Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away Feel like my soul has turned into steel I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal There’s not even room enough to be anywhere It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there
University Of Illinois
Champaign, Illinois
27 October 1999
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
Charlie Sexton (guitar)
Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
“…Robbie Robertson is an album that represents both a clear break from his past, and an ambitious attempt to take his fascination with American culture and music in a new and contemporary direction. It’s highly ambitious stuff…”
– Mark Deming (allmusic.com)
Robbie Robertson is the self-titled solo debut by Robbie Robertson, released in 1987. The album won the Juno Award for “Album of the Year”, and producers Lanois and Robertson won the “Producer of the Year” Juno award, both in 1989 as there were no Juno Awards held in 1988.
The album includes contributions from the members of U2 and Peter Gabriel, both of whom were also working with producer Daniel Lanois at the time. U2 was recording The Joshua Tree and Gabriel was recording So. U2’s contribution is heard in the song “Sweet Fire of Love” which is a duet of sorts between Robertson and U2 lead singer Bono. The other track featuring U2 is “Testimony”, again with vocals from Bono. Gabriel’s contributions are heard on the song “Fallen Angel”, which was dedicated to Robertson’s former Band bandmate Richard Manuel, and “Broken Arrow” which reverberates with Gabriel’s signature Rhodes electric piano. In addition, Tony Levin and Manu Katché, who were recording with Gabriel, are featured prominently on this record.
In 2005 the album was reissued together with Storyville as 2CD in an expanded edition, both with two bonus tracks.
Fantastic album, one of my favourite albums from the 80s.
Robbie Robertson – Somewhere Down The Crazy River (official video):
Harvest Moon is the twentieth studio album by Neil Young. Many of the musicians appearing on it also appeared on his 1972 album Harvest, and it is considered by many to be like a “sequel” to Harvest.
But Neil Young did not agree: “…people see the correlation between the two, and it’s kind of a plus to be able to refer back 20 years and see the same people and do that. But the thrust of the albums is different, even though the subject matter is similar, so I tend to shy away more from comparisons between them…”
Recovering from a case of tinnitus that had come about after the recording of 1990’s Ragged Glory and its subsequent tour (which produced 1991’s Weld and Arc), Young was determined to return to the studio. Returning to Nashville and joining up with compatriots like Ben Keith, Young put down the electric guitar, returning to the acoustic guitar, piano and banjo that had dominated albums such as Harvest, Comes a Time and Old Ways.
The album earned the 1994 Juno Award for album of the year. The 2009 release Dreamin’ Man is a live album of the subsequent 1992 tour and contains live renditions of all Harvest Moon tracks in a different order.
One of Neil Young’s best albums in my book, many classic songs. I think it’s a far angrier album than Harvest and a record that is a testament to Young’s experience and growth as a songwriter.
The title track to Neil Young’s Harvest Moon encapsulates the mood of the entire album in a single song. The power of nature and music, as well as a feeling of celebrating lifetime love are the focal points here, and Young captures it all in his typically literate, artless style. The melody is positively gorgeous, and it’s one that could have easily framed a heavier song. The fact that Young uses the word “celebrate” underlines his feelings here, and the exquisite arrangement and backing vocals (which include Linda Ronstadt) underline this.
– Matthew Greenwald (allmusic.com)
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath’rin’
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears
~Bob Dylan (The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll)
The story I took out of the newspaper and I only changed the words. It’s, er… ..Well, I changed, er… the reporters view into… I used it I used it for something I wanted to say, er, and I used his view, the Maryland reporters view to get at what I wanted to say and turn it that way. And I used a true story, that’s all. I could have used a made-up story.
~Bob Dylan (to Steve Allen – Feb. 1964)
audio from the interview:
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” is an extremely moving song that has stood the test of time better than any of Dylan’s other early topical songs of this sort (retellings of real events, usually tragedies, usually with a moral attached or implicit). Dylan sings it from the heart; he really cares about the woman who
died-her dignity and the value of her life come through in the song, it is a memorial to her and a tribute to people like her as much as it is an attack on her killer and people like him and the system that coddles them.
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan Performing Artist I: The Early Years 1960-1973)
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