which was which — I might even get the words mixed up with others. I needed sets of lyrics to understand what they were talking about, and when I saw the lyrics, especially to the older, more obscure songs, I couldn’t see how I could get this stuff off emotionally.”

He eventually wandered out of the rehearsal hall, at least according to his telling in Chronicles, and stumbled into a bar where an old man was singing jazz standards like “Time on My Hands” and “Gloomy Sunday.” “Suddenly and without warning, it was like the guy had an open window to my soul,” Dylan wrote. “It was like he was saying, ‘You should do it this way.’”

When Dylan returned to the rehearsal space with the Dead, he felt ready to tackle any song they threw at him. “Maybe they just dropped something in my drink, I can’t say,” Dylan wrote. “But anything they wanted to do was fine with me. I had that old jazz singer to thank.”

Dylan is a notoriously unreliable narrator of his own life, and it’s likely this story is at least partially fictionalized, but the Dylan and the Dead tour did indeed feature songs like “Chimes of Freedom” and “John Brown” that he hadn’t touched since his folkie days in the early Sixties.

Also, this was in one of the Double E substacks, but Dylan was drinking way too much in the '80s. He finally quit drinking in the '90s (maybe after his second divorce?), and I think that has made a huge difference. Now that he's selling his own whiskey, I imagine that's a sign he's indulging a little bit again, but probably not too much.

Dylan also credited that xpost bar epiphany to being reminded (while hearing the guy that birdistheword mentions, I think) of something he'd once been told/advised by Lonnie Johnson---so much advice in Chronicles, it could be titled Meetings With Remarkable Men, incl. Bono and The Croz---Johnson being a bluesman who jammed with Charlie Parker, for inst---I showed Dyl's description of his new approach to several guitarists, some of whom said it made sense and some who didn't---but hey, he took it to what became the Neverending Tour.
Didn't know about 5-CD Cutting Edge w Freelwheelin, thanks

I got that Jerry Garcia-assembled tape (reportedly rejected by label), now linked to xpost Albums That Never Were, from a site that quoted Garcia as declaring that Dylan could be great in the middle, but performances had to have great or good endings and beginnings as well (so Dylan was not really a musician).

The drinking habits of aging musicians fascinate me. I'd imagine Dylan never quit, just moderated his intake. Mick Fleetwood still drinks. Jagger's been photographed with aperl spritzers and bers.

grain of salt, but Dylan denied having a drinking problem or having stopped drinking in a Rolling Stone interview circa 2006-7. I don't know if I ever heard of him just quitting in the 90s? Maybe he cut back.

Every grain of salt.

Found a source - longtime road manager Victor Maymudes, who died in 2001 but left behind hours of interview tapes:

Dylan quit drinking in 1994.

“He just stopped on a dime,” Maymudes says. “He didn’t talk as much once he stopped and he didn’t laugh as loud either. It was a really big deal for him and really showed his commitment to changing his behavior. He was capable of dealing with a broader range of personalities when he was drinking and after stopping, his tolerance for certain types of behavior diminished. Bob lost a bit of self-esteem when he sobered up, became little more introverted and a little less social."

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/6-things-we-learned-from-the-new-bob-dylan-tell-all-79529/

Yeah---one thing that's tricky about stopping is, you might get a clearer view of the stuff you were trying to drink away, or around---and clearer or not, you'll notice. But overall it's worth it, I find, and re his tolerance for certain types of behavior diminished, that can def be on the plus side, if not as much fun or sometimes perversely exciting.

The drinking habits of aging musicians fascinate me.

I’m told that Los Lobos — all in their late ‘60s/early ‘70s — routinely drink musicians less than 1/3rd their age under the table.

On a darker note, in some of the new interviews I was reading with Robert Forster, it's mentioned that Grant never gave up his vices like drinking and lived like he was still in his 20s. It likely contributed to his heart attack.

His favorite drink until he died was the Long Island iced tea, which was like a jackhammer in my heart when I learned about it in Forster's memoir. This is what college guys drink to wash down Jägermeister shots (I would know).

I’m told that Los Lobos — all in their late ‘60s/early ‘70s — routinely drink musicians less than 1/3rd their age under the table.

I remember Scott Ian joking that the most dangerous words a musician could ever say were "I'll have what he's having" when seated at a table with Lemmy.

The drinking habits of aging musicians fascinate me.

I’m told that Los Lobos — all in their late ‘60s/early ‘70s — routinely drink musicians less than 1/3rd their age under the table.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, February 6, 2023 4:13 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

friend of mine used to work for a promoter who put on the summer show series that used to happen at the minnesota zoo amphitheatre, los lobos were one of the staples, they came through on a yearly basis for quite a while...anyway she said they would have to roust them out of their trailer in the early morning hours, all the crew was done tearing down the stage and loading out the gear, zoo people had cleaned up, everyone wanted to go home and they'd be in there playing poker and drinking whiskey just kicking it

His favorite drink until he died was the Long Island iced tea, which was like a jackhammer in my heart when I learned about it in Forster's memoir. This is what college guys drink to wash down Jägermeister shots (I would know).

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, February 6, 2023 4:41 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglinkp

such a gross drink, the sugar content alone will kill you

If you put everything into a cocktail, you know nothing about taste.

they would have to roust them out of their trailer in the early morning hours

I mean, there’s a real easy way to do that.

“Hey, guys? I just saw Paul Simon walk by.”

lol

my third year of college i lived a block from this bar called fowl play that had $1 long islands in pint beer glasses from 9-10pm every night, absolutely insane

jesus

was there ice at least?

Foul amirite

Amaretto sours are worse, but that's for another thread.

xpost yeah lot of ice but they'd also let people get multiples at "last call" for the special

the "fowl" play was that the sign had some kinda drunk cartoon chicken thing on it

actually two blocks from the dinkytown apartment dylan lived in, bringing it all back home

nice

There was a bar where I went to school called The Library (yuk yuk, "mom and dad I'm going to the library tonight, don't worry") that had a similar Long Island Iced Tea thing.

Woah... when Fowl Play went out of business it became.....The Library

(it's now The Kollege Klub)

From a very geeked-out Double Ees series: most shows w 0 tape; this is an exception.

Pittsburgh is the second and final tape we have of the first mini-run of Bob Dylan’s 1966 tour, before he went to Nashville to work on Blonde on Blonde. It’s by far the better of the two. Still muffled, still not up the level of the soundboards from later shows, but miles better than White Plains yesterday.

This recording also features some rare songs fo…
Keep Reading With A 7-Day Free Trial:

Late to the party here, but I remember somebody here posting a long time ago about interviewing John Lee Hooker in the '90s and how Hooker offered a sip from the flask he'd been hitting all night. The writer accepted--noting it was the only drink they had that night--and were barely able to drive home.

Listening to the TOOM Bootleg Series and I'm starting to think Lanois fucked up a really great album. Love the spare mixes and a lot of the first versions - some almost sound like Blonde on Blonde a little, little bit.

but… stadows

Red River Shore is such a great song. It sounds like it could be an Appalachian song based on a Childe Ballad (now someone will tell me it is).

The way Mississippi (Version 1) comes fading in I imagine the band was jamming for 15 minutes on that riff before Bob stepped up.

Ken Tucker on Fragments, with good excerpts, esp. live at end:
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/16/1157481772/bob-dylans-time-out-of-mind-remains-eerie-and-vital-in-a-newly-released-version

Standing in the Doorway (Version 1) sounds like a minor track off Blonde on Blonde. The Version 1's are mostly the best versions - each subsequent version made the tracks more distinctive, but also slowed a lot of them down and, imo, sapped them of some energy.

$27 for the 5cd set on amazon us.

Holy crap, what a steal!