Grateful Dead is a band that I’ve learned to love over the years, it has been a struggle. The reason for that is the not very good album collaboration with Bob Dylan (Dylan and The Dead, 1987). I bought it on casette and tried so hard to like it, but in my young and inexperienced ears this was all over the place and without energy. I like the album better now, but it is not among my favorite Dylan albums.
More important, it was unfair to judge Grateful Dead because of that record. I love American Beauty and I love Workingman’s Dead, and I think there are a lot of great live recordings of the band. With Bob Dylan and without Bob Dylan.
I think they are very skilful Dylan interpreters and they have even released an album with Bob Dylan’s songs.
Here are my top 10 Grateful Dead playing Bob Dylan:
Grateful Dead – Maggie’s Farm (19-09-1987)
Grateful Dead performs a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm” for Farm Aid III live via satellite from Madison Square Garden. Introduction by Dick Clark.
Grateful dead – Knockin’ on Heaven’s door (07-07-1989)
FK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA
Here is a 1993 clip of Jeff Buckley at a poetry event, reading an apology letter he wrote to his idol Bob Dylan. The reading is included on a CD accompanying the book The Spoken Word Revolution Redux.
“Dear Bob,
And I don’t know what purpose this will serve at all.
I don’t know how to start. Last Saturday, my man, Steve Burkowitz, broke it to me that you were told of something I said from the stage and that you’d felt insulted. I need for you to listen to me. I have no way of knowing how my words are translated to you, if they’re whole meaning and context are intact, but the truth is that I was off on a tangent, on a stage, my mind going where it goes, trying to be funny, it wasn’t funny at all and I fucked up, I really fucked up.
And the worst of it isn’t that your boys were at the gig to hear it. It doesn’t really bother me. It just kills me to know that whatever they told you was what you think I think of you-
not that I love you, not that I’ve always listened to you and carried the music with me wherever I go, not that I believe in you and also that your show was great. It was only the separate club crowd that I was cynical about and that’s what I was trying to get at when I said what I said.And I’m sorry that I’ll never get to make another first impression. You were really gracious to me, to even allow me backstage to meet you. I’ll never forget you, what you told me for as long as I live. He said “Make a good record man” and I’m very honored to have met you at all. He said some other shit too,
I’m only sad that I didn’t get a chance to tell you before all this intrigue, the intrigue is not the truth. Lots of eyes will read this letter before it gets to you, Bob, which I accept. Someday you will know exactly what I mean, man to man.
Always be well, Jeff Buckley
And you know who’s going to read this? The President of Sony Records, my A&R man, my manager, his two managers, his friend Ratzo, and this is my personal plea of love to Bob Dylan, and this is what happens when you’re not nobody anymore.”
Here are the songs that Jeff Buckley sang and Bob Dylan wrote.
Just Like A Woman – Jeff Buckley, Live at Palais Theatre, Melbourne on February 27 1996:
Like A Rolling Stone is a 1965 song by Bob Dylan. Its confrontational lyrics originated in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England. Dylan distilled this draft into four verses and a chorus. Like a Rolling Stone was recorded a few weeks later as part of the sessions for the forthcoming album Highway 61 Revisited.
Michael “Mick” Ronson (26 May 1946 – 29 April 1993)was an English guitarist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer. He is best known for his work with David Bowie, as one of the Spiders from Mars. Ronson was a busy session musician who recorded with artists as diverse as Bowie and Morrissey, as well as appearing as a sideman in touring bands with performers such as Van Morrison and Bob Dylan.
Mick Ronson covered the song, Like A Rolling Stone, on Heaven and Hull his final solo album, released in 1994, following Ronson’s death the previous year. With collaborations by longtime friends of Ronson including: David Bowie, Joe Elliott, and Ian Hunter. Other artists include: Peter Noone,Martin Chambers and Chrissie Hynde, Phil Collen and John Mellencamp.
One More Cup of Coffee is a song from Dylan’s seventeenth studio album, Desire (Jan 5th, 1976). Desire 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. Most of the album was co-written by Jacques Levy, and is composed of lengthy story-songs.
“One More Cup of Coffee” tells the tale of a girl whose family are gypsies and drifters, and of the man who must leave her to enter the “valley below”. The narrator describes a character who is beautiful: “your eyes are like two jewels in the sky” but for whom the narrator’s love and admiration are not reciprocated (“but I don’t sense affection no gratitude or love, your loyalty is not to me but to the stars above”). Dylan wrote the song at a corner table at The Other End nightclub in Greenwich Village in the summer of 1975.
In West Palm Beach, Florida, September 2, 1999 at Coral Sky Amphitheatre Bob Dylan threw in a surprise performance of Dwight Yoakam’s song, The Heart You Own.
“The biggest surprise followed when Dylan pulled out Dwight Yoakam’s “The
Heart that You Own.” Larry played pedal steel and Bob had some good vocals.
The song was performed well and Bob seemed really into it. It was also
interesting that no one I spoke to around me knew what song it was, though
everyone definitely liked it.”
