Tag Archives: Desolation Row

July 30: Bob Dylan: 4th recording session for Highway 61 Revisited 1965

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Bob_Dylan_-_Highway_61_Revisited

 

July 30: Bob Dylan: 4th recording session for Highway 61 Revisited 1965

“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)

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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 →

July 3: Bob Dylan Desolation Row & Hattie Carroll, Hamburg, Germany 1990 (Video)

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bob dylan GE Smith Hamburg 1990

 

They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Wonderful version… playing verse 1,2,3,7 & 10 (last) of the original song

Stadtpark
Hamburg, Germany
3 July 1990

  • Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
  • G. E. Smith (guitar)
  • Tony Garnier (bass)
  • Christopher Parker (drums)

Cinderella, she seems so easy
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning
“You Belong to Me I Believe”
And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place my friend
You better leave”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
They’re getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They’re spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls
“Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row”

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

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-Egil

April 20: Bob Dylan Concert in Melbourne 1966

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Bob Dylan - The Childrens Crusade

bob dylan melbourne 1966

 Dylan’s voice is extremely rough, but the performance, if anything, even more intense than the English shows
~Clinton Heylin (A Life In Stolen Moments)

Great 66 Show where Dylan sounds very stoned, and still brilliant.

For this show he uses a borrowed guitar, as his had been broken. When compared to the Sydney show, this performance is more laid back.
~bobsboots.com

Festival Hall
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
20 April 1966
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Bob Dylan’s best songs from the 1960s

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672225d Bob Dylan

[on songwriting] The song was there before me, before I came along. I just sorta came down and I sorta took it down with a pencil that it was all there before I came around. That’s how I feel about it.
~to Pete Seeger, Broadside Show, WBAI-FM Radio, May 1962

Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem. Anything I can’t sing or anything that’s too long to be a poem, I call a novel.
~Nat Hentoff quoting Dylan, jacket notes Freewheeling Dylan

“It’s hard being free in a song – getting it all in. Songs are so confining. Woody Guthrie told me once that songs don’t have to do anything like that. But it’s not true. A song has to have some kind of form to fit into the music. You can bend the words and the meter, but it still has to fit somehow. I’ve been getting freer in the songs I write, but I still feel confined. That’s why I write a lot of poetry – if that’s the word. Poetry can make it’s own form.”
~Nat Hentoff Interview, June 1964

“A song is anything that can walk by itself, I am called a songwriter. A poem is a naked person, some people say that I am a poet”.
~Jacket notes Subterranean Homesick Blues

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Saturday (April 12 – 2014) I asked the question – What’s your top 5 Bob Dylan songs recorded in the 60’s ? – over at our Facebook page. As of writing 72 people (all Bob Dylan experts)  have uttered their opinions.

If you’re not on Facebook, or do not “like” our page.. you can use the comment section to post your 5 favorites.

Continue reading Bob Dylan’s best songs from the 1960s →

Bob Dylan – 6th & last recording session for Highway 61 Revisited – 4 August 1965

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Bob_Dylan_-_Highway_61_Revisited

“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)

“If you had to sum up Highway 61 Revisited in a single sentence, suffice it to say that it is the album that invented attitude and raised it to an art form. Just take a look at the cover. Nobody from Johnny Rotten to Eminem has done it better to this day.
~Nigel Williamson (The Rough Guide To Bob Dylan)

Studio A
Columbia Recording Studios
New York City, New York
4 August 1965
The 6th & last Highway 61 Revisited session, produced by Bob Johnston

Overdub session with Bob Dylan (guitar) and Charlie McCoy (guitar, bass).

One final session was held on August 4, again at Studio A. Most of the session was devoted to completing “Desolation Row”. Johnston has related that Nashville musician Charlie McCoy was visiting New York, and he invited McCoy to play guitar at the session. According to some sources, seven takes of “Desolation Row” were recorded, and takes six and seven were spliced together for the master recording.McCoy holding a microphone onstage

Nashville sessions musician Charlie McCoy’s chance visit to New York resulted in the guitar flourishes accompanying “Desolation Row”, the last track on the album.

~Wikipedia

Songs:

  1. Desolation Row
  2. Desolation Row
  3. Desolation Row
  4. Desolation Row
  5. Desolation Row
  6. Desolation Row
    6 and 7 edited into one track and released 30 August 1965

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  7. Desolation Row
  8. Tombstone Blues

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Recorded 1-4 pm.

bd 1965_10

Related articles @ JV:

References:

-Egil