Bob Dylan seems to be very aware of his age these days, that he has fewer days ahead of him than behind him. He has often reflected on this, even when he was a young man, come to think of it.
I have collected some of his most profound musings on the bittersweet fact that time slips through our fingers. Some of my choices are obvious and some are not, I sometimes read thing into songs that others do not.
Please, tell us what should have been on the playlist in the comments section.
The great late Etta James would have been 77 years old today we celebrate her here at Alldylan by presenting her Bob Dylan interpretations. As far as I know there are only two. Gotta serve somebody is good but Blowing in the wind has a strangely artificial drum sound. Listen to it and make up your own minds.
I love this album, and I think there are many wonderful songs on it. Every time I play it the lesser known songs (if that can be said about a Bob Dylan album) really amazes me.
The originals are better, I agree, but I love to hear what other artists can do with such great material.
It is hard to find good cover versions of songs that are so dear to you, and sometimes you just can not find a decent one. This time I couldn’t find a good cover of Never Say Goodbye so please help me if you know of one.
My favorites here are Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia Band, Norah Jones and John Doe with Lucy Schwartz
Desire is the seventeenth studio album by Bob Dylan, released on January 5, 1976 by Columbia Records.
It is one of Dylan’s most collaborative efforts, featuring the same caravan of musicians as the acclaimed Rolling Thunder Revue tours the previous year (later documented on The Bootleg Series Vol. 5); many of the songs also featured backing vocals by Emmylou Harris and Ronee Blakley.
“His albums have a great class to them, even those albums where he is actually playing songs of long-dead blues singers. His writing, his song texts, leave me speechless. “
– David Bowie (about Bob Dylan, 1997)
David Bowie have always talked about Dylan with great respect. Bob Dylan has maybe not been the biggest influence on his music, but he has sung some of his songs both live and in studio. I found some fine versions of, Like a Rolling Stone, Maggie’s Farm and Trying to get to heaven. Mick Ronson a long-time Bowie friend and collaborator was also a part of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour.
He has also played Don’t think twice it’s all right and She belongs to me (I’ve read somewhere) but I could not find an upload of them anywhere.
Trying to get to heaven Recorded during the mixing sessions for Earthling in 1998.
Bowie’s version of “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” (which, at least in its circulating edit, cuts Dylan’s second verse and squeezes the fourth and fifth into one incoherent lump) is, essentially, a first draft of what would become Hours. The take begins somber and ashen enough. Yet the circularity of Dylan’s singing on “Tryin’”, conveying a journey undertaken but never in danger of ending, seemed to frustrate Bowie: he needed a narrative.
So in the “people on platforms” verse, Bowie builds to a manic desperation, as if he has to make an eleventh-hour sale or he’ll be sacked by his proprietor. We get a rattled “cha-hay-hay-hain,” a squeaked-out “looose,” the creaking onomatopoeia of “cloowwoose the door,” and a gargle. Having made a hash of Dylan’s last verses, Bowie latches onto a line as if he’d drawn it by lot to torture: “I’ve beeen! to Sugar Town-I shook! the su!gar down!” Dylan sang those words with an earned swagger, like a spendthrift man recalling a spent-out life. Bowie sang them as if he was just passingly familiar with the English language. – Pushing ahead of the Dame
