All posts by Egil

Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan Concerts, Bob Dylan video

Bob Dylan: 8 essential videos from the 80’s

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bob dylan 1986

..to draw a crowd with my guitar, that’s about the most heroic thing that I can do. To play a song to calm the king, well everybody don’t get to do that. There’s only certain things a King wants to hear. And then if he don’t like it, he might send you to the gallows. Sometimes you feel like a club fighter who gets off the bus in the middle of nowhere, no cheers, no admiration, punches his way through ten rounds or whatever, always making someone else look good, vomits up the pain in the backroom, picks up his check and gets back on the bus heading out for another nowhere. Sometimes like a troubadour out of the dark ages, singing for your supper and rambling the land or singing to the girl in the window, you know, the one with the long flowing hair
~Bob Dylan – August-September 1985, Cameron Crowe Interview (for Biograph)

I really don’t have any place to put my feet up…. well, we want to play ‘cause we want to play… Why tour? It’s just that you get accustomed to it over the years. The people themselves will tell you when to stop touring.
~Bob Dylan to Kathryn Baker – Aug 1988

It’s not stand-up comedy or a stage play. Also, it breaks my concentration to have to think of things to say or to respond to the crowd. The songs themselves do the talking. My songs do, anyway.
~Bob Dylan to Edna Gundersen – Sept 1989

Here are 8 videos you absolutely need to see. They are chosen for their historical significance and/or blistering performances.

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Bob Dylan, Country, Cover versions, Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash covers Bob Dylan – part 1

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Redirecting to a newer version of this post….

“I love Bob Dylan, I really do. I love his early work, I love the first time he plugged in electrically, I love his Christian albums, I love his other albums.”
~Johnny Cash

In this series of post I’ll present all the Dylan covers by Johnny Cash I could find. They will be presented chronologically with facts related to the recording.

PS! duets are not included, rather check out:

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As an intro, here is a nice video where Bob Dylan talks about Johnny Cash:

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Bob Dylan other, Interview

Feb 20, 1966 – Bob Dylan: Martin Bronstein Interview, Montreal (audio)

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bob dylan on the phone - 1966

MB: Do you consider yourself a poet or a songwriter?
BD: I don’t consider myself either one of those two things. I did when I first heard the words, you know, of course – “songwriter” – you hear that when you’re very young. “Poet,” I never heard that word really. I never really could think of myself as such until I came to New York and then for a while I did think I was a poet, but I don’t consider myself anymore from seeing all the rest of the people who’re called poets too and I just don’t like to refer to myself as a poet because it puts you in a category with a lot of funny people, you know

Place Des Arts
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
20 February 1966

  • Released in the UK on ON THE CREST OF THE AIRWAVES VOLUME ONE, Music Melon MMLTDBOX12, 13 February 2012.
  • Released on The Classic Interviews 1965-1966, Chrome Dreams CIS2003, 19 May 2003.

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan video

Feb 20: Bob Dylan Grammy Award Ceremony 1991

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bob dylan 1991 grammy

To see and hear how the band looked and sounded in February 1991, you just need to view television footage of the Grammy awards ceremony from New York on the 20th , when Dylan was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Dylan’s appearance caused a media stir par excellence on two counts. Talking point one was his performance; number two was his acceptance speech.
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Dylan performed his damning anti-war3 indictment, “Masters Of War” – a striking choice given that the Gulf War was still going on and hawkish jingoism was rife. However, since he chose to sing it without a pause for breath, and backed by this hapless/hamstrung band, no-one who did not already know the song would have got the message. In fact, many who were familiar with the song did not even recognise it. Not only did Dylan’s nasal passages sound blocked (he later revealed he’d had a cold) but it seemed he had swallowed a burst of helium before starting to sing. Some observers thought he was singing in Hebrew. The tuxedoed crowd looked on in utter bewilderment. The next day’s newspapers marvelled how only Dylan had performed a song with any meaning and purpose, but then, being Dylan, he had made it completely incomprehensible.
~Andrew Muir (One More Night: Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour)

Bob Dylan receives his Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is presented by Jack Nicholson.

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan recording sessions

Feb 18: Bob Dylan’s 5th recording session for “Nashville Skyline” (w/Johnny Cash) in 1969

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bob dylan nashville skyline

I like Johnny Cash a lot. I like everything he does really.
~Bob Dylan (to Nat Hentoff – Autumn 1965)

In the end, Nashville Skyline is a lovely album but not a heavyweight contender, though its effects were major ones. Country music was despised, hick music when Dylan took it up. People were divided into the hip and the non-hip. The counterculture was in full swing and riddled with its own self-importance and snobbery. Nashville Skyline was a hard pill to swallow: but it did ’em good.
~Michael Gray (Bob Dylan Encyclopedia)

The 5th recording session for ‘Nashville Skyline’ took place on February 18, 1969. One master versions emerged.. the lovely “Girl from the North Country”. Johnny Cash shared vocal on all 38 takes…this is a highly bootlegged sessions… and people have uploaded most of it on youtube… 

bob-dylan-and-johnny-cash-tv-special
picture of Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan.. NOT from the studio sessions

 

Some background from wikipedia:

Nashville Skyline is the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in April 1969 by Columbia Records.

Building on the rustic style he experimented with on John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline displayed a complete immersion into country music. Along with the more basic lyrical themes, simple songwriting structures, and charming domestic feel, it introduced audiences to a radically new singing voice from Dylan—a soft, affected country croon.

The result received a generally positive reaction from critics, and was a commercial success. Reaching number 3 in the US, the album also scored Dylan his fourth UK number 1 album.

bob dylan nashville skyline back

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