” ‘Love & Theft’ is not an album I’ve recorded to please myself. If I really wanted to that, I would have recorded some Charley Patton songs.”
~Bob Dylan
“All the songs are variations on the 12-bar theme and blues-based melodies. The music here is an electronic grid, the lyrics being the substructure that holds it all together. The songs themselves don’t have any genetic history. Is it like Time Out Of Mind, or Oh Mercy, or Blood On The Tracks, or whatever? Probably not. I think of it more as a greatest hits album, Volume 1 or Volume 2. Without the hits; not yet, anyway”
~Bob Dylan (“Love & Theft” press release, June 2001)
The old Chess records, the Sun records. . . I think that’s my favorite sound for a record . . . I like . . . the intensity The sound is uncluttered. There’s power and suspense. The whole vibration feels like it could be coming from inside your mind. It’s alive. It’s right there.
~Bob Dylan, to Bill Flanagan, 2009
High Water (for Charley Patton):
High water risin’—risin’ night and day
All the gold and silver are bein’ stolen away
Big Joe Turner lookin’ east and west
From the dark room of his mind
He made it to Kansas City
Twelfth Street and Vine
Nothin’ standing there
High water everywhere
Would you spend the night of Friday the 13th in a huge medieval castle? The folks that chose to do so on this cold, rainy evening, found it to be one of the luckiest days of their lives. Dylan is in top form, and the show is another near perfect performance in a string of many along this tour.
–bobsboots.com
Stirling Castle Stirling, Scotland 13 July 2001
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
Charlie Sexton (guitar)
Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
Dylan entered the room fifteen minutes late, dressed in black and white and looking like a gentleman from the Old West. Those assembled were seated on sofas; Dylan sat opposite them, bolt upright on the very edge of his seat, behind a wall of microphones and tape recorders. The questions covered a wide range of topics and were not merely confined to Love and Theft. What is astonishing about this recording is the relaxed atmosphere, the ease with which Bob chats almost intimately with those gathered, and most notably, the sense that he is actually enjoying the conference, an attitude far removed from the mans notorious dislike of press interviews. The material he discusses is fascinating and offers at least a glimpse of where Bob Dylan was at at this juncture in his career something that no previously recorded interview with the man has even hinted at.
~Chromedreams.co.uk
Hotel de la Ville Rome, Italy 23 July 2001
Press conference with reporters from Austria, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
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
Some facts:
Dylan has played “Not Dark Yet” 152 times live
First time was @ Columbus Civic Center, Columbus, Georgia – 30 October 1997
Last performance: Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, Connecticut – 8 September 2012
