I saw Buddy Holly two or three nights before he died. I saw him in Duluth [Minnesota], at the armory. He played there with Link Wray. I don’t remember the Big Bopper. Maybe he’d gone off by the time I came in. But I saw Richie Valens. And Buddy Holly, yeah. He was great. He was incredible. I mean, I’ll never forget the image of seeing Buddy Holly up on the bandstand. And he died – it must have been a week after this. It was unbelievable.
~Bob Dylan (to Kurt Loder, March 1984)
Buddy Holly. You know, I don’t really recall exactly what I said about Buddy Holly, but while we were recording [Time Out Of Mind], every place I turned there was Buddy Holly. You know what I mean? It was one of those things. Every place you turned. You walked down a hallway and you heard Buddy Holly records, like “That’ll Be the Day.” Then you’d get in the car to go over to the studio and “Rave On” would be playing. Then you’d walk into this studio and someone’s playing a cassette of “It’s so Easy.” And this would happen day after day after day. Phrases of Buddy Holly songs would just come out of nowhere. It was spooky. [laughs] But after we recorded and left, you know, it stayed in our minds. Well, Buddy Holly’s spirit must have been someplace, hastening this record.
~Bob Dylan (to Murray Engleheart 1998)
On this day in 1936 Buddy Holly was born.
Here are some Buddy Holly songs covered by Bob Dylan:
Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when ’neath the trees of Eden
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..Only at the start of the Never Ending Tour, partnering an equally electric “My Back Pages” with an arrange- ment of heart-stopping intensity, would “Gates of Eden” come back into its own. Disappointingly, this dramatic reinterpretation was dropped after just a handful of performances. Thankfully, in the spring of 1995, it returned to join “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” in laser-precise acoustic sets that acted as a crash course in the compositional quantum leap achieved three decades prior.
-Clinton Heylin (Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973)
Performances:
115 times acoustic w/ band – top year 1990 (28 times)
85 times acoustic – top year – top year 1989 (27 times)
8 times w/band in 1988 (8 times)
First known performance: Symphony Hall, Boston, Massachusetts – 24 October 1964
Last known performance: Kingsford Smith Park, Seagulls Rugby League Football Club, Ballina, New South Wales, Australia – 31 March 2001
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
–
‘Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’… I wrote the words of it on a piece of paper. But there was just no tune that really fit to it, so I just sort of play chords without a tune. If all this comes under the heading of a definition, then I don’t care really to define what I do. Other people seem to have a hard time doing that.
~Bob Dylan (to Max Jones, May 64)
Performances:
116 acoustic w band – top year 2001 (24 times)
97 acoustic – top year 1986 (32 times)
37 as an instrumental, all in 1978
215 times w/band – top year 2011 (31 times)
First live performance: The Home Of Eve and Mac MacKenzie
New York City, New York – September 1962
Last live performance: Firefly Festival, Dover – June 17, 2017
Bob Dylan: As I look back on it now, I am surprised that I came up with so many of them. At the time it seemed like a natural thing to do. Now I can look back and see that I must have
written those songs “in the spirit,” you know? Like “Desolation Row” – I was just thinkin’ about that the other night. There’s no logical way that you can arrive at lyrics like that. I don’t know how it was done.
KL: It just came to you?
BD: It just came out through me.
~Bob Dylan – Kurt Loder interview, Oct 1987
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“Desolation Row” also focuses on scene, but in a more purposeful way: the images build up powerfully, propelled by the vocal and instrumental performances. The song makes a statement: this scene is important, it needs·to be paid attention to, there is a reality in this life which may not be cheerful but which, once discovered, shows everything else to be a
pose. Desolation Row” is an anthem; it proclaims and forever defines a certain place, certain state of being… ..And finally I can say about “Desolation Row” only that I am in awe of it.
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan Performing Artist I: The Early Years 1960-1973)
Performances:
262 times acoustic w/ band – top year 2000 (42 times)
19 times acoustic – top year – top year 1966 (13 times)
166 times w/band – top year 2011 (32 times)
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First performance: Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, New York – Aug 28, 1965
Last performance: Pepsi Live at Rogers Arena, Vancouver – July 25, 2017
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