Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

Bob Dylan closed out a three-city run through Japan on Thursday night with his third and final show at Aichi Prefectural Arts Theater in Nagoya. Dylan kept a trend of Grateful Dead tributes started at the previous stop in Tokyo going during his visit to Nagoya, including a double dose of Dead-related music tonight.

The 81-year-old musician proved the third time’s a charm at the Nagoya opener on Tuesday, when he finally made it through “Brokedown Palace.” Dylan debuted a seemingly impromptu version of the American Beauty classic in Tokyo last Friday, April 14. Bob appeared to surprise his bandmates with the selection as they slowly began accompanying him before Dylan aborted the cover and moved on to “Melancholy Mood.” A more fleshed out version came two nights later at Tokyo Garden Theater. Yet Bob Dylan transitioned into “Goodbye Jimmy Reed,” leaving “Brokedown Palace” unfinished.

Bob Dylan’s first full “Brokedown Palace” came in the 16-slot at Nagoya’s Aichi Prefectural Arts Theater on Tuesday. Dylan and his band — multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio, drummer Jerry Pentecost and bassist Tony Garnier — nailed the Hunter/Garcia gem.

Stream a recording of Dylan’s third attempt at “Brokedown Palace” below thanks to Ray Padgett

The Nagoya run continued on Wednesday when Bob Dylan trotted out Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” as the 14th song of the 17-tune concert. Dylan previously dusted off “Not Fade Away” in Tokyo on Saturday, April 15 for his first performance of the song originally recorded and released by the Crickets since August 8, 2009. “Not Fade Away” was a staple of the Grateful Dead live repertoire from 1969 through Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995.

Bob Dylan started the trend of honoring the Grateful Dead in Japan back on Wednesday, April 12 when he debuted a cover of “Truckin'” during his second of five concerts at the Tokyo Garden Theater. Dylan gave the song a second go tonight towards the end of his tour-closing show in Nagoya. However, he had another GD-related trick up his sleeve. After following “Truckin'” with “Mother Of Muses,” Bob Dylan and his band unveiled their take on “Only A River.”

Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir wrote “Only A River” in collaboration with Josh Ritter. Weir released the song on his excellent 2016 solo album, Blue Mountain. “Only A River” has been a staple of Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros performances. Dylan, on baby grand piano for the duration of the run through Japan, followed the debut with “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” and “Every Grain Of Sand” to close Thursday’s concert and the Japanese leg of his Rough And Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour.

now we're talking! are they applauding because they recognize the tune or just being polite/enthusiastic?

On a flight, I read this book by a recording engineer named Mark Howard, who worked on Oh Mercy & TOOM (among many other, non-Dylan records). The Dylan stories in the book are great (and this guy has some frank assessments of what it was like to work for Daniel Lanois, which he did for a long time).

Anyway, this bit from the Oh Mercy session reminded me of the “leaves cast their stadows on the stones” thing discussed above:

Dylan had a piano song called “Ring Them Bells” that had a lyric that went “the fighting was strong,” but every time we listened back, it sounded like “the farting was strong.” We laughed every time we heard it and Dylan would ask, “Why you always laughing?”

Here’s a Lanois story from TOOM (precipitated by Howard accidentally erasing a few seconds from the beginning of a “Not Dark Yet” take):

“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO, HOWARD?” Dan’s face went red and he spun like the Tasmanian Devil. He grabbed a metal stool and threw it toward me, and it hit the wall behind me, smashing all the dimmers for the lights in the control room. All the lights in the room flashed on and off like photo flashbulbs, and he lunged toward the console and kicked it as hard as he could with his big motorcycle boots, denting the bottom.
“You fucker!” he seethed.
Dylan was sitting beside me the entire time and leaned toward me and asked quietly, “Does this guy have a mental problem?”

Dylan in CHRONICLES writes about Lanois smashing a dobro or something on the floor of the studio, so frustrated was he with the sessions.

Hilarious!

xp LMAO

Along with Chronicles, those Uncut interviews that were done for the upcoming release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs painted a pretty good picture of how strained and unhappy all of the Lanois sessions could be, for both Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind. I don't recall one anecdote that showed anyone being particularly excited or happy about Lanois himself, though I'm sure players were appreciative of getting a gig, working with Dylan, appearing on a good album, etc. but it sounded pretty tense. Howard's story kind of suggests that you really had to be there to know the full extent of it - that's the first I've heard of that particular incident and I get the impression there must've been a lot of them, they just haven't been laid out like a laundry list of shit Lanois did on each day.

Howard writes that Lanois is generally a tense and uptight guy (even when he’s not throwing things), which doesn’t put artists at ease… odd temperament for a producer.

Did anyone go to Tulsa for the Dylan conference?

lol at Bob's reaction to Lanois's tantrum

Shadow Kingdom soundtrack out on CD and LP, movie can be bought or rented, though only on Apple now (forever?). This links to trailer and video (but only for "Forever Young"): https://view.fans.legacyrecordings.com/?qs=7daa208fd0e6dd5a4dca1ddf515fe364d371434feaad8070f09281bc9e6ddb1401f58e4f64e34c2fd3a1ef7c8158d9cc05284bc602f996d4d185b6f49fad84a5b10246fabb2205ab2f6d7a4c586f2f00

I suspect it's better with the visuals---true?

Some of the re-imaginings on the set work better than others, but Dylan is in astonishingly fine voice here, and when it works, it is stunning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whlhEPT2wrc

Howard writes that Lanois is generally a tense and uptight guy (even when he’s not throwing things), which doesn’t put artists at ease… odd temperament for a producer.

this is not even remotely an odd temperament for a producer

xpost "Forever Young" off Shadow Kingdom is so beautiful

Dylan is in astonishingly fine voice here

wow you weren't fuckin kidding, this is stunning stuff

I particularly dig the instrumental at the end... (this is not meant as a slight, btw)

I haven't gone back to his Sinatra albums much, but his singing here reminds me of those; there's an intimacy and command of the material that's different from his past rearrangements, as if it's been so long since he wrote these songs that he can now perform them as standards

Wow, QJA is so sweet and elegiac, the original such a scalpel.

A little too tasteful for me (like most of post TOOM-Dylan; I'm a weird outlier)

It's a little jarring to consider that the 34-year-old "What Was It You Wanted" is indeed part of Dylan's early years from a 2023 perspective.

If you split the span in half, World Gone Wrong is the end of the early years. Which makes sense really - that and GAIBTY are a kind of ground zero for the later period. Back to basics, one guy in a garage with his guitar and the old folksongs.

Are there a bigger batch of songs that tgise albums were culled from? You Belong To Me from the Natural Born Killers strck was from those sessions if I remember right.

I got that CD in high school before I was very aware of Dylan. It was an early experience of enjoying a performance with WTF singing.

My understanding was that it was pretty much home recordings with Dylan producing himself - there was a period when those two albums and The Bootleg Series Vol 1-3 came out and it was kind of a reckoning with his past and turning to the roots for renewal. I think maybe the performance epiphany he talks about having in Switzerland in Chronicles Vol 1 was around the same time. The "before" period ended with Oh Mercy and the after period began with Time Out of Mind which seems like a real shift to me - same producer but very different vibe.

I love those albums and want more of that

Fragmemtsis from the TOOM sessions, seems like it would be worth a listen.

They sure are good. I guess the closest I know of are the early live performances of his where he mines similar repertoire, but obviously not with his 50 year old voice. Also the Traveling Wilburys albums from around that time (not really comparable), the NYC Supper Club shows from 1993 (no major official release) and MTV Unplugged is worth a visit.

First listen to the only stream I could find, on free Spotify (commercials didn't break the vibe): some of these will have to grow on me, but "Queen Jane" actually gets me to thinking more about Jane and her situation than Dyl; this arrangement of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" kills, ditto the re-write of "To Be Alone With You," "What was it you thought you saw...?"---perfect lead in to "What Was It You Wanted" (not really a question), "Watching The River Flow: "People disappearin' every day," yeah, tell me about it; was that in the original? "Pledging My Time" slyly otm, "Wicked Messenger" now sporting some cruelly jaunty accompaniment, as in Charley Crockett's cover of "Tom Turkey (Alternative Version)": "Billy you're so far away from home" and all (wicked Spotify serves this up as a chaser to SK).

xpost Somebody should do a book about Dylan's 80s trek, or have they?

I thought that a book which solely focuses on INFIDELS is on the horizon

They just dropped a "Man In Me" from Budokan in advance of presumably the newest set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IcO4yO4FdM

Hmmm. Live at Budokan is, for me, the absolute worst Dylan. Is this from the same shows? I have a hard time seeing how this can be good. That clip, "The Man in Me," isn't bad except for the saxophone. I'll probably get this but it's the first archival release that prompted an instant "bullshit" from me.

Those are substantially new lyrics. I probably won't buy it, but I'm down for the listen. Even when he's "bad" he's fascinating.

I do like the version of "Rolling Stone" from Budokan — seems sadder and wiser, even somewhat sympathetic.

This isn't THE BOOTLEG SERIES, is it? I have become quite confused by the fact that there is now a whole series of other releases that are like THE BOOTLEG SERIES but not actually part of it.

Which ones are you taking about(?)

There are the "complete" series - complete shows with the band, complete rolling thunder, now the complete Budokan. I assume these are different because they're not really curated in any way.

Hoffman forums is saying that the Bootleg Series is winding down and there are a limited number of releases planned at this point; partially because of dwindling sales and also the sense that they've gotten through most of the good stuff. Somebody was saying that at a certain point the archives may start releasing stuff, but I don't know how much of any of that is confirmed.

a "complete" show series would be good — like the Royal Festival Hall gig in 1964, or the "complete" Hard Rain 76, or a complete show from the 1980 Warfield residency ... I've always thought that someone like Dylan or Neil Young could just follow the Dick's/Dave's Picks model and target the hardcore fans who want this stuff. A subscription, 3-4 releases a year, it'd definitely make money.

Live at Budokan is, for me, the absolute worst Dylan.

I've never heard it but that's always been the word on it -- back in the day cut-out bins were swollen with copies of it.

Those COMPLETE boxes yes, that's a good example - plus, the releases which are somehow for copyright? I have '1970', think there is also an ANOTHER SIDE demos set of that kind?

These are things that I find hard to distinguish from THE BOOTLEG SERIES. In fact I thought the 1966 band series WAS part of that series!

Budokan is awesome, accept Budokan into your hearts.

i have been waiting for this for decades

I can deal with Dylan and the Dead, Knocked Out Loaded, everything else, but Budokan is the final Dylan frontier for me. It sounds pompous to me, like it's trying to add a lot of elements that just don't work: the flute, the saxophone, etc.

Tyler, what does it do for you? What am I missing?

I dig his vocals on Budokan, I like the sort of wonky big band arrangements ... I dunno, it's always seemed kind of weirdly edgy to me, Dylan seeing how far he can stretch his songs into this smoother territory.

I'm seeing that they are charging $160 for the CDs of this new set though! WTF lol.

From the official email that went out this morning:

This new deluxe box set celebrates Bob Dylan's 1978 world concert tour and the 45th anniversary of the artist's first concert appearances in Japan. It includes two complete shows from Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan Hall (February 28 and March 1, 1978) featuring 58 tracks, 36 of which are previously unreleased, all newly remixed from the original 24-channel analog tapes.
This luxurious 12 x 12” box is imported from Japan and includes 4 CD’s, a 60-page full-color photo book of liner notes and previously unpublished photos of Dylan on-stage and behind-the-scenes at the airport, press conferences and more and facsimile memorabilia such as concert tickets, pamphlets, posters, and flyers.

Also available as a 2-LP set with a selection of 14 previously unreleased performances. Listen now to “The Man In Me.”

So not an actual Bootleg Series title, but an imported domestic release of a Sony Japan box.

his tenderly unhinged vocals on "i want you" (over just the flute, lol, and a lil textural guitar) are maybe a way in

if the remit is "add way too much drama to it's alright ma" i prefer the broadway-climax version here to the before the flood approach of just turning everything all the way up and crossing fingers

Dylan seeing how far he can stretch his songs

big appeal for me yeah

yeah, i mean, i fully recognize that getting into this era is a typical "i have listened to too much bob dylan" move, but I do genuinely enjoy it. maybe what comes across most is how strong so many of Dylan's melodies are, he really gives them room to breathe on Budokan as opposed to sort of sledgehammering them as he had during his previous 70s tours.

Maybe he realized he had only a couple more years of belting like Caruso before he blew out his voice.

I was curious, but jfc... $160 for 4 CDs? Come on.

Dylan and Zappa drive me nuts with alternating these box sets between really reasonably priced and ridiculously overpriced. I get that it comes down to extras, books and packaging... but it's obnoxious. I think I paid like $18 for the 3xCD 1970 sessions thing and less than $70 for the gigantic '66 tour box.