♪ Odds and ends odds and ends ♪ Lost time is not found again ♪ Roy Silver, now he was a character who showed up.
Kind of a... [CHUCKLES] He's kind of like... How can you put it?
He was kind of like a hustler type on the street, you know, somebody... You know, trying to make a deal about this and make a deal about that.
He was a fast talker.
Well, I saw him perform all the time.
I hung out with him.
I was the guy.
I was his manager.
I mean...
So I was there wearing, at that time, as was my practice, I was the only one in the entire Village that wore a suit.
Everyone else was in jeans, etcetera, etcetera.
But I had my little outfit and so forth... that I wore.
So, I saw him all the time.
I mean, we met on a daily basis, trying to figure out what to do next.
And I was trying to...
There was no question.
I was trying to make him a star, and I knew that he could and would be a star.
In the '60s, it was...
It was great.
There was so much talent around at that point, and in an undiscovered area, folk music.
My God, who knew from folk music?
I mean, the only person that was alive that any of us knew with Pete Seeger.
No one understood what was happening at that time.
I mean, no one woke up and said, "Oh, my God, it's folk music!"
We were just out there.
I mean, Pete Seeger was God, and we were just people working and trying to make a buck and hoping that this would all turn into something fabulous.
And it did.
You could smell it, that there was something going on at that period of time that would do away with the old stuff.
No one ever thought, no one that I remember at that time period ever thought that this was one day going to who'd be Bob Dylan.
I remember that he was strange and that I was not going to...
This was not anyone that I was going to have an easy time communicating with.
This would be...
I'd have to pull everything out of him because he didn't know where he was or what he was doing, and so forth and so on.
I mean, he was new to the Village.
Gerde's Folk City was the highest his dreams had ever gone to.
So, you know, it was hard to figure out where we were all going to go with this.
With Bob, I took a piece of paper out of whatever, or I asked someone, and wrote down that, "I, Bob Dylan, do hereby "agree to be managed by Roy Silver for 20%."
I forget what the period of time was and so forth.
And Bobby signed it.
It was really no big deal.
He was strange.
You were dealing with a guy who had a strange voice, who had a strange rhythm, who was playing a guitar in a strange, humdrum fashion.
I mean, that was really the response.
No one leaped up from their seat at the end of the show and said, "My God, the Messiah has come."
No one.
I mean, it was hard.
He went up.
He did a show.
He came off.
He didn't do a show.
No one ever accused Bob of being a great performer.
I mean, at any time.
Bob came running up to see me to play a new song for me.
So I said okay, and I sat there, and Bob whipped out his rusty guitar and he played this song for me and I said, "This is the greatest song I've ever heard."
And he was thrilled that I said to him that this was a great song, and I said, "We have to record it immediately "because I know a place where this should go."
"I'm going to call Artie Mogull and everything, "but first, we've got to go in and record it."
And my memory tells me that we went...
I went downstairs at Third Avenue, at the place that we were at.
It was a Chinese laundry, and I borrowed $50, 'cause no one had any money then.
I borrowed $50 so that I could go to 1619 Broadway, or wherever it was, to make a record.
That's how we spoke in those days.
We were going to make an acetate.
Bob would sing and play simultaneously, and we would run and record it.
And I did that, and then I sent him home because he was boring to be with and I didn't want to hang out anymore with him.
And then I went over to... the publishing company, Witmark.
It was one of those songs that you knew, if you were in the music business, you knew that a gold mine had just been discovered.
We just arbitrarily decided that we would do it with Peter, Paul and Mary.
Came out three weeks later, a little song called Blowin' in the Wind, went on to absolutely establish who Bob was and what his place was in the world, and deservedly so.
I mean it was, to this day...
I mean, I can listen to it.
I just heard it the other day on someone and it just... Blowin' in the Wind.
I mean, it brings tears to your eyes.
How he could think of all of that, how he made that all work.
This nice little Jewish kid, with nice little Jewish parents, who had changed his name, which was a big enough shanda, that means "disgrace," at that time period, you know.
And then it was onward and upward.
♪ How many roads must a man walk down ♪ Before you call him a man?
♪ How many seas must the white dove sail ♪ Before she sleeps in the sand?
♪ Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly ♪ Before they're forever banned?
♪ The answer, my friend is blowin' in the wind ♪ The answer is blowin' in the wind ♪ Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist ♪ Before it is washed to the sea?
♪ And how many years can some people exist ♪ Before they're allowed to be free?
♪ Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head ♪ And pretend that he just doesn't see?
♪ The answer, my friend is blowin' in the wind ♪ The answer is blowin' in the wind [COUGHS] ♪ Yes, and how many times must a man look up ♪ Before he can see the sky?
♪ And how many ears must one man have ♪ Before he can hear people cry?
♪ Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows ♪ That too many people have died?
♪ The answer, my friend is blowin' in the wind ♪ The answer is blowin' in the wind ♪ [CHUCKLING] Albert Grossman.
The thing that I love the most about Albert.
Albert had this trick.
He could sit there in a room longer than anyone in the world and not say a word.
It was such an amazing...
So that people would find themselves all of a sudden getting up and saying, "I did it, I killed him."
I mean, they would confess to anything so as not to have to sit in a room with Albert and let that silence swell out.
He had an office.
[WHISTLES] [LAUGHS] Not many people had offices at that point.
We were all living in the Village.
So, Albert and I went into business together.
I could see that Albert Grossman really wanted to take over... Dylan.
I could see that.
I mean, and he... Albert had the money to do it.
Albert is, at best, a strange guy, and I have no money.
And I see that Bobby, who is easily, in my opinion, manipulated because he didn't give a... in any way.
He was just busy "writing them songs."
I see that I'm going to lose out on this.
That it's not going to work the way that I want it to work.
So I better move quickly, and I come up with the scheme of selling my share of Dylan's contract.
We had split it 50-50, and my share should be sold, and I should get $10,000.
I have to tell you that $10,000 in 1961 was a fortune.
That was a lot of money at that point.
But he was always very sweet to me, you know, after the dissolution and so forth and so on.
And I felt that, my own personal feeling...
I always thought that Albert took away so much of the fun of him.
But that's my opinion.
I thought he was a warmer, more mellow guy than Albert had turned him into.
The song Blowin' in the Wind, my favorite song.
And I was there.
"How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man?
"Yes, and how many seas must a white dove sail "before she sleeps in the sand?
"Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly "before they're forever banned?
"The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
"The answer is blowing in the wind."
Okay.
It's so funny to read this lyric now.
That's 100 years old.
We've all heard it for, you know, so long.
Now it's become...
It's moved beyond what it was in a strange kind of a way.
Although, I told you, I heard it the other day.
I forget where, and I started to cry.
DYLAN: I got out of the current George Washington Bridge, took the subway down the road.
Went to the Cafe Wha?, I looked out at the crowd.
"Does anybody know where a couple of people could stay tonight?"
I was ready for New York.
IZZY YOUNG: So, this guy comes in.
He didn't look too prepossessing, didn't look the wild sort.
He looked like an ordinary kid.
He said, "Listen, I got some songs I want you to hear."
So I was, "Oh, God.
Can you come tomorrow?
Get out of here."
He said, "No, I want to sing you a song."
So I let him sing the song.
And then I started pointing people.
I said, "Listen, see that guy in the back room?
"His name is Bob Dylan.
You should listen to him.
"The guy's writing good songs, he's terrific."
Al Jolson was the first successful folk manager who knew how to make money out of the singles.
ARTIE MOGUL: Albert tells me one day they're going to send a guy over to see me named Bob Dylan.
He's got a guitar with some kind of a contraption around his neck, so that the harmonica is up to his mouth.
Now, believe me when I tell you, nobody had ever seen this before.
And he starts singing for me.
♪ How many roads must a man walk down ♪ Before you call him a man?
♪ How many seas must the white dove sail...
The music business per se was dominated by music publishers.
In those days, the song was important.
♪ ...must the cannonballs fly...
When I heard "How many ears must one man have "before he can hear people cry?"
I flipped.
I can't even remember what the songs were that he played me that day.
But I said, "Okay, that's it.
I want you.
"I'll give you a writer's contract."
And we got a contract ready and he signed it.
DYLAN: I didn't tell anybody for a bit because, you know, I almost wasn't sure it was happening myself.
So I don't think I really told anybody until I actually went through with the sessions.
♪ ...is blowin' in the wind ♪ The answer is blowin' in the wind ♪ Now, Bob, when he started to bring me songs, the lyrics were written on this long yellow legal-size paper.
Every one of the songs came to me that way.
The Times They Are A-Changin', all the classics.
And we would take him into this little tiny studio that was across from my office and he would make a tape, singing the song, playing the guitar.
I would then take the tape and give it to our head copyist, who was a guy named Simeon Saber.
Simeon Saber was about 65 years old, and he'd been sitting there with his green eyeshade for 45 years, copying the songs of Victor Herbert, Rudolf Friml, and now I'm bringing him songs about rats eating babies.
He comes to me one day and he says, "We've got to get a young copyist in.
I just can't do this."
Strangely enough, even the old people there, everybody got on the Dylan bandwagon.
Everybody started to record Bob Dylan songs.
Helped, of course, by the fact that Peter, Paul and Mary did Blowin' in the Wind and then Don't Think Twice.
And I think it was the fact that all these other artists did Bob, is what made him start to become so big.
♪ 'Cause the times they are a-changing ♪ Come mothers and fathers... ♪ He was the first artist who could record an album of 10 or 12 songs and be the writer and publisher of all the songs.
Previous to that, if Nat Cole recorded an album of 12 songs, 12 different writers and 12 different publishers wrote those songs.
In Bob's case, he really was writing all these great original songs and on all the publishing and all the writing.
It was the beginning of the end of what used to be known as Tin Pan Alley.
♪ Well, I ain't got my childhood ♪ Or friends I once did know ♪ But I still... DYLAN: I wrote a lot of songs in a quick amount of time.
I could do that then.
Because the process was new to me.
♪ Hey, hey, so I guess I'm doin' fine ♪ Yes, I don't think a lot of people realize.
Even I question, where did this come from?
How does he come up with these?
How did this kid from Hibbing, Minnesota... How was this in him?
I'll tell you something else interesting about those demos that we used to make with Bob.
Someplace there exists the tapes on those.
MAN: I have the tapes.
MOGULL: You actually found the tapes from those demos he made?
MAN: We have all the original tapes from the demos in the original boxes.
MOGULL: Well, that could be a great album.
ANNOUNCER: Today's young people have more leisure time than any previous generation, and more ways to fill those hours between work and play.
For practically everyone twixt 12 and 20, one activity to beat the band is music.
Whether blasting from a transistor radio at the beach or the record player in your bedroom, music is in the air that teenagers breathe.
But like any healthy teenage activity, music could be corrupted by unscrupulous profiteers out to push the latest dubious gimmick in the name of progress.
You kids have to be careful of these snake oil salesmen trying to sell you stereo sound.
It's just a scam to raise the price of records.
But my boyfriend says that stereo makes it sound like a group is playing right in your bedroom.
Yeah, and how would your dad feel if one of these rock groups did come and play in your bedroom?
Well, I guess he wouldn't really go for that.
ANNOUNCER: Darn right he wouldn't, and neither would your neighbors.
Stereo sound purports to split the signal between two speakers, putting half the music in one side and half in the other.
They claim that when the music is reassembled in your brain, it fools you into thinking you're hearing a band spread out around the room.
Why would I want to fool my brain?
ANNOUNCER: Exactly, Scottie.
By introducing deceptive patterns into the adolescent mind, stereo sound plays havoc with the still-developing tissue of the teenage brain.
Stereo is designed to lie to you.
The fallacy of the stereo sales pitch is that it's based on the false syllogism that two speakers equal your two ears.
But what it ignores is that you only have one brain, and you don't listen to music with your ears, you listen with your brain.
ANNOUNCER: What is the antidote to stereo?
Well, it's been right in your home all along.
Good old American mono.
In the recording studio, each instrument has its own microphone.
Trained technicians on the other side of the protective window balance the volume levels to achieve an ideal blend.
With mono recording, you hear that same perfect blend wherever you're standing.
However, with stereo recording, you may hear a blaring trumpet in the left speaker, an out-of-tune electric guitar in the right speaker, and a honking Lowrey organ somewhere on the ceiling.
ANNOUNCER: And here's something you may not know.
Today's most with-it groups mix all their records in mono.
That's the true recording.
Stereo mixes are often done after the musicians you love have left the room.
This whole stereo stampede is nothing but a flimflam to trick teenagers into paying more for records.
$3.50?
That's more than my whole allowance.
Once customers swallow high stereo prices, many stores may stop selling mono records altogether.
They can't do that, can they?
ANNOUNCER: Teenagers are the future of America.
These young twisters, swingers and go-go kids will someday be our senators, astronauts and homemakers, but to live in the future, everyone will need a fully functioning brain.
Everyone will need to be able to think clearly, straightforwardly in mono.
I'm sticking with mono.
I'm sticking with mono.
ANNOUNCER: Let's all stick with mono.
♪ Columbia That's the magic word ♪ For the greatest records you've ever heard ♪ You even get past the hi-lo on Columbia!
♪ ♪ When you're lost in the rain down in Juarez ♪ When it's Easter, too ♪ And your gravity drops ♪ And negativity don't pull you through ♪ ♪ Don't put on any airs ♪ When you're walking on Rue Morgue Avenue ♪ They got some hungry women there ♪ And they really make a mess outta you ♪ Well if you see Saint Annie please tell her thanks a lot ♪ I cannot move My fingers are all in a knot ♪ I do not have the strength ♪ To get up and take another shot ♪ And the doctor who's my best friend ♪ Won't even tell me what it is I've got ♪ I started out on burgundy and soon hit the harder stuff ♪ Everybody said they'd stand behind me ♪ When the game got rough ♪ But it was all a laugh ♪ Because there was no one there to call my bluff ♪ I'm going back to New York City ♪ I believe I've had enough ♪ NARRATOR: Between 1965 and 1966, Bob Dylan recorded three albums that many believe changed the course of modern music.
Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.
The Cutting Edge, The Bootleg Series Volume 12 takes you inside the studio during the recording of these three legendary albums.
♪ Well, the rainman's coming and he's waving his wand ♪ And the judge says "Mona can't have no bond" ♪ Mona, she starts to cry ♪ Rainman leaves in a wolf's disguise... ♪ NARRATOR: With a staggering wealth of unreleased songs, outtakes, rehearsals and alternate versions, The Cutting Edge provides a unique look into one man's astonishing creative process.
MAN: My Girl, take one.
NARRATOR: January 1965, Dylan arrives at CBS Recording Studios in Manhattan looking for a new sound.
♪ She's got everything she needs ♪ She's an artist She don't look back ♪ She's got everything she needs ♪ She's an artist She don't look back ♪ She can take the dark out of the night time ♪ And paint the day time black ♪ NARRATOR: On The Cutting Edge, we follow that journey as the elements of Bringing It All Back Home fall into place.
♪ Ain't it hard to stumble and land in some funny lagoon?
♪ ♪ Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man play a song for me... ♪ DYLAN: Hey, I can't... Hey, the drumming is driving me mad.
I'm going out of my brain.
NARRATOR: Six months later, Bob Dylan is back in the studio.
♪ People call, say "Beware doll ♪ "You're bound to fall" ♪ You thought they were all kiddin' you ♪ DYLAN: At this point, his switch to electric music has already alienated some fans, at the same time created a whole new audience.
The resulting album, Highway 61 Revisited is Dylan's first fully realized rock album.
♪ Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby ♪ Can't buy no thrill ♪ I've been up all night, baby ♪ Leanin' on the windowsill ♪ Well, if I die on top of the hill ♪ And if I don't make it ♪ You know my baby will ♪ NARRATOR: On his next album, the sonic landscape shifts once again.
It takes several tries and multiple cities to finally realize Dylan's distinctive vision for rock's first double album Blonde on Blonde.
But on The Cutting Edge, even the wrong directions can yield glorious results.
♪ Ain't it just like the night ♪ To play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
♪ The Cutting Edge presents an alternate history for some of the most distinctive songs ever recorded.
♪ Oh, Mama this might be the end ♪ I'm down here in Mobile with the Memphis blues again ♪ NARRATOR: You are there for the evolution of one classic after another, and all of it is tied together with Dylan's unerring sense of lyrical and musical mastery.
♪ Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit ♪ He spoke to me I took his flute ♪ No, I wasn't very cute to him, was I?
♪ But I did it to him because he lied ♪ Because he took you for a ride... ♪ Because time was on his side ♪ And because I... ♪ Want you ♪ I want you ♪ I want you so bad ♪ Honey, I want you ♪ Hello, I'm Bob Egan of PopSpots, the website where I track down where old record album covers were made.
Today we're going to look at Bob Dylan's Bringing It All back Home.
Now, today I'm on Minetta Street in Greenwich Village, the center of the folk movement, and I'm standing next to what used to be called The Commons.
And in 1962, Dylan wrote Blowin' in the Wind right here.
Now, back in that era, he was a scruffy looking kid who just blew in from the Midwest, and he would be photographed that way.
But three years later, he's a changed guy.
Rock 'n' roll has come.
The Beatles have come, The Rolling Stones have come.
New fashions have come.
When he put out this album, he's dressed like a country squire.
He's in the middle of a nice, beautiful house next to a beautiful woman, he's got a Persian cat.
Basically, what he's trying to do here is say, "I'm past the folk movement.
"I'm moving on."
As a matter of fact, half the record is acoustic, that's the old world, and half is electric.
Right here, this is Sally Grossman.
Bob's manager was Albert Grossman and that was his wife.
This photograph is taken on the Grossman's estate up in Bearsville, New York, which is just west of Woodstock.
How many pictures did you take like this?
Ten.
And how did you decide on this particular shot?
-The only one in which the cat was looking at the lens.
-[CHUCKLES] How'd you get that yellow circle of light?
As I explained to Bob that what would happen if we do this effect, -we will have things blurry and moving... -Yeah.
...but you won't be moving because you're the center.
You know what's going on.
But around you, there's the turning of the world.
Also the turning of the record.
Any reason why you put Dylan's own album in the back?
Just kind of like his history, is that it?
My back pages.
KRAMER: Bob put a lot of things in that had some meaning for him.
Bob Dylan with Daniel Kramer, they spent about three hours going through the house, just picking up all sorts of old stuff, including the record album and, you know, movies.
And then, you know, like old world paintings.
He's got these pink cufflinks.
They were a present to him by Joan Baez.
And he's got, you know, a lot of the objects of his past, including one of his old albums in the middle.
Hi, I'm Bob Egan of PopSpots, and on my website, I searched down where famous record album covers were done.
Today I'm sitting on the front steps of where Bob Dylan lived for two years, starting in 1961.
Today we're going to go look at the location of Highway 61 Revisited.
Bob lived here and he took this photograph right down these steps, down the street, right over to the corner of Jones Street.
They probably walked right by this spot, where they took the shot for Freewheelin' several years before.
So now follow me and we're gonna go see the rest of where the other part of the shoot was for Highway 61.
The street corner at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street.
And where they went, this place called O' Henry's.
And it was a famous, old fashioned, you know, kind of barbershop-quartet-era type restaurant that was located right here.
After lunch, Bob and Daniel went up to Gramercy Park.
So, I'm always on the lookout for different locations, you know, where album covers were done and I saw a book that said that Janis Joplin used to sit on the front steps of the building where it was taken, and look out at Gramercy Park.
When I found that Janis Joplin had been at Albert Grossman's apartment, I zoomed in on the door and I said, "This is the same door."
I couldn't believe it because the whole time that I was thinking about this album, I thought that it was done indoors inside of a stage, because it looks like it's kind of like a theater arch on the right hand side.
So I was... My mind was blown when it turns out that it's outdoors after all this time.
This is a place where Dylan stayed for, you know, long periods of time.
When they got here, Dylan said, "I want to go in and have you take a picture "using my new Triumph T-shirt."
So he went and got the Triumph T-shirt and he sat down.
Usually, you have a plan, especially for a cover.
Yeah.
And this wasn't the plan.
This was kind of all naked here.
So I asked Neuwirth if he'd stand here.
So I grabbed my camera and I said, "Bob, hold this camera."
Now, once he did that, it seems like something's going on.
Not that we're taking a picture, but there's a making of a picture.
There's a photographer, he's got his camera.
This wasn't the plan.
This wasn't even expected that we would do a picture like this.
Kramer then took two different pictures and one of the pictures... You know, the last picture of the day that they shot was the one that became the album cover.
♪ And have it on Highway 61 ♪ This is Bob Egan from PopSpots.
It's a website where I track down where famous record album covers were done.
Today we're gonna look at where Blonde On Blonde from 1966, Bob Dylan's album, was photographed.
Standing next to Jerry Schatzberg, who took that photograph.
This is your studio.
It was right up here.
Dylan picked you and one of your assistants up.
And where did you go to take the picture?
What I remember was the Meatpacking District downtown.
-Okay, that's about 14th Street.
-Possibly.
Way over on the west side.
Let's go check it out.
We're going to the Meatpacking District because I know that I photographed Dylan there for Blonde on Blonde.
Or I think I photographed him there.
We're just trying to discover where because they've gentrified the areas so much.
We're hoping to uncover the mystery.
Tell me exactly why the pictures are blurred on the cover.
It was pretty cold out, you know.
I know all the critics, everybody trying to figure, "Oh, they were trying to do a drug shot or something."
It's not true.
It was February.
He was wearing just that jacket.
I was wearing something similar.
The two of us were really cold.
And to his credit, he's the one that chose that photograph.
Someplace in here might be the building, but it's totally disguised now.
So far, this is the closest thing that I've seen in all these years.
They covered over the brick here.
It could be this building, too, without this top.
I think this building looks very possible.
It's been a good experience for me because I really thought that the building would be torn down.
Now I think that it might be up here somewhere.
-Still might be up... -I think the job is up to you now.
-I'll see you.
Thanks, guys.
-Okay.
♪ I'm pledging my time to you ♪ Hopin' you'll come through, too... ♪ ♪ Ain't it just like the night ♪ To play tricks when you're tryin' to be quiet?
♪ We sit here stranded ♪ Though we're all doin' our best to deny it ♪ And Louise holds a handful of rain ♪ Temptin' you to defy it ♪ Lights flicker from the opposite loft ♪ In this room the heat pipes, they cough ♪ The country music station plays soft ♪ But there's nothing Really nothing to turn off ♪ Just Louise and her lover so entwined ♪ And these visions of Johanna ♪ That conquer my mind ♪ The fiddler now speaks ♪ To the princess who's pretending to care for him ♪ He says, "Name me someone that's not a parasite ♪ "And I'll say a prayer for him" ♪ And like Louise always says ♪ "Ya can't look at much can ya, man?"
♪ As she prepares for him ♪ Madonna, she still has not showed ♪ And we see the empty cage now corrode ♪ Where her cape of the stage once had flowed ♪ The peddler he steps to the road ♪ Everything's gone which was owed ♪ He examines the nightingale's cold ♪ Still written on a fish truck that loads ♪ My conscience explodes ♪ The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain ♪ And these visions of Johanna ♪ Are all that remain ♪ -[INDISTINCT CHATTER] -[RHYTHMIC CLAPPING] MAN: The big show special!
DYLAN: Well, if it isn't the Hunchback of Notre Dame himself.
How's it going to sound tonight?
-[CHUCKLES] -MAN: Great.
Better than it has in days.
INTERVIEWER: Well, what was life like on the road then?
-You know, on that tour?
- ALDERSON: Hectic.
Hard, sleepless, driving.
Crazy.
[CHUCKLES] [CROWD SHOUTING] You talking to me?
Come up here and say that.
DYLAN: It was the worst thing anyone could go through, man.
Can't even hear the guitar to put it in tune.
There's something wrong with the sound system.
It has got to be fixed.
ALDERSON: It never occurred to me to question it.
I was just doing it.
They asked me to do it and I did it.
[CHUCKLES] -You can follow him.
-On the other side.
-Show him what side.
-On the other side.
You want me to show you where I'm plugged in?
I'll show you where I'm plugged in, over here.
I was always about the music.
I was never about the mechanics of being a sound man.
So if the music was good, I was happy.
♪ He looks so truthful ♪ Is this how he feels ♪ As he tries to peel the moon and expose it?
♪ I can't... [STRUMMING] It's not the same, you know?
I can't hear it coming back.
I don't know what it is, man.
One, two.
One, two.
I didn't change anything.
I bet something's wrong with the wires.
ALDERSON: I lived in a fifth floor walk-up on Bleecker Street, right across the street from where the Village Gate was.
And I just hung out in the Village.
And I met Bob for the first time when he was just playing folk music and hanging out.
My friend introduced me to the new owners of the Gaslight.
They had me put in the sound system, and then somebody said, "Well, Dylan's going to premiere a bunch of songs after hours "and you should come and tape it."
The atmosphere was so wonderful in the Gaslight.
And it had a special quality that studio recordings could never have.
♪ Oh, where have you been my blue-eyed son?
♪ Where have you been my darling young one?
♪ It was just overwhelming.
I mean, I had seen all kinds of people perform, and nobody gave me chills like that.
Nothing even came close to it.
Tito, listen, we seem to have a problem.
ALDERSON: I'd done a lot of live sound work for Grossman.
When it came time for Dylan to go on tour, Grossman asked me to build the sound system and I said yes.
I need an electrician.
My power's all gone.
It's Richard's power, man.
Come on.
ALDERSON: I fit perfectly into that situation because I was really a kind of hi-fi purist as far as sound is concerned.
DYLAN: Richard's power.
Give him his power back.
Let's have the power.
I had no rehearsals with Dylan because I was busy getting the gear together and setting it up.
I built the sound system.
I had to make up the tables and I had to connect everything and I had to put it into the road cases and get it on the plane.
It was shipped to Honolulu.
The first time I used the whole sound system was on the stage in Honolulu.
And I was still soldering wires on the stage in Stockholm.
I remember that very well.
Just give me time to get across to the other side.
I mean, I barely had time to get everything set up at every venue we were at.
I knew that he had been performing electric, but I had no idea that the second half was going to be what it turned out to be.
♪ Once upon a time you dressed so fine ♪ You threw the bums a dime in your prime ♪ Didn't you?
♪ Richard.
ALDERSON: Everybody knew that they came to see the Bob Dylan that they were expecting.
Rock 'n' roll was something that no one expected.
There was a lot of booing.
I mean, it was practically everywhere we went.
The audiences were hostile.
And the band responded to the hostility of the audience by playing more aggressively.
♪ You walk into the room ♪ With your pencil in your hand ♪ You see somebody naked ♪ And you say "Who is that man?"
♪ The audience reaction, that was mystifying... to everybody.
It was mystifying to me.
I can remember, like, "Why doesn't everybody think this stuff is as great as I do?"
[CHUCKLES] The tapings began when we were in Europe because Bob wanted to make a movie.
♪ I'd stand by her roil ♪ In the lonely water ♪ I've stood there many times before this, you see ALDERSON: He wanted to make kind of a nouvelle vague movie of the whole process.
Nobody ever thought that those tapes would ever be issued in the way they're being issued.
MAN: All the stuff that came from Paris is still being cleared through customs.
There's nothing here?
-I can't believe it.
-ALDERSON: It's a 7:30 show.
-Nothing is there now?
-That's right.
Just the stuff that was left here.
Two speakers and the organ, and that's all set up.
The stage is all set up, but there's nothing else there.
The gear was just the gear that I was used to using.
It was good microphones.
They were all individually mic'ed.
There was one microphone for everybody, maybe two microphones for Bob.
DYLAN: Thank you.
ALDERSON: There wasn't any theory.
There wasn't any map to follow about how you mic an electric band.
It was just the way the music sounded on stage.
There was all one mix, so I had to compromise.
I mean, most of the concern was about the music and about the performances, and the recordings were just whatever went out into the hall.
We'd all listen to the tapes afterwards.
I made some changes and it definitely got better.
He was singing wonderfully and performing wonderfully, and the songs were very exciting, and I was wrapped up in that.
I don't know.
You put good microphones up in front of good music and it sounds good.
♪ Yes, but the joke was on me ♪ There was nobody even there to call my bluff ♪ I'm going back to New York City ♪ I do believe I've had enough ♪ ALDERSON: I mean, obviously, the musicians played their asses off.
It wasn't even like the studio recordings or like the performance at Newport because Mickey Jones was a much louder drummer and much more aggressive drummer than anybody else that had played with him before.
And it drove the music harder.
It made Robbie play some of the greatest stuff he ever played in his life.
[CROWD CHEERING] The Paris show was problematic for any number of reasons.
[STRUMMING] [TUNING] You see, my electric guitar never goes out of tune.
[CROWD LAUGHS] ALDERSON: Bob took forever tuning his guitar, I think, just to irritate everybody.
He took like 20 minutes to tune his guitar.
The audience was hostile from the get-go.
-[CHUCKLES] -[CROWD SHOUTING] Oh, I love you.
[LAUGHS DRYLY] You're all so wonderful.
ALDERSON: They had an attitude about America already, that we were a bunch of fascist warmongers.
They opened the second half with the biggest American flag that Bob could find in Paris.
And the audience didn't get the joke at all.
♪ Tell me, momma ♪ Tell me, momma ♪ Tell me, momma, what is it?
♪ What's wrong with you this time?
♪ ALDERSON: It was kind of dismissed.
The recordings weren't very important.
It broke my heart.
And Columbia just mishandled it because they wanted to use their tapes.
And they'd sent expensive crews over.
And the fact that Bob wanted to use my recording was not compatible with their desires.
I think Grossman told me to take the tapes to Columbia and turn them over, and that was it.
I never saw them again.
I wanted the tapes to sound good.
I don't know why because... [LAUGHS] I didn't know till now that they would ever become anything.
And I'm glad that it's getting appreciated after all this time.
♪ Just Louise ♪ And her lover so entwined ♪ And these visions of Johanna ♪ That conquer my mind ♪ NARRATOR: The year is 1967.
It's winter in West Saugerties, a small town about a two-hour drive north of Manhattan.
Here, Bob Dylan is laid up recovering from a motorcycle accident, a canceled tour and the newfound pressures of fame.
"Escaping the rat race," Dylan said.
His touring group lived nearby.
They're called The Hawks, but we'd soon come to know them as "The Band."
♪ With another tale to tell ♪ And you know that we shall meet again... NARRATOR: Together with Bob Dylan in the basement of a little country house called Big Pink, they start recording originals, country, folk and rockabilly classics, song sketches and ideas.
Over the course of a year, they have reels of new songs, but none of it would see the light of day.
No, these were demos made to hand over to Dylan's publishing company.
Music for other artists to record.
The cover versions come almost overnight.
And what happens next surprises everyone.
♪ If your memory serves you well ♪ I was goin' to... NARRATOR: The songs, they spark a public demand.
They want the originals.
Demo tapes recorded in a country basement have found a following.
And by 1969 the first bootleg of the modern rock 'n' roll age appears called Great White Wonder.
The album compiles the basement recordings and some lesser known Dylan tracks into one album.
More bootlegs follow more demand, and soon an underground industry is born.
Eventually, in 1975, Dylan and The Band bend to the demand for the real deal and they release The Basement Tapes.
The record is an instant success, but you know how it goes.
The fans, [CHUCKLES] they want more, to hear it all, to know it all.
♪ ...next of kin ♪ This wheel shall explode... NARRATOR: It's been 47 years since Bob Dylan and The Band made that two-hour drive north of New York City to Big Pink.
And the fans [CHUCKLES] were still curious about The Basement Tapes.
Are there more hidden reels to be discovered?
What do the original recordings really sound like?
Forty-seven years we've wondered, and now we get to find out.
♪ This wheel's on fire ♪ It's rolling down the road ♪ Best notify my next of kin ♪ This wheel shall explode ♪ GREIL MARCUS: In early '68, this guy calls me up and we do the equivalent of a dope deal, except there's no money involved.
He surreptitiously hands me this cassette and said, "Don't tell anybody where you got this."
And I take it home and listen to it and call up all my friends and they come over and we all listen to it, completely awestruck.
[HARMONICA PLAYING] CLINTON HEYLIN: To me, it's always been the Holy Grail to actually fondle the original reel.
To actually... To say, "Yeah, this is it.
"This is the real thing."
The goal was to get as much out of the tapes as possible and to allow you to be on the stairs that led down to the basement so you could hear, "What are those guys playing?"
You're in the room.
You're right there.
You feel people breathing.
Everything that's been mythologized or turned into legend on behalf of what happened in that Woodstock basement in the summer of '67 is true.
The history of the reels themselves.
It's like a detective story.
Robbie told me he remembered Bob saying, "We ought to destroy this stuff.
We ought to just erase it."
What if we recorded songs that could never be released?
What would they sound like?
That's what you're hearing.
I think The Basement Tapes stars.
I think there's no question with that world tour of '65-'66.
HEYLIN: They were unbelievably grueling shows because, of course, everywhere Bob went, he was badly received by sections of the audience.
At some shows, a large section of the audience turned on him.
[CROWD SHOUTING] Usually during the electric set.
DYLAN: This is a folk song.
This is a folk song.
I wanna sing a folk song now.
[CROWD CHEERING] People did feel that something had been taken away from them.
Or something beautiful had been destroyed by Bob Dylan leaving the music of the people behind and going for the charts.
It's taken as this outrage, as this sellout, as this betrayal.
Dylan talked about it afterwards, he talked about it with a sense of great defiance.
Don't you think your first records were much better than the ones that you do now?
Who said that?
MARCUS: The sense of, you know... "This is the music I'm making, this is the music I want to sing, "this is the music I want to play.
"If you don't like it, stay away."
Didn't you boo me last night?
-I didn't, I didn't.
Please, just a minute.
-We didn't boo you, Bob.
DYLAN: Well, I want the names of all of people that booed me.
DYLAN: First half, when they're all so quiet.
I'll just break it, right?
I'll play four or five songs.
They just don't make a sound.
All of a sudden, "Boo."
[LAUGHTER] Boo.
MARCUS: Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson Levon Helm, they become Bob Dylan's band.
These guys are now a band of brothers.
This brings these people together.
By the time they reach the United Kingdom in the spring of April 1966, they're meeting audiences that made the angry audiences they faced before look like nothing.
This is a war.
People come in organized groups in order to stage walkouts.
In other words, they're paying money not to see the show.
We paid to see a flipping folk singer, not a... Not a big loser.
MAN: Judas!
[CROWD SHOUTING] I don't believe you.
You're a liar.
MARCUS: The effects were apocalyptic.
In Torrance it's July '65, with people booing him.
You can't do that for a year without it getting to you at some point.
Effectively, you can carry on for so long like that.
But when you get to the end, there's a crash.
And the crash can be metaphoric, or, as proved to be the case in Dylan's life, literal.
GRIFFIN: After that long, grueling tour, he was going to take a break.
June 1st, 1966.
He was going to kick back up at the Yale Bowl on August 2, 1966, another whole leg of shows, and Dylan went back to Woodstock to relax.
They're supposed to be going back on the road to promote his new album, which had only come out a couple of weeks before the accident, Blonde on Blonde.
Except Bob didn't want to go back on the road.
He decides, "I'm not going back to this crazy life, "at least for a while.
I'm gone."
This is 1966.
He doesn't go back on the road again till 1974.
That's a long time.
Dylan took a year-a-half between Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding.
People referred to this as the period of silence.
As if is that this was some kind of a strange violation of the rules of time and space.
In record business terms, it was.
GRIFFIN: The guy's 25 years old.
He's had this motorcycle accident.
He has to come up with some sort of a battle plan.
And this is one reason I find him so infatuating.
I think in a way, he does it.
He knows he wants to regress but he doesn't know exactly how.
When he finally gets better, I think it was that point that Dylan had the moment of, "What am I doing with my life?
"Could we not stop for a moment and reassess where we are "and where I, Bob Dylan, want to go?"
MARCUS: Dylan is saying, "No, I'm not giving you a new album.
"No, I'm not going back on tour.
"No, no.
"I've got a note from my doctor says I don't have to do this.
"I can stay home."
And that's what he did.
HEYLIN: This is January '67.
So they have been recording and Bob had ideas for a film.
Originally, the idea of getting the guys to come up to Woodstock was actually to work on that.
GRIFFIN: And they're initially filmed backing Tiny Tim singing in the snow one morning.
And then they continue on with other things.
MARCUS: And they work on the movie or they don't work on the movie.
And they're bored.
What are they going to do?
That's the way these songs came together.
HEYLIN: Initially, it was just that, getting back into playing music.
Not making music, but playing music.
GRIFFIN: Initial sessions are held in the Red Room, Bob Dylan's own house.
And in typical Bob Dylan fashion, I can report to you now that the Red Room wasn't red.
It had previously been red, but it had been painted by the Dylans.
The point of the Red Room sessions is it's where Bob Dylan starts to get his mojo back.
♪ Ooh, baby, ooh... ♪ They got all this equipment together to record this stuff, and I can just see all The Hawks going... Garth, you know, you could figure out how that works, right?
DYLAN: Once you set it up, you can see how it's recording.
[GUITAR PLAYING] ♪ Well, we're living on the edge of the ocean ♪ With the mocking rumble ready to drown... ♪ STEVE BERKOWITZ: Fortunately, in this case, Garth Hudson is a very meticulous person who seemed to be the responsible party to put the tape recorder on top of his organ and a couple of mixers with microphones leading in an experiment how to record.
Red Room tapes.
My understanding is that the microphone was put on top of a Wurlitzer electric panel which was being played, it was like a little broadcast mic stand without rubber feet.
The mic is picking up that vibration, and some of that stuff's pretty distorted, but there's still good music that you can hear through it.
GRIFFIN: They leave Dylan's house and they go where?
Well, they're going to go to where the guys...
There's no female presence, there's no family.
There's no one to really bother, so they go to Big Pink.
Rick Danko said, "You have to understand."
He said, "This was a club house."
It was wonderful.
GRIFFIN: Big Pink's on the side of a hill.
It's called The Basement Tapes because you leave the kitchen and walk down to it.
♪ Oh, you sound so sweet ♪ And they started recording, where the lion's share were done in the basement of Big Pink.
♪ Well, those old whole back-strappers ♪ A re a dime a dozen ♪ And I can get a cup for a nickel ♪ Look what an earful I get and it's awful, too ♪ Every time I try to go get a little tickle ♪ Flies from dawn to dawn ♪ Look at that old floor-bird He just... ♪ Flies from dawn to dawn ♪ What a floor-bird He... ♪ Flies from dawn to dawn... ♪ And at some point, somebody flicks the trigger.
You know, and suddenly the floodgates open.
It's speculation when that happens.
The evidence would appear to be Tiny Montgomery, which is one of the acetate songs.
It's the first one to be recorded.
♪ Well, you can tell everybody down in ol' Frisco ♪ Tell 'em Tiny Montgomery says hello ♪ Now every boy and girl's gonna get their bang ♪ 'Cause Tiny Montgomery's gonna shake that thing ♪ Tell everybody down in ol' Frisco ♪ That Tiny Montgomery's comin' down to say hello ♪ And, suddenly, all the imagery and all the ideas that are gonna make The Basement Tapes this extraordinary body of work come together in one song, and it's there.
And it kind of opens up the history of American popular music in this extraordinary way for these guys during these sessions.
DYLAN: You come in on the second line all the time, it's very easy... Robbie said at one point, "Bob was very subtle about this."
♪ Well, the high sheriff... MARCUS: But he was taking us to school.
He had prepped for this.
These very sessions when he would just drop in.
♪ Johnny Todd, he took a notion ♪ For to cross the ocean wide ♪ He'd come over with something he wanted them to learn.
Folk, blues, country music, child ballads, contemporary folk music.
Bob Dylan was teaching them.
So here are these people.
They learned to trust each other.
They can pick up each other's cues.
Nothing needs to be explained.
They can work out arrangements together.
They are all speaking the same language, and it's their language.
And in a way, that's what The Basement Tapes are.
It's five people, later six, speaking their own language.
♪ Tears of rage ♪ Tears of grief ♪ Why am I always the one who must be the thief?
♪ Come to me now You know we're so alone ♪ And life is brief... ♪ Once the dam burst, I mean, it really burst.
I mean, he just...
He seems to have been turning out masterpieces on an almost daily basis.
[CHUCKLES] GRIFFIN: An acetate is a recording.
You give it to Jane or Joe so they can hear the song and learn it.
BERKOWITZ: There were some acetates made that got distributed for the purpose of publishing demos.
I think they decided to do the acetate once they'd recorded a whole slew of original songs that sounded great, that they were proud of.
They weren't just fooling around.
They weren't just experiments.
These songs are demanding from the musicians who made them, "Finish me."
And that's what happens with Tears of Rage, I Shall be Released, Too Much of Nothing, and so many other songs.
♪ Too much of nothing ♪ Can make a man ill at ease ♪ One man's temper rises ♪ Where another man's temper might freeze ♪ Too much of nothing can make a man feel ill at ease ♪ One man's temper might rise ♪ While the other man's temper might freeze... ♪ The hits that came out of The Basement Tapes were people like The Byrds and Manfred Mann and Fairport Convention.
Quinn the Eskimo.
How the guys in Manfred Mann picked that and pulled it out, it's great.
♪ Come all without Come all within ♪ You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn ♪ Come all without Come all within ♪ You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn ♪ You Ain't Going Nowhere is just one of the funniest things you'll ever hear.
Here is a song that everybody knows.
The Byrds obviously put it out.
It's a single that's been covered a million times, and it has that very, very memorable chorus.
"Whoo-ee, ride me high.
"Today is the day my bride's gonna come."
And suddenly you hear this version where he's almost sending himself up.
"You ain't no bunch of basement... "You ain't no head of lettuce, just a bunch of basement noise."
♪ Look here, you bunch of basement noise...
I mean, just, what is going on?
♪ You ain't no head of lettuce ♪ Feed that buzzard Lay 'em on the rug...♪ Yeah, they're definitely having a good time on that one.
The original publishing demos start to circulate in 1968.
They get bootlegged on vinyl in 1969.
Two well-meaning long haired guys in Los Angeles, California, decided that they would create a Bob Dylan album of this material that they had heard, they had assembled, as Dylan fanatics that no one else had heard, none of the general public had heard.
And they created a very haphazard two-LP set called The Great White Wonder.
It was the first pop music bootleg of any real substance.
It was literally just a white cover that they had a rubber stamp made that said "Great White Wonder."
And they went... Next.
It's not a great recording.
Some of the basement tape songs, they're running fast.
They didn't cut the record particularly well.
But how could they?
They were enthusiastic amateurs that loved Bob Dylan.
Who would have dreamed that in Sweden, a guy took their stuff, added a couple things and put out another one?
Who would've known a guy in New York would have, you know... And this whole thing was like throwing a pebble in the placid lake and the waves go like this... People start bootlegging the bootleg.
HEYLIN: Almost immediately, and possibly even simultaneously, other people who'd got hold of the full acetate started issuing just the acetate.
And the proliferation was so extreme that there's no way of cataloging who was doing what.
GRIFFIN: It didn't just start a minor Bob Dylan fan club.
It started a whole bootleg industry.
MARCUS: There was a cover story in Rolling Stone by Jan Wenner saying Bob Dylan's Basement Tape, and that's what it was referred to, as The Tape, The Basement Tape, not "tapes," should be released.
And he made an argument about how this music not only was terrific, it was a different way of looking at the world, and it had to be released.
And why in the world wasn't it?
Didn't make any sense.
It was a secret hidden in plain sight.
All these songs were on the radio so why not put it out?
Good question.
By 1975, the band needed a boost, and I think putting this stuff out was a way to make that happen.
Plus, the music was obviously stuff that the world ought to hear.
Even if Bob Dylan said he didn't understand why it made the top 10, he thought everybody already had them.
HEYLIN: And Bob agreed to let them put it out.
GRIFFIN: I remember John Rockwell in New York Times said it was the greatest record of the Western popular music sphere, period.
That's a paraphrasing.
But he did, he wrote that.
When the two LP-set came out in 1975, it should have, in theory, one might think quench the thirst of the public for The Basement Tapes... A-ha!
People are going, "What the hell is this?"
Probably the two most famous songs on The Basement Tapes are missing.
I mean I Should Be Released and Mighty Quinn are not on.
GRIFFIN: If anything, it was like putting kerosene on that flame and The Basement Tapes myth got another rocket boost.
HEYLIN: Very quickly... people realized that, "This isn't it.
"We need more."
"There must be more.
Can't there be more?"
"Sure, there's more.
We hope there's more."
And the fans got out there and doing their detective work soon found out these guys recorded for months.
Anybody else, the two-LP set would have come out, "Oh, great, that's what they did.
This is great.
Now we've got it."
But the Dylan fans, they began to dig, dig, dig, and they found out there was a lot more stuff done there, and it took 40-something years, but here we are.
♪ Ain't no more cane on the Brazos... ♪ Stuff came out in dribs and drabs on LPs that included tons of other stuff.
On tapes that people passed from hand to hand.
Then in 1986, several reel to reels turned up recordings of Dylan and the band doing reams and reams of country and folk and all this amazing material that nobody knew about.
And they came out on two famous double albums, bootleg.
Those tapes originally came from an ex-roadie of the band.
And then, six years later, another ex-roadie of the band helped himself to another bunch of tapes that were lying around in Garth's locker and released those.
Suddenly, the scale of the amount of material that had been recorded becomes more than one could necessarily comprehend.
♪ Down the street the dogs are barkin' ♪ And the day is growing dark ♪ 'Cause I'm one too many mornings ♪ And a thousand miles ♪ Behind ♪ From the crossroads of my doorstep ♪ My eyes, they begin to fade BERKOWITZ: One Too Many Mornings with Richard and Bob singing.
The Richard part has been inaudible.
You cannot hear it because the left channel was recorded so low, and we're able to raise and level the channels and then get rid of a lot of the swirl of the hiss on top so that their voices could be equal.
Now, for the first time on this set, you can hear Richard and Dylan sing that song at the same time.
♪ Behind... ♪ We finally are getting the real basement tapes because they're off the real reels.
And even in the instances where they can't get access to the real reels, nothing is more than first generation.
♪ ...someone must explain ♪ That as long as it takes to do this... BERKOWITZ: There is one tape called GHO 1, the Garth Hudson 01 reel, which is the tape that he mixed.
That was the model that we went after.
To how do you finish them?
We follow what Garth did.
♪ Take heed of this and get plenty rest ♪ It was great to work with Garth.
It was great having him be there and touch it again and bless it and give his approval for it to come out.
It's great that we've got 30 songs that haven't been in circulation, and some of which are as great as anything we've previously heard.
♪ I don't hurt anymore ♪ All my teardrops have dried The Basement Tapes are a masterclass in Americana.
They help codify it.
They helped define it.
This is why the Americana Acts of today all revere The Basement Tapes.
It's why I feel The Basement Tapes and so many others feel The Basement Tapes are important.
If you allow me to say the inverted commas, "important."
Certain records and moments in time are culturally important.
And the basement in Woodstock is one of those times.
MARCUS: These people...
Think about it.
They're looking at the past.
♪ If your memory serves you well... And they're learning from the past, and they're listening to the past.
♪ ...again and wait ♪ So I'm going to unpack all my things... ♪ But the idea that if the past isn't alive in you, then the future will be empty.
That's what the music says.
That's what was so different.
The notion that these guys are 23, 24, 25 is just nuts.
BERKOWITZ: The "Holy Grail" as some people say.
Maybe it's the ultimate bootleg.
Maybe it because when you talk about bootlegs, what has been more desired than this?
♪ This wheel's on fire ♪ Rolling down the road ♪ Best notify my next of kin ♪ This wheel shall explode ♪ DARIUS RUCKER: Something that Dylan's had over his career, he tries these things, everybody goes, "I don't know."
And he does it and we get it.
We go, "Absolutely."
JASON ISBELL: I don't see him attempting to reinvent himself.
People say that, you know.
But I don't see that.
I see him writing songs and going, "What kind of songs do I have?"
ROSANNE CASH: Bob Dylan came from New York to record John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, and it was a revolution.
♪ All of these awful things that I have heard ♪ I don't want to believe them ♪ All I want is your word ♪ So, darling you better come through ♪ Tell me that it isn't true ROSANNE: It was a revolution in music, in attitude and understanding how incredibly powerful the cross pollination of country and folk and rock was, and natural for the time.
Here was a guy who was, in his way, a revolutionary.
Bob had an enormous impact on what was going on in Nashville.
He was following his instincts to seek out these musicians because it was inspiring to him.
♪ I pity the poor immigrant ♪ Who tramples through the mud ♪ A soon as I heard Dylan, I realized that he needed country background.
He needed the kind of musicians we didn't have in New York.
The kind of people who work with people like Johnny Cash.
Dad carried a record player on the road with him on tour and before his shows, he would play Bob every night.
Bob was a fan of dad's, too, to that famous line of you heard him coming out of the radio.
It was like a voice from middle Earth.
Johnny Cash was the epitome of country music.
He was the living ultimate end.
He and I, we were writing each other letters before we'd ever met.
First time I met him was at the Newport Folk Festival.
He was an early supporter of mine, told me so.
But I have been a fan of his long before that.
JOHNNY CASH: Then one night, Bob Johnston brought Bob Dylan to Nashville.
I had Dylan there, and then I had Cash coming in.
So when Dylan got through, Cash walked through the door.
He said, "What are doing here?"
He said, "I came down to record."
He said, "Well, I just finished."
While he went to dinner, I built a bar.
Blue lights, I had whiskey bottle there, clock and... like that, their guitars all tuned, ready.
Want me to get in closer on it?
When they came in, they looked at each other, and then they looked over at me and they started smiling and they took their guitars and they went outside and tuned them and started playing for an hour-and-a-half.
And what do you want to hear?
♪ 'Cause you're right from your side ♪ But I'm right from mine ♪ We're just one too many mornings ♪ And a thousand miles behind ♪ That's right ♪ Record company wouldn't release it because they talked in it.
And they told me in Nashville, "If you get a pair of scissors "and cut the talking out of Dylan and him "then we can use the music and all."
And I said, "Oh, God, I'm so happy."
And he said, "Why?"
I said, "Not to have to be around you...
people."
And I walked out the door and they still didn't release it.
And that's the one they're talking about.
ISBELL: In Nashville, their approach is different.
The negotiations that you make with producers and engineers and studio musicians have a different tone and they move at a different speed.
These guys weren't messing around.
They were so deep musically.
♪ All along the watchtower ♪ Princes kept the view ♪ While all the women came and went ♪ Barefoot servants, too... ♪ RUCKER: The John Wesley Harding record.
When I worked retail, and I really discovered that record back in the late '80s, early '90s, that record, I just went...
I mean, when does it stop?
When does he stop being great?
All that country stuff that he did, you listen to the singer, it's not even the same singer.
You got that... ♪ Someone's got it in for me ♪ They're planting stories in the press ♪ [VOCALIZES] He'd sing in this warm, beautiful way that you've never heard Dylan sing before.
♪ Lay, lady, lay ♪ Lay across my big brass bed... RUCKER: When you listen to Lay Lady Lay you really go, "Wow, this is one of the best singers in the world."
His voice is perfect.
It's beautiful.
It makes you feel every note.
♪ Whatever colors you have in your mind ♪ I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine ♪ Love is a burning thing ♪ It makes for a fiery ring ♪ It's beautiful that it arose out of mutual respect and friendship.
That it was again an authentic organic response to what they felt for each other.
JOHNNY: All right.
[GUITAR PLAYING] I grew up in the north country, you know.
[HUMMING] DYLAN: I don't know if I could do that, John.
The night that Bob was on The Johnny Cash Show, and he and my dad sat next to each other, I was 13 years old.
I went to school the next day.
Suddenly, the coolest 13-year-old in the world.
It's like an explosion happened in the country.
♪ If you're travelin' ♪ In the north country fair ♪ Where the winds hit heavy ♪ On the borderline ♪ Remember me ♪ To one who lives there ♪ She once was ♪ A true love of mine ♪ True love of mine ♪ A true love of mine... ♪ JOHNNY: Bob Dylan's appearance brought a great deal of attention to Nashville and then a lot of my peers did not give him credit for it, and people to follow who recorded songs in Nashville because Bob Dylan did.
[CROWD CHEERING] ♪ I went to see the gypsy ♪ Staying in a big hotel ♪ "How are you?"
He asked me ♪ And I asked the same of him ♪ It must have been right around 1970.
I was living in New York City.
Bob used to come when we'd play The Bitter End.
I know that he'd seen me play there.
I didn't think he noticed me.
I was introduced to him one night.
We said maybe six words to each other.
And that was all the personal contact I had with him until he called me one day and asked me if I would help him try out a studio.
Trying out the studio turned out to be recording Self Portrait.
The studio that I went to was one of the Columbia Studios, so I'm sure he'd been in there many times before.
I'm sure of that now, I wasn't then.
-Bob?
-DYLAN: Yeah.
BROMBERG: Let's just take this one.
You ready?
[GUITAR PLAYING] ♪ Down in some lone valley ♪ In a sad, lonesome place... ♪ JOHNSTON: He told me he wanted to come in.
Said, "What do you think about me doing it?"
The other people saw it.
I said "Great idea."
It was a good idea for him to do anything.
And especially something like that.
You never knew what he was going to do or how he was going to do it.
Bob is always Bob.
So when we're working on a session, Bob is specifically always Bob.
I was there, I think, for three, four days in a row.
And it was different than the other sessions I had done.
I thought the album would be called Folk Songs of America or something.
It was bizarre.
He wanted to do folk songs, great.
I love playing that stuff.
DYLAN: It's one of our old favorites.
Copper Kettle we recorded, just the two of us.
♪ Get you a copper kettle ♪ Get you a copper coil...
He put his own twist to it, you know, and it's good.
♪ You'll just lay there by the juniper ♪ While the moon is bright... ♪ He'd play a little bit and that wouldn't be it, then he'd go into something else.
That was always Dylan, ever-changing thing, man.
He's going, "If this didn't work, that would work.
"If this didn't work, that would work."
DYLAN: Remember this?
Remember Bob Gibson.
I think maybe he just wanted to do a record where he was the interpreter, as opposed to the composer, because he wasn't doing any songs that he wrote.
♪ Yes, tell old Bill ♪ When he comes home ♪ To leave them downtown girls alone ♪ This morning ♪ This evening, so soon ♪ So soon ♪ So soon ♪ It seems to me that he called it Self Portrait because this was the music that he came out of.
♪ All the tired horses in the sun ♪ How am I supposed to get any ridin' done?
♪ Mmm ♪ A lot of the critics didn't want to hear Bob do anything different.
A lot of the critics wanted Bob to remain what their idea of him was.
If he come with another album, "Oh, yeah.
Let's criticize this one and see what this is like."
He knows all that...
He's been out there long enough for that.
They wanted what happened.
They wanted Rolling Stone.
They didn't want Self Portrait.
They didn't want a change of pace.
They didn't want a different sound.
People don't really speak to you.
They speak to their image of you.
They speak to your name in caps.
[DYLAN VOCALIZING] Some people don't get anything.
Some people don't get the Bible, there's a devil or whatever.
It didn't matter what anybody saw.
Some of the people who really were very critical of it, have realized that there's some marvelous things, they just weren't the things that they wanted to get out of a Bob Dylan album.
Self Portrait, you know, stood by itself.
It was very different.
As far as I could tell, New Morning was a reaction to the criticism of Self Portrait.
It was more like another album, and it was very comfortable, and that's why it was hurried, if you will.
But it wasn't really hurried.
Didn't rush anything.
When he got through, that's when...
When he said, "That's it, Bob," that's when it came out.
At the time, there was a brief...
Flirtation with writing the songs for a Broadway show.
I once accompanied him to Archibald MacLeish's house where they had a discussion about that.
And it was some sort of collaboration between the two of them.
And then he decided not to do that.
But he had written the songs.
That's what comprised New Morning.
♪ Time passes slowly up here in the daylight ♪ We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right ♪ Like a cloud drifting over that covers the day ♪ Time passes slowly and fades away ♪ I was hearing the songs for the very first time.
And sometimes those first times through are what was on this album.
I never heard Bob do rehearsal with the band.
He knew what he wanted.
He didn't necessarily tell us, but he knew.
I told everybody, "Never quit playing."
If you quit playing, get some boot briefcase, and your hat and go out the door and wave goodbye at us.
It's like taking off in a rocket ship to ever go in with Bob Dylan.
I was not at the sessions that George Harrison did with Bob.
He was very careful about working out every note that he played.
Bob is very spontaneous, and he he wants you to...
He wants to hear what your first thought is.
So the sessions that they did must have been very different.
It was nice to hear him improvising, and I thought I could hear at a point, I thought I could hear him thinking, "What's he doing now?"
[LAUGHS] ♪ Looking for a guru ♪ Working on a guru ♪ Working on a guru ♪ Before the sun goes down ♪ Play it again.
We had cut New Morning, and I said to Bob, "I have a really good horn arrangement for this.
"Can I do that?"
And he said yeah.
And I brought in the horn session for New Morning.
And he kept just the French horn playing a downward scale.
All the rest of it, he said, "No, I'm just going to erase it."
♪ So happy just to be alive ♪ Underneath the sky of blue ♪ On this new morning ♪ New morning ♪ On this new morning ♪ I'm so delighted that horns were still there so I could mix it, properly.
Same thing happened with the strings in Sign on the Window.
On the original session, I played an organ solo.
And my intention was to take the organ out altogether.
He kept that.
And threw all those strings out.
♪ Looks like a-nothing but rain ♪ Sure gonna be wet tonight on Main Street ♪ Hope that it don't sleet ♪ I love the vocals.
The way he sings the word "sleet" is amazing.
He puts "sleet" in his voice.
Those two tracks specifically I've coveted for 40 years.
And then to find that I could remix them because he didn't erase them, it was great to come back to it and sit at my desk and listen to the isolated vocal and go, "Boy, this is great."
New Morning I thought was a great time of his singing.
I don't think that Bob has gotten credit for what a great singer he is.
He is a great singer.
There's a difference between having a great voice and being a great singer.
The man can put across a song like no one else can.
It just comes through.
♪ Sylvie came here Wednesday ♪ She came this morning by the light of the dawn ♪ She comes up here now nearly all of the time ♪ To see if she can carry on ♪ Now won't you bring me a little water, Sylvie?
♪ Bring me a little water now?
♪ I was very lucky to have been asked to play on those records, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
That's the way it was.
It was a complete and utter joyous trip.
Bob is the equivalent of William Shakespeare.
What Shakespeare did in his time, Bob does it in his time.
You think of all this huge period of time in which he's continued to deliver, it's pretty amazing.
Down the curve and around the bend, he came.
And it'll never end now 'cause he's been on this roller coaster ride ever since he left Minnesota.
He's been brutalized, sunrised, baptized in the waters of the Village.
Still, it goes on from Soho to Moscow to Oslo.
They speak of this trip, this battleship who sailed in the harbor of Tin Pan Alley and sank it with his Subterranean Homesick Blues.
There is none but one Bob Dylan.
♪ Someday everything is gonna be different ♪ When I paint that masterpiece ♪ When Bob was signed in '61, he really changed the whole image of Columbia Records.
Columbia was a MOR company.
It was sing-along with Mitch, with Johnny Mathis.
It was the tried and true.
And suddenly Bob came along with a revolutionary outlook for a new generation.
What's wonderful about having Bob back now is he tried making it away from the company, and he found out that Columbia was his home.
And I think the album is going to prove how different Bob is when he's completely comfortable with his surroundings.
Than he was, last year.
I get phone calls every day.
Reviewers wants to hear it and certain retail accounts where the clerks, are aware that it's going on, have called.
It's just become everywhere.
There's a great deal of anticipation and a great deal of excitement about this new Blood on the Tracks album.
I was in the dentist chair some morning...
Some afternoon in May.
I got a frantic call from Owen Stegalstein's secretary saying, "John, Bob Dylan is in the building.
"Owen wants to know if you could come right over."
I said, "I can't come right over.
I'll be over as soon as I can."
I guess they called me because some 13 years ago, I was the guy who sort of stuck my neck out and signed Bobby originally to Columbia.
And they thought it might be a nice idea if I were around at some certain point in this thing, so...
I got back to the office about 45 minutes later.
And Bobby and Owen were just finishing what looked like an extremely successful and friendly talk.
And they were going into Goddard Lieberson's office.
And Dylan has always had a sort of very special respect for Lieberson.
And they came in and Bobby was very effusive with Goddard.
And Goddard looked up at Bobby and said, "Well, Bobby, same temple, new rabbi".
When Bob came into the studio this time, he was prepared.
Not only was he prepared, he was marvelously certain of what exactly he wanted to do.
When I used to record Bob in '61 and '62, it was a very different story.
Bob would come up, he was writing about 11 to 15 songs a week in those days.
And every time he had something, he wanted to put it on tape.
And it was simple in those days.
That was before the time when people had to pay for studio time, editing.
All the rest of the things that happen now days, and this didn't cost Bob anything.
Every time he had something new, I'd put 'em in.
He was sort of sloppy about the way he worked.
We had to build a special guard around the microphone because he popped so many P's.
Poor George Kanawa, who was the engineer at that time, was going crazy.
So Bob had to work further away from a microphone.
But Bob, of course, was just absolutely unique, sensational, marvelous artist in those days.
And he turned out to be even more of a unique, sensational and marvelous artist this time.
Bob's always coming up with a really unusual surprise.
On this one, he asked me to get in touch with Pete Hamill because we had talked about liner notes, and he said he wanted Pete Hamill to write the liner notes.
And we made some maneuvers to contact Pete.
It was a little difficult at first.
Bob and Pete hit it off immediately.
Pete took notes and wrote incredible liner notes for the album.
So, we've got a really unusual merchandising support there.
It kind of explains a little bit about the music, a little bit about the society in which we live.
And Bob's music is kind of a portrait on life.
He covers so many areas of music.
For example, his hard blues numbers like Meet Me in the Morning.
Part of the album is acoustic.
Part of it has Eric Weissberg's band.
On a few cuts, Buddy Cage from the New Riders plays steel guitar.
And as a matter of fact, we should touch on some things that John had talked about, with other musicians or artists doing Bob's music.
The New Riders have recorded You Angel You.
They used Bob's rough lyric, as opposed to his finished lyric on the Planet Wave album.
But they did a Dylan tune.
Dave Mason recorded All Along the Watchtower.
And Richie Havens, Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.
So people are still recording his music.
Nothing has changed.
He's evolving, it's all growing.
And this album, there'll be tons of songs that people are going to record.
Many artists will record the songs in Blood on the Tracks.
There's a tune called Idiot Wind, which you have to listen to.
You must listen to it several times to get the significance of it.
There's a tune, Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, which touches on some of the... You know, life is a gamble, type of life that we all lead.
And the conflict between women, men, and just life in general.
But it kind of paints a picture, a story as it were that's very different than some of the things he's done before, and yet it's very familiar.
So...
The album has a continuity, a cohesiveness that's exciting.
And there's an enthusiasm that just builds the difference of having a little bit of acoustic music and a bit of music with a band, steel guitar, organ, etcetera.
Kind of creates a contrast that in itself is exciting.
I don't think Bob consciously plans this sort of thing.
But it came off beautifully, really came off beautifully.
Let me tell you about this album.
This album, unlike any album that's cut with groups these days, was finished in five days and mixed in two days.
Now this is, you know, absolutely unprecedented the way Columbia works nowadays.
A Simon and Garfunkel album or a Bruce Springsteen album.
This is six or seven months in a studio of, you know, experimentation, of discarding this, adding that, overdubbing.
None of that with Bob.
And this album has a flow that you won't find in any other album recorded in 1974.
The album cover is a cover that lends itself to everything, the merchandiser's dream.
His name is big, the title is big.
He has liner notes on the package.
We're going to be ready with point of purchase support before the album ships.
We'll have time-buys ready to run the day the album hits the stores.
We'll have all our print ads.
We've really done a job up-front on this album because Bob has allowed us the time in a very professional... "Professional enthusiasm," I think, might be a good phrase.
He just loves being back, and he just knows that we can do the job for him, and it's going to be really exciting.
And you'll get to hear the album.
And when you hear the album, you know everything that John and I have said relates to an exciting future with Bob Dylan.
This album, of course, will get immediate airplay.
That's not unusual for Bob.
I think where the difference comes here is this album will stay on the air for quite a while.
And it's certainly accessible to Top 40 radio.
Part of this enthusiasm for the new release is generated in the company.
We've played the tapes for in-house personnel, of course, and Larry Sloman wrote the interview in Rolling Stone, which you've probably all read by now.
And part of what Larry talked about was that this is the Dylan that people have been hungering for.
So there have been some little rumbles of apprehension about, "How are we going to sell a new Dylan album?"
We've seen the problems electors had the way they handle it.
I think we're unique.
We handle Bob differently.
We know Bob and we understand Bob.
We know what to do with his music.
We know how to handle the reaction to the airplay, and the reaction in the market place.
So we're going to go out there well-prepared, better prepared than we've ever been probably, and really do a number with this album.
And it's going to be accepted.
People are waiting for this album.
NARRATOR : Over 2,000 concerts.
Six hundred songs.
Forty-four albums.
Five decades.
One artist.
♪ Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine ♪ I'm on the pavement ♪ Thinkin' about the government... ♪ ♪ Like a rolling stone ♪ ♪ Knock-knock-knockin' on heaven's door ♪ ♪ All along the watchtower ♪ ♪ Tangled up in blue ♪ ♪ Someday, baby you ain't gonna worry for me ♪ ♪ Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man play a song for me ♪ ♪ The answer, my friend is blowin' in the wind ♪ The answer is blowin' in the wind ♪ NARRATOR: Dylan.
His greatest songs.
October, '07.
♪ Everything went from bad to worse ♪ Money never changed a thing ♪ Death kept followin' Trackin' us down ♪ At least I heard your bluebird sing ♪ ♪ Now somebody's got to show their hand ♪ Time is an enemy ♪ I know you're long gone ♪ I guess it must be up to me ♪ If I'd thought about it ♪ I never would've done it ♪ I guess I would've let it slide ♪ If I'd lived my life by what others were thinkin' ♪ The heart inside me would've died ♪ I was a bit too stubborn ♪ To ever be governed by enforced insanity ♪ Someone had to reach for the risin' star ♪ I guess it was up to me ♪ Now, the Union Central is pullin' out ♪ The orchids are in bloom ♪ I've only got one good shirt left ♪ It smells of stale perfume ♪ In 14 months I've only smiled once ♪ And I didn't do it consciously ♪ Somebody's got to find your trail ♪ I guess it must be up to me ♪ It was like a revelation ♪ When you betrayed me with your touch ♪ I'd just about convinced myself ♪ Nothin' had changed that much ♪ The old rounder in the iron mask ♪ He slipped me the master key ♪ Somebody had to unlock your heart ♪ He said it was up to me ♪ Well, I watched you slowly disappearing ♪ Down into the officers' club ♪ I would've followed you in the door ♪ But I didn't have a ticket stub ♪ So I waited all night 'til the break of day ♪ Hopin' one of us could get free ♪ When the dawn came over the river bridge ♪ I knew it was up to me
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