In 1961, Bob Dylan recorded “Fixin’ to Die” for his debut album, released the following year. The album liner notes indicate that it “was learned from an old recording by Bukka White”. However, Dylan’s arrangement uses a slightly different melody line and some new lyrics.
Album version:
The urgency and intensity of Dylan’s performance gets me every time, I love it. Continue reading The Songs he didn’t write: Bob Dylan Fixin’ To Die
….would be Like A Rolling Stone because I wrote that after I’d quit. I’d literally quit singing and playing, and I found myself writing this song, this story, this long piece of vomit about twenty pages long, and out of it I took Like A Rolling Stone and made it as a single. And I’d never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that that was what I should do, you know. I mean, nobody had ever done that before.
~Bob Dylan (to Martin Bronstein – Feb 1966).. The sound is so rich the song never plays the same way twice
~Greil MarcusThe 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)
Continue reading June 16: Bob Dylan recorded Like A Rolling Stone in 1965
You’re No Good
WRITTEN BY: JESSE FULLER
Appears on Bob Dylan’s eponymous debut album. Dylan’s take is a bit faster and with some small differences to the lyrics.
Jesse Fuller was an acoustic blues singer that Dylan claims to have met in Denver, Colorado in 1959. Fuller, was born in 1896 in Jonesboro, Georgia, and spent the majority of his life working at a variety of blue-collar jobs and playing music on the side.
Continue reading The Songs he didn’t write: Bob Dylan You’re no good
Fantastic soundboard recording of a great show. .. The acoustic versions of Tambourine Man, Hard Rain and, particularly, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue (where he places all the emphasis on “All” when singing the title-line) are stunning.
–bobsboots.com(9½ stars)
Continue reading Bob Dylan @ Ljubljana, Slovenia – April 28, 1999 (Audio)
On the 15th, Dylan plays his first London concert in 12 years, enough of an event to warrant TV coverage on both the ITN and BBC News. He plays a standard set, with “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” in the “variation slot.” The reviews, though, are anything but standard. The Daily lvlail headline says “The Greatest Concert I Have Ever Seen,” the London Times reviewer writes, “One of the best [concerts] to happen in London for years,” and even The Sun admits, “Dylan lives up to his legend.” In its next edition, Melody Maker includes an eight-page pull-out special comprising four reviews of the show.
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)