At the time Dylan commonly enriched his writing and composition by borrowing from the vast reservoir of traditional songs. “John Brown” was no exception. The melody was inspired by “900 Miles,” a train song well known in folk circles, and the lyrics by the Irish ballad “Mrs. McGrath.” That song tells the story of an Irish teenager mutilated after joining the British army while fighting against Napoleon’s soldiers. In Dylan’s song, John Brown is a young soldier—the greatest pride of his mother—who left for war in some foreign land. He returns home disfigured, a metal corset around his waist. The boy sings to his mother, “And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink / That I was just a puppet in a play.” The same theme is found in “Only a Pawn in Their Game” on the album The Times They Are A-Changin’.
John Brown is the subject of two Dylan records. The first was recorded on February 1963 as part of Broadside magazine’s program requesting recordings from folksingers. It appeared on a compilation album titled Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1, and was later included on The Best of Broadside 1962–1988, released in 2000. Bob Dylan released the song under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt to avoid any legal issues with Columbia Records. The second recording took place at Witmark six months later in August 1963 and was officially released on The Bootleg Series Volume 9 in 2010.
Dylan performed “John Brown” live for the first time at the Gaslight Cafe on October 15, 1962. He played the song many times onstage, especially during the MTV Unplugged concert recorded on November 18, 1994. “John Brown” is still part of his repertoire in his most recent concerts.
Guess I’m Doing Fine
Bob Dylan / 4:08
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Witmark Studio, New York: January 1964 / Sound Engineer: Ivan Augenblink / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (CD 2) / Release Date: October 19, 2010
The protagonist of this song looks back on his life. “And I’ve never had much money /… Many times I’ve bended / But I ain’t never yet bowed.” Is this a projection of Dylan’s, an implicit reference to his relationship with the music industry?
“Guess I’m Doing Fine” was recorded in January 1964 at the last session in Witmark’s offices. During this session he also recorded another melody, “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down,” from his very first album, Bob Dylan (1962).
In January 1964, Dylan gradually expanded his palette by introducing more varied sounds into his compositions. “Guess I’m Doing Fine” is harmonically more ambitious than the other songs recorded for Witmark. The piece is rhythmically interesting with various breaks, and the colorful chords provide a new perspective for his future songs. Too bad he never recorded a more polished version. Hamilton Camp reworked the tune, providing a more energetic and rather simple song in his 1964 album Paths of Victory.
The Death Of Emmett Till
Bob Dylan / 4:32
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Witmark Studio, New York: December 1962 / Sound Engineer: Ivan Augenblink / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (CD 1) / Release Date: October 19, 2010
“The Death of Emmett Till” is about the murder of a fourteen-year-old African-American from Chicago on August 28, 1955, in Money, Mississippi. He was beaten and shot in the head before being thrown into the Tallahatchie River. His only crime was saying a few words, maybe even flirting, with a young white woman named Carolyn Bryant. The two white murderers, Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, and his half brother J. W. Milam, were arrested and acquitted by a jury composed entirely of whites. Thereafter, they boasted of having indeed kidnapped, mutilated, and murdered Emmett Till. The drama in Money helped spark the civil rights movement, and seven years later was the source of inspiration for Dylan’s song.
The song was recorded for Witmark in December 1962. Its melody and harmonic grid are very similar to “The House of the Risin’ Sun,” a traditional song recorded in November 1961 for Bob’s first opus. In March 1962, during Cynthia Gooding’s radio show Folksinger’s Choice, Dylan confessed that he was inspired by folksinger Len Chandler, apparently his song “The Bus Driver.” Chandler had never recorded the song. Dylan confirmed in Chronicles, “One of his most colorful songs had been about a negligent school bus driver in Colorado who accidentally drove a bus full of kids down a cliff. It had an original melody and because I liked the melody so much, I wrote my own set of lyrics to it. Len didn’t seem to mind.”1 Dylan performed this song for the first time onstage on July 2, 1962, at the Finjan Club in Montreal.
Gypsy Lou
Bob Dylan / 3:45
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica Recording Studio: Witmark Studio, New York: August 1963 / Sound Engineer: Ivan Augenblink / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (CD 2) / Release Date: October 19, 2010
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Who was Bob Dylan thinking about when he wrote this song and recorded it for Witmark in August 1963? A woman named Louise, “Gypsy Lou,” and her husband Jon Webb were artists in New Orleans and pioneers in the counterculture movement. They were founders of Loujon Press, a publisher known for the avant-garde magazine The Outsider, which printed work by Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Charles Bukowski. The cover of each magazine has a portrait of… Gypsy Lou.
“She’s a ramblin’ woman with a ramblin’ mind.” Bob Dylan used this shuffle to follow the path of the gypsy Lou from Cheyenne through Denver and Wichita on into Arkansas. He played his six-string guitar with conviction. He built this song on a speedy rhythm of three chords. Besides the title, there are quite a few similarities between Dylan’s “Gypsy Lou” and Woody Guthrie’s “Gypsy Davy,” written around 1938.
Bringin’ It All
Back Home
Subterranean Homesick Blues
She Belongs To Me
Maggie’s Farm
Love Minus Zero, No Limit
Outlaw Blues
On The Road Again
Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream
Mr. Tambourine Man
Gates Of Eden
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
THE OUTTAKES
Farewell, Angelina
If You Gotta Go, Go Now
DATE OF RELEASE
United States: March 22, 1965
on Columbia Records
(REFERENCE COLUMBIA CL 2328/CS 9128)
Bringing It All Back Home:
Farewell to Folk?
The Album
Bob Dylan heard “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” for the first time during his American tour in February 1964 on radio station WABC. The Beatles had just landed in New York (February 7) to begin their first North American tour and were getting ready to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show. “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, came as a shock for many young American musicians. After a particularly dull post-Presley period, it brought freshness and a new impulse to rock ’n’ roll. Bewitched by the single, Dylan said it changed how he viewed music: “They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid. You could only do that with other musicians. Even if you’re playing your own chords you had to have other people playing with you. That was obvious. And it started me thinking about other people.”2 On August 28, 1964, with the help of journalist Al Aronowitz, who had already introduced him to Allen Ginsberg in December 1963, Dylan met the Beatles for the first time at the Delmonico Hotel in New York City, where they were staying on their second American tour. A friendship began, along with healthy competition. That day was marked forever in the history of the Fab Four, because on this occasion Dylan introduced them to the joys of pot. Dylan, in veiled terms, told reporters at the time, “We just laughed all night, that’s all, just laughed all night,” not mentioning that they were high.2
A Slow Metamorphosis
The young songwriter did not wai
t for the Beatles to begin his artistic metamorphosis. A few months earlier, during the sessions for Another Side of Bob Dylan, he had already broken with the folk movement. His attitude toward Joan Baez, who had replaced Suze Rotolo in his heart for several months, had also changed completely. Dylan criticized her political commitments, the simplicity of her ideals, and her tendency to stir up anger without giving any real solutions. Thus, when Nat Hentoff questioned Dylan about the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence that Joan Baez wanted to found in Carmel Valley, California, he gave this scathing response: “I’m sure it’s a nice school, but if you’re asking me would I go to it, I would have to say no.”20 The rumor of a forthcoming marriage between Baez and Dylan had spread in Greenwich Village but vanished as quickly as it had begun. The disintegration of their relationship was documented in the documentary film Dont Look Back that D. A. Pennebaker made during Dylan’s 1965 tour of the United Kingdom. Bob deliberately kept Joan out of his path and did not ask her once to join him onstage. He explained to Robert Shelton: “There is no place for her in my music. She don’t fit into my music. Hey, I can fit into her music, but she doesn’t fit into my music, my show.”7 Soon after, the songwriter and the queen of folk music separated. Dylan soon met another young woman, probably by the end of 1964. According to Allen Ginsberg, “She seemed to be totally hypnotized by him.” The young woman in question was Sara Lownds.
Opening Up to Rock
Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan’s fifth studio album, was released on March 22, 1965. The message of this album is clear: despite the wave of British groups, including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the songwriter from the Midwest wants to set the record straight and show clearly that rock is an authentic American musical style. This also served as an announcement of his own return to rock ’n’ roll, which he loved so much as a teenager. He decided to record some songs for his new album with rock musicians and swap his trusty acoustic guitar for an electric one, the iconic Fender Stratocaster. Bringing It All Back Home is indeed a rock album—a mix of folk and rock, to be exact—similar to the sound of the Byrds, who later covered “Mr. Tambourine Man.” In December 1965, Dylan explained in a televised news conference, “I don’t play folk-rock… I prefer to think of it more in terms of visionary music—it’s mathematical music.”20 This did not prevent the cries of outrage from purists in the folk community. However, Dylan did not want to miss this musical explosion, brought about by the Beatles and the Stones, by tirelessly continuing his acoustic show. He made it clear to Nora Ephron and Susan Edmiston in August 1965: “I was doing fine, you know, singing and playing my guitar. It was a sure thing, don’t you understand, it was a sure thing. I was getting very bored with that. I couldn’t go out and play like that. I was thinking of quitting. Out front it was a sure thing. I knew what the audience was gonna do, how they would react. It was very automatic.”20 When he heard the Animals’ rock interpretation of the traditional folk song “The House of the Risin’ Sun,” a title he had himself covered for his first LP, his decision was made: he would change his musical approach. His songs—and his physical appearance—moved into high gear.
Without offending the folkies, Dylan’s fifth studio album allowed him to broaden his audience and, more importantly, to lay down the foundation of a new style. In 1979, critic Dave Marsh wrote, “By fusing the Chuck Berry beat of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles with the leftist, folk tradition of the folk revival, Dylan… [created] a new kind of rock ’n’ roll.”7 Dylan noted with pleasure that the volume of letters from fans had exploded since his conversion, despite the rejection of some of the followers of his earlier style!
Clinton Heylin wrote that Bringing It All Back Home “was possibly the most influential album of its era. Almost everything to come in contemporary popular song can be found therein.”15 In 2003, the album reached number 31 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” The album Bringing It All Back Home was also a commercial success, reaching number 6 on the Billboard pop albums chart. It was the first of Dylan’s LPs to enter the US top 10 and to reach first place in the UK charts. It was also the first of Dylan’s albums to sell a million copies and is now a certified platinum record in the United States.
The Album Cover
The album’s cover was photographed by Daniel Kramer, a thirty-two-year-old photographer who had just opened his own studio. After he heard Dylan interpret “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” (The Times They Are A-Changin’) on television, he followed him from August 1964 to August 1965. Kramer: “For the cover of Bringing It All Back Home, we made a Polaroid to introduce Dylan to the idea of a picture with lots of objects and movement. He went to pick a bunch of records, magazines, and elements I had to remove. Someone found the panel with the atomic symbol in the basement. Some things were there in a precise sense, others only by chance. All was not completely planned.”36 “I made ten exposures,” Kramer explained. “That [cover shot] was the only time all three subjects were looking at the lens.”37
The cover shows the songwriter, holding his cat (named Rolling Stone) in his arms, in the living room of Albert Grossman’s house. A magazine lies open to an article about Jean Harlow. At his side, a pretty woman in a long red dress is sitting comfortably on a sofa, smoking a cigarette. She is Sally Grossman, the wife of Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, and Sara’s friend. The album cover also features the magazine Time with President Lyndon B. Johnson on the cover of the January 1, 1965, issue and several LPs, including the Impressions’ Keep On Pushing, Robert Johnson’s King of the Delta Blues Singers, Ravi Shankar’s India’s Master Musician, Lotte Lenya Sings Berlin Theatre Songs by Kurt Weill, The Folk Blues of Eric Von Schmidt, and Another Side of Bob Dylan. Finally, on the mantel above the fireplace is a portrait of Lord Buckley, Dylan’s reference to the poets of the Beat generation.
Recording
When Bob Dylan began recording his fifth album in Columbia’s Studio A, he was inspired both by Sara and the muse Euterpe. Most of Bringing It All Back Home was written in August 1964 during Dylan’s visit to Albert Grossman’s house in Bearsville, near Woodstock in upstate New York. Joan Baez with her sister Mimi and Mimi’s husband Richard Fariña visited as well. Joan Baez recalled that the songwriter spent all his days and nights typing: “Most of the month or so we were there, Bob stood at the typewriter in the corner of his room, drinking red wine and smoking and tapping away relentlessly for hours. And in the dead of night, he would wake up, grunt, grab a cigarette, and stumble over to the typewriter again.”33 Out of eleven tracks, the first seven are accompanied by rock musicians, the last four mainly by acoustic guitar. Before starting the actual sessions, Dylan’s producer Tom Wilson wanted to overdub a rock combo on three of Dylan’s earlier songs from the recording sessions for his first two albums: “Mixed Up Confusion,” “Rocks and Gravel,” and “House of the Risin’ Sun.” Without telling Bob, Wilson went to Columbia’s studio at 207 East Thirtieth Street, near Third Avenue in New York City, on December 8, 1964. But the result was not up to his expectations. In addition to the electric version of “House of the Risin’ Sun” released in 1995 on the CD-ROM Highway 61 Interactive, the other pieces from that day were discarded.
The first session was held at Columbia’s Studio A on January 13, 1965. For this first day of recording, Dylan played acoustic guitar for a dozen titles. On some of these he was accompanied by John Sebastian on bass. Sebastian was a musician in the folk scene in Greenwich Village and the future founder and leader of the Lovin’ Spoonful. None of these titles was officially chosen. Why was so little accomplished that day? Some think that Dylan wanted to record demos for the musicians scheduled for the next two days. But such a short time span makes that an unlikely scenario. Perhaps he just wanted to verify that the acoustic versions were superior to the electric versions he envisioned. And that explains why the second session, on January 14, is historic. For the first time since “Mixed Up Confusion” (November 1962), Bob Dylan is accompanied by a fu
ll “electric” band. Who was the initiator of this radical change? Probably as much Dylan as Wilson, even though the latter did not hesitate to claim sole responsibility for the change. In 1976, Wilson told Michael Watts, “It came from me.”28 But Bob is more nuanced: “Did he say that? Well, if he said it… [laughs] more power to him [laughs]. He did to a certain extent. That is true. He did. He had a sound in mind.”20 Nevertheless, the identity of the musicians accompanying Dylan for the second session differs, according to some sources. It even seems that there were two sessions in the same day, the first session from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. and the second from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. But since the information is not officially confirmed and all the titles worked on during this second session were rejected, it isn’t taken into account. According to one report, John Hammond Jr. participated as a guitarist. Finally, on January 15 there was another session, the last one needed for the album. Dylan kept the same musicians from the previous day and also recorded some solo acoustic tracks.
Until then Dylan had only played solo on his records, except for his first single. Suddenly facing seasoned musicians could have not been an easy task. However, according to some accounts, he took the time to explain each part and what he expected from them. Kramer recalls, “The musicians were enthusiastic. They conferred with one another to work out the problems as they arose. Dylan bounced around from one man to another, explaining what he wanted, often showing them on the piano what was needed until, like a giant puzzle, the pieces would fit and the picture emerged whole… Most of the songs went down easily and needed only three or four takes… His method of working, the certainty of what he wanted, kept things moving.”14
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 19