Even legends don’t live forever, so I always get a bit apprehensive when Bob Dylan is trending online. But today, happily, the world celebrates his 82nd birthday and astounding artistic legacy. Somehow, the man is still on tour.
What’s left to be said about Dylan after the countless retrospectives, especially by a callow millennial who’s only been listening for twenty-odd years? Just that he’s been profoundly inspirational as a writer and curator and channeler, not to mention as a Midwesterner gone east, and that he’s got a ton of great material slightly off the beaten path.
Among my favorites is I Ain’t Got No Home, recorded with The Band at a Woody Guthrie tribute in early ’68. Incredible that it never made the exhaustive bootleg series!
Thankfully the bootleg series did include this gorgeous version of Spanish Is The Loving Tongue, from the much-maligned Self Portrait sessions circa 1970, easily the best of many takes over the years.
Don’t Start Me Talkin’, a blazing Sonny Boy Williamson cover from the Letterman Show in ’84 with The Plugz, is an especially egregious exemption from the bootleg series.
In 1995, Bob performed an especially piquant version of Restless Farewell for Frank Sinatra’s 80th birthday special.
From discovering discount copies of The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Highway 61 Revisited at age 16 to playing Blood On The Tracks to death as a lovesick undergrad, and especially ever since, Dylan’s work has remained endlessly relevant in every season of life.
Still hoping for a few more albums and/or Chronicles, Vol. 2… many happy returns, Bob!
Next: Above The Law
oh, no doubt. I think, morbid as it sounds, when he does go into that tour bus in the sky, or whatever you want to call it, I will have to give the internet a break for a day or so. I hope he lives to one hundred, no make that two hundred. I, too, love that performance on Letterman with his wold backing band. That was a great song...but don´t start me typing, I´ll tell ya everything I know..
I wrote about Dylan a while back. Like yours, it is not comprehensive, but just a thought- about his voice.
https://judsonvereen.substack.com/p/bob-dylan-cant-sing