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77 posts tagged Bob Dylan
Video: Bob Dylan Honors Martin Scorsese with “Blind Willie McTell”
Bob Dylan performed on television last night in tribute to Martin Scorsese, who was being feted by the Critics’ Choice Awards for his music documentary work. In the performance that followed an introduction by George Harrison’s widow, Olivia, Dylan didn’t pluck an obviously reverent cut from his oeuvre, however, opting to treat the No Direction Home director and room full of Hollywood A-listers to 1983 rarity “Blind Willie McTell” — perhaps alluding to Scorsese’s The Blues series. Watch the poet laureate of rock, whose damaged voice and unpredictable phrasing still pulls through for old blues-style tunes, baffle the crowd above.
Steve Jobs’ Favorite Bob Dylan Song
Not that we need an excuse to revisit a Dylan classic, but here’s one nonetheless: Walter Isaacson’s new bio on the late beloved Apple CEO Steve Jobs contains a number of intriguing details about the digital music pioneer’s obsession with Bob Dylan — from the fact that Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak first bonded over Dylan bootlegs to his romance with Joan Baez in the early 1980s. The pair even met on a couple occasions, once for a two-hour discussion and again backstage at a concert, in which Jobs revealed that The Times They Are A-Changin’ ballad “One Too Many Mornings” was his favorite cut from the Dylan canon. The poet laureate of rock took that as a request and performed the tune at the show.
Rolling Stone has quotes and other musical highlights from the book to peruse while we take two versions — the original and a Johnny Cash duet recording — of Jobs’ excellent pick for another spin above/below.
Anticipated recordings by Jack White and Bob Dylan for The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, a new compilation of songs completed by a dozen artists from lyrics Williams left behind after his 1953 death at 29, have arrived to stream ahead of the set’s release this week. Both White and (his favorite artist to cover) Dylan honored the country legend’s words with a sound that wouldn’t be out of place among Hank’s enduring oeuvre (a spare, shuffling drumbeat, slide guitar, and twang-inflected vocal), while each cut recalls moments in their own work as well (Dylan’s Modern Times and White’s work on the Cold Mountain soundtrack, for example). Hear Dylan sing “The Love That Faded” at NPR and White channel Williams (“I was so thankful to be an antenna…”) on “You know That I Know” below.
Hear Bon Iver Cover Bob Dylan: “With God on Our Side”
We’ve heard ’80s country hit “If Hollywood Don’t Need You (Honey I Still Do)” and a genre-bending take on Björk from Bon Iver, but this one takes the cake: Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side,” one of the rock poet laureate’s most enduring ’60s anthems, performed with reverence and relevance the other night in Portland, Oregon. Hear Bon Iver’s inspired cover — complete with Justin Vernon in his lower register voice and glorious trumpet solos — above.
A set of previously unheard Hank Williams songs recovered from notebooks left behind after his 1953 death at 29 years old have been co-written to completion and recorded by Bob Dylan, Jack White, Jakob Dylan, Levon Helm, and others. News broke tonight (via Rolling Stone) that the long-rumored LP, dubbed The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, will finally see the light of day on October 4th, via Bob Dylan’s Egyptian Records imprint. Few other details about the project — aside from the tracklist below — have been announced, but here’s a choice quote by White on his contribution from an obscure interview with Pamela Des Barres I stumbled upon while researching our spring Dylan covers roundup:
The great thing is I live on the street Hank Williams lived on in Nashville and [“You Know That I Know”] just came out of the pile [Dylan] sent over, I picked that one. And there was this phrase about this girl with red hair, and I went, whoa, whoa, and I read backwards, ‘you know that I know that you ain’t no good.’ That was the first line! And I was like, oh my God! And I prayed to God, I said, please, Hank was walking on this street at one point and I’m sitting here now… let it happen again. And it happened in five minutes and that song came out. It was so cool. I was so thankful to be an antenna like that for a second. Because Hank wrote the song, let it be an antenna again.
In a Q&A with Noah Baumbach earlier this month, Joel and Ethan Coen revealed that they’ve been working on a new script for a music-related film featuring songs “pretty much all performed live” on a “single instrument.” The pair kept further details a bit cryptic in that discussion, but now the L.A. Times have been tipped off with an intriguing update on the project: The Mayor of MacDougal Street, a posthumously published memoir by legendary folk singer Dave Van Ronk that revisits the historic 1960s Greenwich Village scene he helped lead, is serving as inspiration for the script, which is loosely based on Van Ronk’s life.
Bob Dylan took to his official site this morning for a rare statement in reaction to discussion over rumors of censorship at the living legend’s recent performances in China, which were — according to a number of reports — canceled last year by the Chinese government and rescheduled for this spring, sans early-career protest anthems in the set list. Not so fast, says the poet laureate of rock:
First of all, we were never denied permission to play in China. This was all drummed up by a Chinese promoter who was trying to get me to come there after playing Japan and Korea. My guess is that the guy printed up tickets and made promises to certain groups without any agreements being made. We had no intention of playing China at that time, and when it didn’t happen most likely the promoter had to save face by issuing statements that the Chinese Ministry had refused permission for me to play there to get himself off the hook.
“I’ve got three fathers: my biological dad, God, and Bob Dylan,” said Jack White once of the poet laureate of rock, with whom he has since shared the stage and collaborated on an album of music written for unreleased Hank Williams lyrics that has yet to surface. It’s fitting, then, that Dylan’s songs have been adapted by Jack White and his White Stripes, Dead Weather, and other Third Man bandmates so seamlessly — a near-hereditary passing of the torch, perhaps. Notably, Dylan played an important role in White’s early career as well: granting permission for the Stripes to cover Desire’s “One More Cup of Coffee” on their self-titled debut and inspiring Jack’s earliest shows, at which he performed Dylan’s entire first album for apathetic audiences in Detroit coffee houses.
There have been many Dylan covers unleashed by White live, in the studio, and on the radio since his salad days, of course. So, without further ado, enjoy our collection below:
Bob Dylan and Eurythmics co-leader Dave Stewart have worked together on and off a number of times over the years, most notably during the mid-’80s, when Dylan joined Stewart in the studio to record an album that never saw an official release. Now one of their past collaborations, a tune they wrote together called “Worth the Waiting For,” will finally reach our ears via Stewart’s forthcoming solo LP, The Blackbird Diaries.
In honor of their former pianist and tour manager, Ian Stewart, the Rolling Stones reunited with bassist Bill Wyman — who hadn’t recorded with the rock icons since 1992 — for the forthcoming tribute record Boogie 4 Stu. Wyman and other Stones appear on a few cuts off the 11-track, Ben Waters-helmed LP, but all five performed for just one track collectively: a 5-minute cover jam of Bob Dylan’s 1971 single “Watching the River Flow.”
You can still preview snippets from the album, including PJ Harvey’s version of “Lonely Avenue” here, but now we have an official stream of Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, and Wyman covering Dylan here or below: