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Hey everyone, I'm Jim Salvucci of the Dylan Tons, and welcome to the latest installment of million dollar bash.
The basement tapes occupy a unique place of honor in the pantheon of Dylan legends, coming just after two other legendary events, the going Electric performance and subsequent tour, and Dylan's motorcycle accident. The 1967 recordings were a collaboration between Bob Dylan and his previous backing group, who would soon after become the members of the band. The tracks they laid down first in Dylan's house in Woodstock, New York, and then literally in the basement of the house, the big pink that three members of the band rented, were never meant for the public. They consist of covers of pop songs, folk numbers and blues. In addition, they recorded a large number of Dylan originals, some apparently intended as demos for other musicians to record.
Public interest in the sessions was piqued by the release of the great White Wonder in 1969. Widely regarded as the first rock bootleg, the album features five Dylan originals from the basement tapes. Given Dylan's minimal public presence at the time, this bootleg could not help but excite the fan base.
In 1975, Columbia released an album entitled the Basement Tapes, which consisted of a number of these recordings, along with some demos from the band who were still active and popular. It was inevitable that many more of these storied recordings would make their way into Dylan aficionados collections as bootlegs, some of which purported to be complete. In truth, even 20 fourteen's the Bootleg series volume eleven, the basement tape's complete is likely not all there is, and Dylan also penned many lyrics without any musical accompaniment during this period, some of which were set to music and released on the 2014 album the New Basement Tapes. Produced by Tebow and Burnett and featuring luminaries such as Elvis Costello and Rihanna Giddens Grail Marcus documented the circumstances and significance of these recordings in his 1997 book Invisible Republic, updated in 2011, is the old weird America. Marcus book squarely positions them in the american musical tradition.
Today we will address just the COVID songs from the basement tapes, we hope next time in a part two to discuss the Dylan Penn numbers. So let me introduce our panel. First off, we have Rockin Rob Reginio.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: Hi, Jim. Hi everyone else, great to be back.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Looking forward to this one.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Court Carney.
[00:02:53] Speaker D: Hello, everyone.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: And Nina Goss.
[00:02:57] Speaker E: Hello. Hi.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: Thank you everyone for being here. We're hoping that Aaron Callahan will make it a little bit later, and I decided, I don't usually do this, but I decided to prepare one question in advance to open this discussion.
Do you think the band would have ever become the band without the basement tape sessions? And why or why not?
[00:03:24] Speaker C: Because it dovetails a little bit with the song that I want to talk about. But Robbie Robertson spoke a little bit about Dylan teaching them, like, Pete Seeger, songs that he thought were hopelessly square and lame. And then because he said, we came into this on a whole other train, as he said, right, Ronnie Hawkins and really powerful, driving r and B. And Dylan, at least in Robertson's telling, got him to see the old triangle and the bells of Rimney and some of these songs, to see the great emotive power in them.
Does that mean that opened their eyes to the possibilities of covering what we now call working in the tradition of what we now call roots music? I don't know. But there is certainly some suggestions in Robertson's comments that the train that they got off the train, they came in on that r and b, blazing Roddy Hawkins train, and Dylan opened up a path for them.
[00:04:26] Speaker E: Jimmy, would the band have cohered into what led to the last waltz? Would we have the last waltz if it wasn't for those base twin tape?
Is that what you mean?
[00:04:38] Speaker B: So the band was an r and B rockabilly group backing group. They were Bob Dylan's backing group. They were just doing driving rock as rock, and Rob said, and they weren't doing Americana roots music at all, as far as I'm aware. And I'm wondering if this is the birth of that and the group that released the album music from Big Pink that would have even existed. But for this recording, the very least.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: They probably wouldn't have figured it out in West Socerty's in a pink house, which they apparently only lived in to be close to Dylan. On the one hand, I respect the band so much, and I don't want in any way to belittle their achievements, to suggest that they needed Bob Dylan to make it happen.
They were already making something happen that the fans loved in Toronto for many years. But would they have had that Quantum leap into americana music? I tend to agree with Rob. Probably not. And, you know, I don't know. I'd love to know what Dylan thought he was doing with the band, other than sneaking out of the house and away from the kid to have a drink, smoke some pot and make some music. There's part of me that has always imagined it as a kind of seminar that Bob Dylan was intentionally teaching these largely canadian musicians about american music.
But I don't know if Dylan ever saw himself as a professor in that sort of way. If I had to pick one song that maybe captures what Rob was talking about for me this time through listening to the basement tapes, it would be the COVID of my bucket's got a hole in it by Hank Williams Wright, which starts off pretty straight as a kind of tongue in cheek, country accent cover of Hank Williams. And then suddenly you get this scream that straight out of the Beatles twist and shout, and you realize, wow, you could do that with a Hank Williams song. That's not what I thought Hank Williams was. And I think that kind of exploding the shallow myths of square music is what Dylan did for the band. And then they took it from there and were just phenomenal. But, yeah, I do feel like Dylan was probably the. That ignited that to a large extent.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that particular cover with that Beatles scream. I was listening to my car and that came on, and my wife's a big Beatles fan. I said, see, there you go. Bob Dylan doing the Beatles right there. It's pretty wonderful.
Court, do you have something to say about this question?
[00:07:30] Speaker D: I wonder, bringing in the Beatles, it's like you could wonder if this is like their homburg, right? Not in terms of playing, because that was the Toronto club scene for, or the Canadian Club sing forum, but in terms of every day, or most days, they're just learning new songs they didn't really seem to know. And I love that line, too, where they're like, is it Garth or someone? They probably all at one point that they never knew if it was like an original or if it was something that Bob wrote, or this is an old song or whatever. And I think that it was like a boot camp of sorts. I mean, in a very fun way of them constantly learning these songs and constantly playing these songs. And I love on some of the songs, too, you can tell they don't know them. Obviously, in the middle, there's one song where Robbie's soloing, and then the band's like, he's waiting for the band to catch up, and you don't know if he knows the changes or if they.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Don'T know the changes.
[00:08:21] Speaker D: It's a really lovely mix of stuff. But I do think that there is something that they could play, obviously, and they'd played with him, but this was different. And I think what Greeley said, too, is he wasn't a professor. It wasn't like a chalkboard thing. But they were clearly confronting songs and music in a way that they hadn't before. And I think that probably does lead them in a very different path than they would have. Would they have been the band? Maybe, but would they have been what the band became? I think the basement tapes are very important. I think it was very important to them in a way that maybe is less important to Dylan, and Dylan's world. I think you could probably make the argument there, too. But, yeah, I think it's interesting.
The way to say that in another way is like, are the basement tapes when they come out, this is the anniversary, right? When they come out, the band's Columbia records version of the basement tapes.
Is that more of a band story than a Dylan story, or is the band more invested in that project than Dylan? I don't know.
It's interesting.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: Really great point. Because there's so many band only songs on that set. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: And clearly the bootleg complete, the official release, volume eleven, has none of the band only pieces, and I never heard a bootleg. I used to listen to a tree with roots, and I know there's several others, and I've checked them out. I don't remember any that had any of the band only songs, so I don't know what else they did. And those songs that are on the 1975 release the basement gates, I don't think any of those were actually recorded during the basement sessions. I think they were all demos that the band did for other things, with varying results, not some of their best work. It's an odd collection, to say the very least. The Dylan stuff's interesting, but the band stuff is, in some cases, a very bizarre selection, I think, Jim, what you.
[00:10:22] Speaker D: Just brought up is what I. What my one note card of comments was about. But I think it was so interesting to go back to tree with roots, which I'm assuming, I don't want to speak for everybody, but that was such an important collection. And I remember when I first got that bootleg move cds, it was like I had heard about this record for so long. I heard about these songs for so long, and you had read about them. Marcus writes an entire book about material that most readers hadn't heard, and it was like this mystery. And then to hear those songs, it was like, this is the greatest thing in the world, and I think so important. And when it comes out, when it becomes the actual bootleg series, it's so eye opening in terms of the fidelity of some of the material we have now, and that kind of stuff. But it's that collection. I don't think can be overstated in terms of how important it was, in terms of opening my eyes to what could be the possibility of the basement tape. They weren't just a few songs that became other, bigger songs. There was dozens of songs that were just, on their own level, just so beautiful and wonderful.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: So what about the covers, Gordon? I know you have a note card.
You keep holding up defensively.
[00:11:38] Speaker D: Let me written on there. I will. I can defer to other. I will say this, though. I love the clutch of Johnny Cash song because he's a big river and he's got Dylan town, which lesser known one, and those old kind of sun records songs. But they're not that old. That's what's so funny about, like, big river is not even a decade old. When he's doing it, you think he's pulling out. It's like the Beatles and let it be. You think they're pulling out these ancient songs from seven years, one after nine oh nine. How'd they remember that from seven? Dave Barry calendar pages. But I do think that those songs are really beautiful, and I think that he digs into them. And I know that there's a lot of things we can say with a couple of these songs that they're still in rotation today. Big river, he's playing. He played on the last tour. I think it's really. I don't want to belabor the point that I always make about history, that kind of stuff. But I will say this. I think it's really interesting to hear how great those songs sound. I forgot to remember to forget. This sounds really great. Big river sounds wonderful. But these are not also ancient things. Some of them are old triangle, that kind of stuff. Dad, get into the. But some of these songs were from a few years prior. But he's playing them as if they're like ancient, ancient songs.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: I've got a big picture observation. I'm sure we'll want to dig into some of the specific cover songs along the way. But I just.
I so love that it took place in a basement. Let's start there. That it's almost too perfect, that it takes place in a basement, because it lends itself so well to the sense of underground music, underground art. Right. But also to these other themes I love in Bob Dylan. Of descent. Right. Descent into an underworld, descent inward into the self. And when you descend into this album, and I'm especially thinking of the bootleg series version, six discs long, you can just play it all day.
It feels like you're descending into the mind of Bob Dylan. It feels like this is probably what it sounds like in his head all the time, right? This kind of buzzing swarm of bees, of snatches of music in different genres and different registers, in different moods and different eras. And somehow, miraculously, this got pulled out of his brain and his mouth and his fingertips and communicated to a band of other people who are hungry to consume it. And they just jam. And sometimes it works and sometimes it laughably doesn't, but most of the time it works. And the. Just the sonic atmosphere, the mindscape, it feels like you've entered into. It feels like such a privilege, right? That you're getting the inside story of what it sounds like in Bob Dylan's head. This is what I think of when I'm thinking of basement tapes. Not individual tracks, but just listening to one after another, as I had the privilege to do, preparing for this conversation. And it's just phenomenal.
[00:14:43] Speaker E: That's what I always think when I get near the Faceman tapes, is it's so overdetermined, it's such a piece of theater that he's constructed. Everything about it from the outside is so artificial and over determined.
The basement and the costumes that he wears. And the way he uses this, for the first and only time in his life, he uses his family as props to create this entire theater of retreat and authenticity. And everything about it should be so fake. And then he opens his mouth and you're gone. And that's why I'm not a musicologist. I can't tell if the band is good, very good, or excellent, or on any spectrum. And I don't even hear them. Sometimes I hear Robbie Robertson's guitar, but otherwise he opens his mouth and you get the bells of Remni and then you get be my baby. How is this the same throat and brain creating these two experiences? And then all the theatricality seems essential to the transcendent moments of the individual song.
[00:16:15] Speaker C: You're talking about those Elliot Landy photographs, Nina. Yeah, yeah. Where you. That's a really thought about. Or how incredibly, how using his family as props, as you said, never. He keeps that big wall around his family and his private life in here. But I think I agree with you that it's a kind.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: He's.
[00:16:35] Speaker E: Oh, my God. He can afford to buy a whole truman show for himself. He can really. And he can afford the assistance to create this with him. And we get the bells of Rimney and big river and, oh, that sad song about the mule pool water.
I can't listen to that too. Often it's so sad. But there you go.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Johnny Cash recorded that in one of his late life american recordings. I don't remember if that was released. I think that one was released posthumously. That's where I first encountered that, I think.
[00:17:15] Speaker E: And belches are Johnny Cash song, right?
[00:17:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:19] Speaker E: Pronounces it strangely belches. Yeah. Where's that from?
[00:17:25] Speaker A: If we're moving into individual songs that we love. And I've listened to basement tapes almost exclusively for a month ever since I knew that we were doing it. Except for the last week when I've been listening to guided by voices, because I so loved Court Carney's piece on the 30th anniversary of B thousand. And if you haven't read that, go out and read it. Subscribe to his substack. But aside from a week of guided by voices, it was all basement tapes. And because it's so long, you just often have it on in the background. Right. It becomes this mental wallpaper and you're appreciating it, but maybe not totally zoned in. But the song. There's more than one. But the one that really struck me, that always just makes me snap to attention is Mister Blue. I.
And now he's bringing it back, apparently, on the tour. That's crazy. But that performance of Mister Blue is so arrestingly beautiful and it is such a serenade and a seduction. And it works. I fall in love with this man every time he plays that song. And I mean, he just knows all my buttons to push. With Mister Blue, it is so achingly gorgeous. And nina was saying earlier, it's unfathomable that the same guy that we know, think we know so well from the electric tour in 1966 and all of the footage there. How can that guy be the guy just months later performing Mister Blue, it's some kind of, I don't know, transubstantiation he's done, but I'm buying it. Everything he's selling, I'm buying that song. Mister Blue. Oh, oh. Love it.
[00:19:11] Speaker E: Usually it's Spanish as the loving tongue that I've noticed that turn men into Bob Dylan, make men briefly, whatever.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm totally crushing on him there.
[00:19:27] Speaker E: Yes, Spanish is the longing tongue is the. But that we can't.
Yeah, because it's not only register, it's that when you see them in 66, it's these layers, this metametta consciousness that's required to. To do thin man or desolation row in those shows, you just feel that he's inhabiting this psychic realm that's layers and layers above what an ordinary human is. And then that's all erased. And he's just totally present in Mister Blue, this reasonably hokey song that is nothing but pure, simple, pure feeling. And all the meta is gone.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Yeah. When he starts singing, is it Richard Manuel or someone? Chuckles. They're like, oh, my God, I can't believe you're playing this. What a lame, square ass song.
[00:20:26] Speaker D: I think there's a lot here, though, that's interesting about the artifice and masks, all the stuff that we give him credit for. And then when he's doing cover songs, it's so heartfelt because there is distance. All of a sudden there's a heartfelt, beautiful element that comes into it. Fool. Such as, there's so many songs where he just sounds so great. And granted, it's interesting. You mentioned guide by voices. Thank you. But it's interesting, too, this idea of lo fi and, like, one of the charms of guided by voices during the nineties was like. It sounded like. It was just like, hey, we got these songs that we want to put out. We just need to have them out. The basement tape says that same vibe. These are songs, but they weren't meant for. That's what there's so many complicating pieces. They weren't meant to be put out as, like, these just wonderful campfire, whatever basic thing.
And yet we collect. What I love about these songs, if we go back to the meta story, is that is exactly why I love Dylan so much. It's. There's so much mystery. There's eternal mysteries in this. We cannot nail down even basic chronologies for a lot of the. We can't nail down precisely when or how or was he practicing this stuff and then bringing them in. How many recordings, how many takes did they take before Garth hits play? There's eternal gaps, but that's exactly what makes it so lovely. And, like, the blurred edges and the mystery and the entanglements is what makes this stuff so moving to me. And it's. You don't need to know. Like I said, bringing up Graham Arkansas again, he write an entire book where stories are being spun out of stories of songs that most people haven't heard, and then you get to hear them, and it doesn't necessarily change what he's saying. It might count or may not, but then you have, it's like this hopelessly endless stream of material that also sounds really great. And we'll get into the original stuff later, obviously, but I just think there's something really moving about all that. I think it's something that really is magnetic. I hadn't really thought what Nina was saying. I hadn't really thought those. Those ways before that. It's a fascinating way of looking at it, like kind of the idea of authenticity or the idea that this could all be a put on or something, and then it's not. I don't know. I think it's. I think the fact that this well exists is exactly why you'll never get tired.
That's stuff. There were times when I was in graduate school when I only listened to those. Bootleg the tree with Ruth. That was it. This is the only music I need. And then there are times when you don't hear that so much because you're too busy listening to blood on the tracks after a divorce. But then you go back. I'm just kidding. I'm not kidding. It's all real. But anyway, I just think it's interesting to think about these holes and what we can do with them. I just. It's endlessly fascinating to me.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: I like it.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: My bucket's got a hole in it.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Which I was just going to say. I really appreciate your, well, metaphor. So I guess my bucket has a hole in it, too. So that's. It's all of a piece. Rob, are you going to say something?
[00:23:22] Speaker D: Wells? Holes?
[00:23:25] Speaker C: No, I was going to talk about bells of rimning. That's the one song that I was going to talk about, and it was on. So Seeger puts out his greatest hits album in 67, and there's a live version of Bells of Rimney on that. And Grail Marcus, in his book, dismisses it as that version, as he just calls it a protest song, then says Dylan does something deeper with it. And I just respectfully don't necessarily agree. I find Seeger's version of Bells of Rimny incredibly emotive, incredibly mysterious and ambiguous, even though you've got lines that are def. The way the song ends, which we'll talk about in a sec, but. So the birds. So that's. And Dylan in. When he gets the band together to do this version of it, he's doing Seeger's version of Bells of Rimny.
He's not necessarily altering the arrangement at all, certainly in the way that he sings it. Right where the line has. Throw the vandals in the court and you sing that high, say the bells of new, or you sing it low, and he follows exactly how Seeger sings it. And we get that again. Seeger's version is an incredibly emotive putting across of the song. And you have this catalog of injustices at the beginning of each line, followed by those impossible to pronounce welsh place names.
[00:24:56] Speaker E: I love how he says that.
[00:25:01] Speaker D: What.
[00:25:01] Speaker C: He does in the performance, he gives so much space to his fast strummed guitar that it allows this kind of echo chamber resonances to come through. And so places like Cardiff and Y and Rimney and Merther and these other places that I'm going to mispronounce, accrue this kind of powerful. You get a sense that these are places that all have their kind of like little local histories, if only they can be unpacked. It's a very mysterious song in that. And so the. The last verse of the song, all will be well if cry the green bells of Cardiff. Why so worried, sisters? Why sang the silver bells of y? And what will you give me? Say the sad bells of Rimny? And that last line, what will you give me? Is a kind of opening up rather than this resoundingly like closed ending that you'll get in a Pete Seeger protest song. So I really love that. I think what Dylan's doing in the basement tapes is teaching the band, even if they didn't know, the birds version of Bells of Rimny, which is diluted because they give it this full band sound and it's not focused on just this fast strum guitar and this voice. What he's doing is that the band the true ver, not the true, but he's teaching them a more powerful, emotive version of this Pete Seeger song. And so what Dylan learned from the famously earnest and square, as Robbie Robertson said, pete Seeger is the way that a performer can get layers of history that's imbricated in a folk song, modern or ancient. Bells of Rimney was a Pete Seeger kind of appropriation of an older paul to resonate in this haunting way. The town and city names put us in a specific place. But the question asked by the bells of Rimney specifically embodies longing for justice, just work, mobility beyond the town, beyond Wales itself, in a literal and spiritual sense. And this dislocation of being rooted but feeling disconnection between your personal story and the seemingly aloof way that history goes about destroying what you want to know is of the moment. And here I am thinking about my John Wesley Harding book. It's 1967. It's an appropriate song for a country that's feeling or straight, a group that's straining to feel this sense of rootedness. But this connection seeps in and so you get this wonderful. The performance of Bells of Rimney that Dylan gives in the basement tapes blends so beautifully those two emotions. A yearning for these places at the same time, an expression of a hopeless dislocation. And so he takes something and get it. But hat tip to Seeger, he's the one that produced that original song. And the way that he originally, the way that he performed it, is what.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Dylan is borrowing from, I might segue off of. And that was a great reading of that song. You pulled a lot of the resonance out of it that I had missed. So now I, immediately after this roundtable discussion, want to go back and listen to that one again. One of the songs that grabbed me in a way it hadn't grabbed me before prepping for this roundtable is the old triangle, which is a song. Maybe it's because of over familiarity. I've taught in Ireland many times, study abroad, and so I know that song to the point that it almost feels cliche irish to me. And Dylan helped me de. Familiarize the song enough to make me appreciate it afresh this time through on multiple levels. Vocal is hypnotic. The music I wish. I'm not a musician, so I don't even know what I'm hearing or who's playing it. And it's very subtle and modest accompaniment, but perfect. I just. Between Dylan's voice and that music, I'm hypnotized by this long version of the old triangle. And it made me start thinking, and I'm sure this is not a coincidence of fairy tale of New York and Shane McGowan. The late, great Shane McGowan knows his irish music and culture and history so well. And so I'm sure there's an intentional connection there because the scenario is very similar, right? You've got a prisoner who is busted and depressed and morose, and he's lying in his lonely cell, staring up at the ceiling or out the window and imagining better times or imagining his way into some kind of alternate reality that's better than the horrible reality he's currently living in. And that's also what's going on in the old triangle. But of course, the other thing that it made me think of is, oh, this is Dylan. And it might as well be a chapter out of the philosophy of modern song, right? Because he's showing us how you inhabit a song and inhabit the character of the singer in the song. I feel, and I don't know the actual chronology here, but I feel like the experience of inhabiting that consciousness of the singer in the old triangle had to have been an inspiration for I shall be released, which is Dylan's song about a prisoner who's imagining his way over those walls and out of this terrible situation that he's a. That he's currently in. And so there's so many different resonances there that really make this song one of the highlights of the basement tapes for me.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Now that song's the earworm on the album for me. I can't get it out of my head.
[00:30:46] Speaker E: Oh, it is. Four strong lenses, the earworm.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Let's talk about the canadian numbers, since we're. Thank you for bringing that up.
What about those canadian numbers? Four strong winds.
[00:31:01] Speaker D: So that's the one for me, too.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
Ian Tyson songs, right?
[00:31:06] Speaker E: Yes.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: Do you think Dylan's bringing them to the band, or the band's bringing them to Dylan.
The french girl song for Canada?
[00:31:20] Speaker A: It could.
[00:31:20] Speaker C: They're thinking, please.
We know he's something on the 66 tour. It's rock and roll, but he's a folk guy, so maybe here's some folk songs from Canada that he might. I can imagine them bringing them to the. But Dylan has always been a fan of those Ian and Sylvia songs, and.
[00:31:37] Speaker D: Grossman's in the middle of that, too. It's probably all there.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Could you explain that?
[00:31:43] Speaker D: Isn't Grossman with Eden? Sylvia isn't even.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: I didn't know that.
Did he have all the folk acts?
[00:31:49] Speaker D: I don't know. That's interesting, though, the canadian side of things. I don't know how much the band would have brought it to that or not.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: So I have a really big question, bigger than my first question about the band, why these songs? We heard about the philosophy of modern song, and one of the questions is why this selection of songs? Why these songs here? Some of them are songs that Dylan just wants to kick around a little bit, you can tell, but some seem to have his performance, the energy they put into them.
You can tell there's a lot of meaning here. Why do you think he selected this collection of covers?
[00:32:26] Speaker C: The big question of 67. What is he doing? That's a version of the question that you're asking. What is he's editing? Eat the document. We know he's interested in film. We know he's interested. He's consistently interested in making movies. So he's got that on his plate in 67. But is he prepping this band for another tour where he's going to want to mix in some of these songs? The only analog that I can think of, in a lot of ways is a lot of the audition stories that you get from the never ending tour of people saying, dylan calls us in and he keeps throwing these old songs at us and has us play them, and if we can get it, then we get the gig. Is that what he's doing? It's so, again, going back to Greeley's wonderful point. It's so mysterious. It's mysterious and trying to connect. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:33:21] Speaker E: Once he began the process and he felt the conditions of this throne and the people and the space of the intimacy in the room and whatever he heard in each of them as a musician, once that started, then did it just steamroll? And so every day there was seven new songs, because he's done this many times. Why isn't self portrait this good? There's a remarkable range of material on self portrait that's not junk by any stretch of the imagination. And why did Grail Marcus mythologize this to such exhausting, mortifying results? And why did he detest self portrait? What is the magic that occurred when they put those that she also is Bob McDillen. He can get the most advanced, expensive recording equipment available in 1967 and have it hauled off to upstate New York, and he doesn't. So again, there's this very deliberate, crafted dialing down of the whole production. And I think that once he felt what was possible and what this brought out in his.
In the voice, what he could sing himself into in these conditions, it just went on and on, day after day.
And I don't know that asking the question why these particular songs? I think that will lead us into the kind of overwrought narratives that some people who will remain nameless have published books about. And I don't think there should be an overwrought narrative about this.
I'm done.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe the simplest answer is the best pleasure joy that he just likes these songs and he wanted to play.
[00:35:37] Speaker E: Them about these guys. Yeah, they'll do it.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: And isn't that one of the great joys of listening to the complete basement tapes, especially, is how much fun he seems to be having on a lot of his dogs or everyone's happy. I love to hear Bob Dylan.
[00:35:51] Speaker E: And he laughs and laughs. Yes, he does laugh a lot.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: If Dylan is the king of this court, then the jester seems to be Richard Manuel, right? That this is the guy who wants to make Bob Dylan laugh and is pretty good at it. And he makes me laugh, too. I guess Dylan must like to have a kind of sidekick who makes him laugh. We saw that with Bobby Newerth on the 65 tour on don't look back. But it's a very different kind of gesture that Bobby Newerth is than Richard Manuel this was occurring to me thinking about it why do I like Richard Manuel so much more than Bobby Newerthe? It's probably unfair to Bobby Newworth I know very little about Bobby Newworth I probably know nothing accurate about Bobby Newworth because I'm only going on my impressions the few times I see him on film and maybe he's nothing like that off film but the impression I get from don't look back is that he could be mean, he could be a guy who likes to mock other people and get people to laugh at other people's expense and that's not Richard Manuel, Richard Manuel it's very self deprecating he's a goofball and he makes himself the butt of the joke and I just find that so much more endearing and it's just the sense of rapport and camaraderie and humor I get between Bob Dylan and Richard Manuel is priceless we just.
[00:37:12] Speaker E: So where he keeps trying to get Manuel to sing and he won't what's. Then Dylan finally says, all right, I'll do it. I forget which one that is singiverse he keeps telling Richard. Richard says, I don't know this. And then I love that they got. There must be so much of it didn't make it on but the kicking.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: My dog around and I'm your teenage prayer all american boy those are just so funny. And of course, I guess some of those are Bob Dylan originals or maybe all of them or all american boy, I think is a Bobby. Or it starts out as a Bobby bear cover but then he just starts riffing all on lines that Manuel's giving him and turns it into his own thing. But whatever's happening there, you want to be there in that basement and it feels kind of like you are there because of the miraculous existence of these tapes that shouldn't exist.
[00:38:06] Speaker C: And I think kicking my dog around has that great. I think I'm remembering the right one where Dylan is choreographing at the beginning. He's no, do the chorus. Do it.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: What?
[00:38:16] Speaker C: Instead of breezao or he's trying to get visions of Joanna nailed down, he's. I want to make the silliest.
[00:38:21] Speaker E: Why?
[00:38:22] Speaker C: Backing why? Yeah, that's what I want you to do. And when Manuel tunes into that wavelength, Dylan chuckles and then they just go.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Off and it's wonderful and they're laughing throughout yeah, I have that song listed as a traditional song, so it isn't a Bob Dylan original.
[00:38:42] Speaker E: But I need to just. What? That's exactly the difference that we all love those alpha Dells and that terrific tell old Bill thing that we have them in the studio where this wonderful range and variety. But you can feel he's trying to get it right. We're going to do it again. We're going to try to get it whatever. We're going to try to get it right. But there's none of that here. We're going to just keep doing something else and see where we are and then do something. There's none of that. That sense of molding, working towards something, working towards anything.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: It's actually the perfect learning environment, what you just described, right, where there's no pressure, everyone's just operating. They're able to jump out of their comfort zone, goof off, maybe switch instruments, do whatever they're doing. We don't even know who's playing drums almost of this, because Levon helm was rarely there for whatever reason, they're not necessarily doing the things they're good at. And that's the best way to learn.
[00:39:53] Speaker D: But I think this also draws the point that the borders are blurry, because I think they did, at least at some point, start seeing it as work.
They don't see it just as play or that they play and then they were. But the recordings are nothing, just recordings. And they're not just capturing whatever they are rehearsing these things to then record. Now, why do they not get other equipment? Is it just because Garth has access to that? But Garth is taking that job pretty serious.
So interesting. It's. Yes, it seems like it's all played to go to this other level, but then it's also planned.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: We don't.
[00:40:32] Speaker D: Steps. I think there's a quote where Garth or someone says, upstairs was play, but when we went downstairs, it goes to Greeley's descent.
[00:40:42] Speaker E: And that upstairs, downstairs, that song that. It's this Robbie Robertson that he goes upstairs and then he comes downstairs and Dylan would go up and write and come down and they'd record anyway.
[00:40:57] Speaker D: Aaron's not here, unfortunately. But Aaron Washington has been talking a lot about lately is this idea of the space, of the domestic space and then leaving the domestic space for this kind of playhouse space, but then leaving the playhouse space for this third space of recording, I think. No, the fact that this is all just on the fly in a couple of months, I think just speaks a lot to Dylan. Goes back to I think, Nina, you were saying with kind of Dylan's point in all of this, or maybe that was another question we were talking about. What is Dylan trying to do with all of this? I don't think the early part of the COVID songs. I don't think there is a mission statement.
I don't think there is. I think there becomes one. I think once they have dozens of recordings and they have other songs being written, maybe it's funny. This is one of those things where you have all these canonical narratives. These were written for other people, so they made these recordings to send to other people, and that gives us the first bootleg. But you wonder how much of that is being. Is that the PR rolling Stone press? I don't know. I bet the reality is a lot murkier and more interesting.
[00:42:03] Speaker C: Yeah, he's got the. When they're recording port, I think that's a fabulous distinction that you make when they record. There is that distinction between upstairs and downstairs, rehearsing, wood shedding, whatever you want to call it, and then actually recording it. And one of the songs that I really like, super dramatic and wonderful, is the hills of Mexico. And that trails off. And Dylan's just not happy with it. He says, you're wasting tape, Garth. You're wasting tape. And I'm like, nope, he's not to keep going. This is really compelling. You're doing a beautiful version of it that they were going to practice it, but then record it. The mystery is, what was the intent? It's still mysterious because this isn't.
[00:42:48] Speaker D: Let it be. This isn't Michael Lindy Hogg recording hours and hours. We have the discernible tapes of the songs that they created. So again, there's a lot of mystery and gaps that maybe never should be filled in. But I think that is, and it goes back to Rob, what you're talking about with 1967. We know that he's listening to country radio, and we know that he's writing down these songs that he likes from country radio in the notebooks that we have access to through Tulsa.
But is it just something like that? Is he hearing something that catches his ear? Is he hearing an old record of his from five years, whatever it is, and he's man, that would be a great song to play. But there's also ultimately what we're getting at is that we don't need to spin lights of fancy. He's clearly getting something out of it, whether it is just pure joy of singing these songs or if it's helping his brain do something different. We'll have to wait for Rob's book to tell us where John Wesley Harding comes from. But that's the eternal question. Where does this other stuff come from? And this has got to be part of that mix anyway.
[00:43:53] Speaker E: And how the original songs are this sweet, generous segue to John Wesley Harding. There isn't anything like that. We'll talk about those next time.
There's nothing like the register of this song, of the original song and how he gets to that. What weird borders those overlap. And then.
So that's. May I add a footnote that Paul McCartney begged the other Beatles to record? Please misses Henry for letting these things. And none of them wanted to do it but him.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: And.
[00:44:37] Speaker E: I think they would do a great version of please misses Henry.
[00:44:41] Speaker D: Wow. Now I'm trying to imagine that's when George visits. And then George is like, this is what the Beatles should be.
These guys seem to like each other.
[00:44:49] Speaker E: Yeah, exactly.
[00:44:50] Speaker D: We don't have to go to a lawsuit meeting every day at lunch.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: That's fun.
[00:44:57] Speaker D: But there's a big difference between big river. As gorgeous as it is, and I'm not there. Something has happened.
Quote a phrase.
But I will say this too to go back to the larger point that I was saying of how you get access to it. I remember. And we all have the same access. You heard Santa Fe for the first time. Right? This blurry.
Is there more like that?
And I think there's still even after you've heard everything else or as much as that we probably ever will know in as good as fidelity as we probably will get. Yeah. Who the fuck knows? The mystery of ah.
[00:45:35] Speaker E: And it was a huge, big deal. When I first got tree with roots. It was really hard to find. I had to find someone who had it. And it was very expensive. I paid 50 or $60 to some guy to copy it. And it was a huge. Do you remember that? It was a huge. This was an ordeal.
[00:45:54] Speaker D: That's a good 33 book is everyone's reminiscence of how we got that collection. And I guess it wouldn't be that great of a great. I scratched that bad idea. It's an important. That's an important collection of music.
Whatever we have now is really great and wonderful beyond that. But that was the entry point.
Thank you.
[00:46:18] Speaker E: Whoever did that slew by.
[00:46:20] Speaker B: Yeah. It really did. And I want to thank everyone. This is wonderful. And wrap this up. I do have a suggestion that we should all pool our resources.
You can actually rent big pink in West Socrates, New York. It's still there. It's still pink.
[00:46:34] Speaker E: Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah. I know people who've done that.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: And it's multi rooms. So if you ever want to pull our resources, all get together, hang out in big pink.
[00:46:44] Speaker C: I think I suggested that in Tulsa.
[00:46:46] Speaker D: When did you?
[00:46:48] Speaker C: Court and Aaron and myself were turning 50 this year, and we're thinking. I was like, what would be great is if we just pool our resources.
Verbo. I think it's on verbo, right? Or something?
[00:47:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's verbose.
[00:47:02] Speaker C: Big pink. And hang out there.
[00:47:04] Speaker D: And upstairs we plan. Then we go downstairs for the podcast.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: We descend.
[00:47:12] Speaker D: Yeah, descend. Is it rolling, Jim?
[00:47:16] Speaker B: All right, this has been great. So thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to.
And the Dylan numbers, so we'll get that together as soon as possible, but.
Bye, everyone. See you around.
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