Tag Archives: The Best Dylan Covers

Blues, Bob Dylan, Cover versions

The Best Dylan Covers: Dave Alvin – Highway 61 Revisited

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The Best Dylan Covers: Dave Alvin – Highway 61 Revisited

Highway 61 Revisited is the title track of Bob Dylan’s 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. It was also released as the B-side to the single “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” later the same year.

I’ve read somewhere that Dave Alvin recorded it at the Ashgrove sessions, that makes sense. His cover of Highway 61 Revisited would fit that album very nicely. The Groove and overall feel from Ashgrove is very present in his interpretation of Highway 61 Revisited. The song is not on the album (not the release that I have at least) but check out the album, it’s a classic (June 15, 2004)

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Highway 61 Revisited by Dave Alvin was however included on a CD that came with an issue of Uncut Magazine, Highway 61 Revisited Revisited (2005).

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Bob Dylan, Cover versions

The Best Dylan Covers: Antony and The Johnsons – Knocking On Heaven’s Door

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Mama, take this badge off of me
I can’t use it anymore
It’s gettin’ dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

“…an exercise in splendid simplicity…”
– Clinton Heylin (about Dylan’s song)

The Best Dylan Covers: Antony and The Johnsons – Knocking On Heaven’s Door

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door is a song written and sung by Bob Dylan, for the soundtrack of the 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The best western ever made, and probably the best film in history.

The song describes the collapse of a deputy sheriff; dying from a bullet wound, he tells his wife “Mama, take this badge off of me; I can’t use it anymore.” The saddest and best death scene you’ll ever witness  (yes, I love that film).

Antony and the Johnsons is a music group presenting the work of Antony Hegarty. Antony Hegarty (born 1971), often referred to simply as Antony, is an English singer, composer, and visual artist. Antony and the Johnsons has a done a few Dylan songs (all good), today we present their haunting and beautiful, Knocking on Heaven’s Door. It has been very popular in TV and movies lately, but it started out as part of the soundtrack to the Dylan “fable”, I’m Not There.

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Bob Dylan, Cover versions

The Best Dylan Covers: Johnny Rivers – Positively 4th Street

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Johnny Rivers

The Best Dylan Covers: Johnny Rivers – Positively 4th Street

Positively 4th Street is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan, first recorded by Dylan in New York City on July 29, 1965. It was released as a single by Columbia Records on September 7, 1965.

Johnny Rivers was probably the first to cover this song, using it as the closing track on his Realization album in 1968. Dylan said in his best selling book Chronicles: Volume Onethat he preferred Johnny Rivers’ version of “Positively 4th Street” to his own recording of the song.

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– Bob Dylan : Chronicles Volume One

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Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Cover versions

The Best Dylan Covers: Bruce Springsteen – All Along The Watchtower

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The Best Dylan Covers: Bruce Springsteen – All Along The Watchtower

“All Along the Watchtower” is a song written and recorded by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. The song initially appeared on his 1967 album John Wesley Harding, and it has been included on most of Dylan’s subsequent greatest hits compilations. Since the late 1970s, he has performed it in concert more than any of his other songs. Different versions appear on four of Dylan’s live albums.

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