Ramona
Come closer
Shut softly your watery eyes
The pangs of your sadness
Shall pass as your senses will rise
The flowers of the city
Though breathlike
Get deathlike at times
And there’s no use in tryin’
T’ deal with the dyin’
Though I cannot explain that in lines
Continue reading April 30: Bob Dylan – To Ramona, Sheffield, England 1965 (video)
…
BD: Well, I don’t like to listen to too much country and western people. I like to listen to some of their songs…
NH: Yeah.
BD: …that they sing. But I get, oh, monotonized by listening to too many. I like Buck Owens’ songs, he’s alright. And Hank Williams and Joe Williams. There all the time, easily, you can make some sort of sound.
NH: Mm.
BD: But the other people are just the songs they sing. I think.
NH: How about in the rhythm and blues and rock n’ roll fields? Who do you especially, you know… who strikes you especially?
BD: Oh, you mean just name a name?
NH: Sure, just, you know, if you’re… almost like free association… if you’re thinking in terms of just pleasure in listening, who would you think of?
BD: I’d listen to all the Motown records. I listen to Wilson Pickett. Otis Redding, I guess. Charlie Rich.
…
Autumn 1965
Nat Hentoff (The Playboy) Interview
The Original Unpublished Version, New York City, New York
There are two versions of this interview, the original version which you’ll find on tape and the
published version which appeared in Playboy in March 1966. To call them versions ignores the
fact that they are totally different interviews.
~Every Mind Polluting Word
Continue reading Bob Dylan: Nat Hentoff (The unpublished Playboy) Interview, Autum 1965 (audio)
“I never wanted to write topical songs,…. Have you heard my last two records, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61? It’s all there. That’s the real Dylan.”
~Bob Dylan (to Frances Taylor – Aug 1965)“Dylan had not only changed his sound, but his persona, trading the folk troubadour for a streetwise, cynical hipster. Throughout the album, he embraces druggy, surreal imagery, which can either have a sense of menace or beauty, and the music reflects that, jumping between soothing melodies to hard, bluesy rock. And that is the most revolutionary thing about Highway 61 Revisited — it proved that rock & roll needn’t be collegiate and tame in order to be literate, poetic, and complex.”
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)
–
Wikipedia:
On July 30, Dylan and his band returned to Studio A and recorded three songs. A master take of “From a Buick 6” was recorded and later included on the final album, but most of the session was devoted to “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” Dylan was unsatisfied with the results and set the song aside for a later date; it was eventually re-recorded with the Hawks in October.
Continue reading July 30: Bob Dylan: 4th recording session for Highway 61 Revisited 1965
“This is about growing up, this is about discovering what is going on around you, realizing that life isn’t all you’ve been told. So now you’re without a home, you’re on your own, complete unknown, like a rolling stone. That’s a liberating thing. This is a song about liberation.”
— Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone magazine (Greil Marcus – Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (book))“The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody had kicked open the door to your mind” – Bruce Springsteen (Jan 1988)
“When I heard Like a Rolling Stone, I wanted to quit the music business because I felt: ‘If this wins and it does what it’s supposed to do, I don’t need to do anything else.'”
– Frank Zappa (1965 )
The first time I really listened to “Like A Rolling Stone”, I felt I entered a parallel universe.. a place of intense beauty.. a place filled with this wonderful blues-fueled rock music… and a spellbinding ..organ! I had never heard anything like it.. anything this good..
That was the day I understood that there is bad music, good music, great music & then there is Bob Dylan. He plays in another league. His musical universe is still as beautiful now as it was first time I flew into it.. “Like A Rolling Stone” still sounds as fresh as it did the first time I listened ~30 years ago. (Egil, alldylan.com)
Like A Rolling Stone:
Continue reading July 20: Bob Dylan released Like A Rolling Stone in 1965
Dylan records two 35-minute TV programs for the BBC, which had outbid Granada for a Dylan TV special, only to then have a delay brought on by Dylan’s illness. During the rehearsals for the show, he tries an acoustic “Maggie’s Farm,” but decides not to attempt it for the shows. The BBC film one of the songs at rehearsal, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but the footage is later destroyed. The two programs feature 12 songs, including three not featured in the then-current repertoire: “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” “One Too Many Mornings,” and “Boots of Spanish Leather.” Except for these three songs, the shows concentrate on newer material, featuring only “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe” from the first four albums.
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)
..recording two half-hour TV shows for the BBC on June I; the twelve acoustic performances survive on audio but not videotape. The performances are fairly routine, uninspired, with the exception of “One Too Many Mornings” which is fresh and passionate. Dylan must have really felt a thousand miles behind by this point.
In hindsight, the BBC-TV filming was the last stand of Bob Dylan, folk star. When he arrived back in the States the Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” was at the top of the charts.
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan Performing Artist I: The Early Years 1960-1973)