Redirecting to a newer version of this post….

We have done a couple of posts earlier of Bob Dylan doing Zevon’s songs, This time we look at Warren Zevon’s renditions of Bob Dylan’s songs. He has done quite a few and they are wonderful.

We found 6 Dylan songs in his repertoire, if there are more, please tell me in the comments.

Let’s start with the first of Warren Zevon’s Bob Dylan covers, If You Gotta go, Go Now. He was in a duo called Lyme and Cybelle and they did this interesting interpretation:

Let us now listen to his heartbreaking performance of Knocking on Heavens Door from his last album, The Wind:

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

Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door

Warren Zevon – Knocking on heavens door (audio):

Warren Zevon in the studio recording “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” with Billy Bob Thorton and friends.

Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside
They’re drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide
I live in another world where life and death are memorized
Where the earth is strung with lovers’ pearls and all I see are dark eyes

Warren Zevon – Dark Eyes (Live in Cleveland, OH, 2000):

Far between sundown’s finish an’ midnight’s broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An’ for each an’ ev’ry underdog soldier in the night
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

Warren Zevon – Chimes Of Freedom (Philadelphia PA, 2000):

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

Warren Zevon – All Along The Watchtower (Aspen CO, 1996):

Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
’Cross the valleys and streams
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride

Warren Zevon – Ring Them Bells (Live in Denver CO, 1996):

Check out:

• Bob Dylan: The Songs he didn’t write
• Warren Zevon @ alldylan.com

 

– Hallgeir & Egil