Category Archives: Bob Dylan

The Best Dylan Covers: Indigo Girls – Tangled Up In Blue

Indigo-Girls

Tangled Up in Blue is a song by Bob Dylan. It appeared on his album Blood on the Tracks in 1975. Released as a single, it reached #31 on the Billboard Hot 100. Rolling Stone ranked it #68 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

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The Telegraph has described the song as “The most dazzling lyric ever written, an abstract narrative of relationships told in an amorphous blend of first and third person, rolling past, present and future together, spilling out in tripping cadences and audacious internal rhymes, ripe with sharply turned images and observations and filled with a painfully desperate longing.

Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. They met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. They started performing with the name Indigo Girls as students at Emory University, performing weekly at The Dugout, a bar in Emory Village.

They performed Tangled up in Blue live and released it on their live album 1200 Curfews in 1995. They also released the song together with the band, Drag The River on a Dylan tribute album, “A Tribute to Bob Dylan, vol1” back in 1991.

1200 curfews

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September 16: Bob Dylan “Blood On The Tracks” first recording session 1974

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Bob Dylan started recording Blood On The Tracks September 16, 1974.

Here are some quotes, facts & music….

When Dylan began work at A&R one Monday afternoon in September he seemed unusually keen to get on with the recording process. The songs themselves were no more than 2 months old, and he was still excited by the new approach to language he had uncovered.
Even behind closed studio doors he was determined to get the songs out of his system as quickly, and with as much impact, as possible
~Clinton Heylin (The Recording Sessions)

From Wikipedia:

Dylan arrived at Columbia Records’ A&R Recording Studios in New York City on September 16, 1974, where it was soon realized that he was taking a “spontaneous” approach to recording. The session engineer at the time, Phil Ramone, later said that he would “go from one song to another like a medley. Sometimes he will have several bars, and in the next version, he will change his mind about how many bars there should be in between a verse. Or eliminate a verse. Or add a chorus when you don’t expect”. Eric Weissberg and his band, Deliverance, originally recruited as session men, were rejected after two days of recording because they could not keep up with Dylan’s pace. Dylan retained bassist Tony Brown from the band, and soon added organist Paul Griffin (who had also worked on Highway 61 Revisited) and steel guitarist Buddy Cage. After ten days and four sessions with the current lineup, Dylan had finished recording and mixing, and, by November, had cut a test pressing on the album. Columbia soon began to prepare for the album’s imminent release, but, three months later, just before the scheduled launch, Dylan re-recorded several songs at the last minute, in Minneapolis’ Sound 80 Studios, utilizing local musicians organized by his brother, David Zimmerman. Even with this setback, Columbia managed to release Blood on the Tracks by January 17, 1975.

Continue reading September 16: Bob Dylan “Blood On The Tracks” first recording session 1974

Bob Dylan – On This Day – September 15

bob dylan 1991

Right, that’s the way I learned how to record, and that’s the way other people were doing it Now, you don’t do it that way, because the machinery is… they got… you know, it’s like, er… you go in a recording studio now and what I do is obsolete. So, I don’t, half the time, use a decent studio. I mean, we made the last record, we made Street Legal in a rehearsal hall, you know, only because we couldn’t use the studio we booked in town, you know. So, yeah, I could use a good producer, you know, I could make some well-produced records, ‘cause my songs are good enough, I mean, you don’t need but a fairly decent song, you know, to have a well-produced record.
~Bob Dylan (Matt Damsker Interview, Senator Hotel, Augusta, Maine – 15 September 1978)

Historic event

  • September 15 – 1965

    Bob+Dylan 1965
    Could this picture date to September 15, 1965 ?

    Dylan flies to Toronto to rehearse with the Hawks at Friars, a Toronto nightclub. Al Kooper has decided not to tour, so the remainder of the Hawks (Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel) are reunited with Robertson and Helen, becoming Dylan’s backing band for the remainder of the historic 1965-1966 world tour. Dylan flies in by private plane, arriving in the early evening at the Four Seasons Hotel.
    ~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)

  • September 15 – 1986
    Robert Shelton visits Dylan on the film set.
    ~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)

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Bob Dylan: My Back Pages, Albany, New York (video) – 1999

bob dylan albany 1999

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ’neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Pepsi Arena
Albany, New York
20 July 1999

  • Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
  • Charlie Sexton (guitar)
  • Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
  • Tony Garnier (bass)
  • David Kemper (drums & percussion)

Continue reading Bob Dylan: My Back Pages, Albany, New York (video) – 1999

Robbie Robertson: The night Bob Dylan offered Otis Redding to record Just Like a Woman

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Robbie Robertson talks about recommending Otis Redding to cover Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman”, but it never came to be. Well, they did record it but he couldn’t sing the bridge (according to Mr. Robertson)…very interesting stuff!

On the commentary track included on the Criterion edition of the Monterey Pop film , D.A. Pennebaker said that he first saw Redding when Dylan took him to see Redding at the Whiskey on April 7th 1966.

Check out: September 9 –  Otis Redding was born in 1941

Bob Dylan played some of Otis Redding’s songs on The Theme Time Radio Hour radio show: “Cigarettes and Coffee”, “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember”, and a “Stay in school” ad.

– Hallgeir