Tag Archives: 1974

Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan recording sessions

September 17: Bob Dylan – Blood On The Tracks, Second Recording Session in 1974

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blood-on-the-tracks-album-cover

Bob Dylan’s second recording session for Blood On The Tracks continued on  September 17, 1974. Another important day in the studio.

Here are some quotes, facts & music….

We cut the entire album in one day like that. Now that blew my mind. I was 19-years-old and trying to learn how to make art. The style of the time was set by guys I was working with like Paul Simon, who would take weeks recording a guitar part only to throw it away. I thought that was the way one was supposed to do it: one note at a time and a year to make an album. Dylan cut the whole thing in six hours on a Monday night. I was confused. It was like the floor, barely built under my young soul, was being ripped apart, board by board.
Then Dylan came back in on Tuesday, and recorded most of the album again.
~Glenn Berger (Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks: The Untold Story)

Albums involved:

ALBUM Release date CODE
Blood On The Tracks 1975-01-17 BOTT
Biograph 1985-11-07 BIO
Blood On The Tracks – Test pressing  Nov 74 BOTT-TP
Jerry Maguire – Soundtrack 1996-12-10 JMS

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan recording sessions

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

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blood-on-the-tracks-album-cover

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.

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Great albums, Music Calendar, Randy Newman, Singer Songwriter

September 10: Randy Newman released Good Old Boys in 1974

Randy_Newman-Good_Old_Boys-Frontal

September 10: Randy Newman released Good Old Boys in 1974

“To me, someone who writes really good songs is Randy Newman. There’s a lot of people who write good songs. As songs. Now Randy might not go out on stage and knock you out, or knock your socks off. And he’s not going to get people thrilled in the front row. He ain’t gonna do that. But he’s gonna write a better song than most people who can do it.

You know, he’s got that down to an art. Now Randy knows music. He knows music But it doesn’t get any better than “Louisiana” or “Cross Charleston Bay” [“Sail Away”]. It doesn’t get any better than that. It’s like a classically heroic anthem theme. He did it. There’s quite a few people who did it. Not that many people in Randy’s class.”

– Bob Dylan (1991)

Good Old Boys is the fifth album by Randy Newman, released 10 September 1974 on Reprise Records. It peaked at #36 on the Billboard 200, Newman’s first album to obtain major commercial success. The premiere live performance of the album took place on October 5, 1974, at the Symphony Hall in Atlanta, Georgia, with guest Ry Cooder and Newman conducting the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

This is one of the best records about “The South” that has ever been made. Randy Newman is cruel but, oh, so witty.

Mark Demming (Allmusic.com):
“ The album’s scabrous opening cut, “Rednecks,” is guaranteed to offend practically anyone with its tale of a slow-witted, willfully (and proudly) ignorant Southerner obsessed with “keeping the n—–s down.” “A Wedding in Cherokee County” is more polite but hardly less mean-spirited, in which an impotent hick marries a circus freak; if the song’s melody and arrangement weren’t so skillful, it would be hard to imagine anyone bothering with this musical geek show.
…
Good Old Boys is one of Newman’s finest albums; it’s also one of his most provocative and infuriating, and that’s probably just the way he wanted it. “

Rednecks:

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylans's best songs

Bob Dylan’s best songs: Simple Twist Of Fate

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bob dylan 1974

[Simple Twist Of Fate]  conjures the smell of the air on an early spring morning…  Dylan on this album has become a master of textures. “Simple Twist of Fate” unmistakably creates the time, holds it, breathes it in, and stops it; the tools it uses to accomplish this arc storytelling, imagery, phrasing, timing, vocal texture, rhyme, melody, and ensemble sound. The bass playing (content, timing, attack) is revelatory. The harmonica solos sum up the song’s essence and push it out to the furthest corners of the universe.
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, Vol 2: The Middle Years 1974-1986)

As ‘Girl From The North Country’ had been triggered by the breakup with Suze Rotolo, casting him back to an older affair, so ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’ set him reflecting not on Sara, but on Suze – hence the song’s subtitle in the notebook, ‘4th Street Affair’.
~Clinton Heylin (Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2, . 1974-2008)

bob dylan & suze rotolo

@ #49 on my list of Bob Dylan’s 200 best songs.

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Bob Dylan, Classic Concert, Photo, The Band

Photo special: Bob Dylan and The Band Oakland Feb 11 1974 (and audio)

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Bob Dylan and The Band 1974-2

Photo special: Bob Dylan and The Band Oakland Feb 11 1974 (and audio):

All photos taken by Chris Bradford:
Chris_Bradford_Profile  “I am a high school English teacher, but have also taught French and. Photography. My passion for    many years, besides photography and music, has been baseball. I coached at the same high school for    35  years and have had 4 players play in the Major Leagues. I also coached for 10 summers in the  Alaska  League, a college-level league, 5 summers in Anchorage and 5 in Honolulu, Hawaii. My  photographic  interests these days revolve primarily around travel. My wife and I go somewhere e  every summer, our  favorite destinations being Cuba, Italy, Croatia, Morocco, France and Southeast  Asia, and numerous  other destinations. I am currently in the laborious process of scanning most of my thousands of rock n roll slides and negatives. Feel free to email me if you have questions about artists you may want to see photographs of. [email protected]“

A while ago we here at Alldylan got an email from Chris where he told us that he had started digitizing his old slides, among them quite a few Dylan photos never before published. He asked if we would like to publish some of them on Alldylan. We were stunned, what an offer! We wrote back and said that we would be honoured. We will publish several posts with photos from several Dylan’s tours, and after that we will maybe post other artists. Chris has pictures of great historic value and he can be contacted if anyone wants to buy Hi-Res shots for printing.

We have put in some information and audio, just to bring us back in time along with Chris’s photos.

I must say that Chris is not very happy with the technical quality on this first batch of photos, but I think they are of great value to all Dylan fans and of Rock’n Roll history buffs so I asked him to allow us to publish them anyway.

Here are the first pictures, more will follow 🙂

Bob Dylan and The Band 1974-1

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