The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It’s that thin, that wild mercury sound. It’s metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up. That’s my particular sound.
~Bob Dylan (to Ron Rosenbaum – Nov 1977)
He had a piano in his room at the hotel and during the day I would go up there and he would teach me a song. I would be like a cassette machine. I would play the song over and over on the piano for him. This served a double purpose. One, he could concentrate on writing the lyrics and didn’t have to mess with playing the piano; two, I could go to the studio early that night and teach it to the band before he even got there, so they could be playing the song before he even walked through the door.
~Al Kooper (talking about BoB recording sessions)
Columbia Music Row Studios
Nashville, Tennessee
9-10 March 1966
“I never wanted to write topical songs,…. Have you heard my last two records, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61? It’s all there. That’s the real Dylan.”
~Bob Dylan (to Frances Taylor – Aug 1965)
“Highway 61 Revisited is the product of a series of recording session in which Dylan is performing at his peak, pure creativeness, sheer intensity, inspired by and pulling forth equivalent performances from the musicians around him. Whichever way he turns, something new and remarkable happens.”
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan Performing Artist I: The Early Years 1960-1973)
Studio A Columbia Recording Studios New York City, New York 2 August 1965 The 5th Highway 61 Revisited session, produced by Bob Johnston
Dylan gets downright talkative at this show, joking about New Jersey being ‘The land of The Boss’. He ends ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ with what sounds like a parody of the stop-start ending of Springsteen’s ‘Born In The USA’. .. Before the encore a guitar-shaped birthday cake is carted onstage for Howard Epstein, while everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’, including Al Kooper, sitting in on piano during the latter part of the show.
~Clinton Heylin (A Life In Stolen Moments)
Howie Epstein birthday – and he gets a cake
Al Kooper joining in for the last 5 songs (including “Like A Rolling Stone”)
Meadowlands Brendan T. Byrne Sports Arena
East Rutherford, New Jersey
21 July 1986
Musicians:
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
Tom Petty (guitar)
Mike Campbell (guitar)
Benmont Tench (keyboards)
Howie Epstein (bass)
Stan Lynch (drums)
and with The Queens Of Rhythm: Carolyn Dennis, Queen Esther Marrow, Madelyn Quebec, Louise Bethune (backing vocals)
–
….would be Like A Rolling Stone because I wrote that after I’d quit. I’d literally quit singing and playing, and I found myself writing this song, this story, this long piece of vomit about twenty pages long, and out of it I took Like A Rolling Stone and made it as a single. And I’d never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that that was what I should do, you know. I mean, nobody had ever done that before.
~Bob Dylan (to Martin Bronstein – Feb 1966)
.. The sound is so rich the song never plays the same way twice
~Greil Marcus
The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody had kicked open the door to your mind
~Bruce Springsteen (Jan 1988)
)
