On Valentine’s Day 1966 in Nashville, TN, Bob Dylan was finally able to record a version of the song “Visions of Johanna” to his liking: He had debuted the song in concert the previous October in Baltimore and had struggled with various arrangements and instrumentation during a recording session in November 1965 in New YorkContinue reading “Visions of Johanna”
Tag Archives: Biograph
Up to Me
On September 19, 1974, Bob Dylan recorded the song “Up to Me”: It was the last day of the New York sessions for what would become the 1975 album Blood on the Tracks. Dylan, aiming for a more commercial sound, re-recorded some of the songs captured in New York before the release of the album.Continue reading “Up to Me”
Tombstone Blues
Bob Dylan was asked about his 1965 hilariously surreal rock ‘n roll masterpiece “Tombstone Blues” for the 1985 box set Biograph by interviewer Cameron Crowe. Dylan recalled the inspiration for the composition of the song 20 years later: “I felt like I’d broken through with this song, that nothing like it had been done before…justContinue reading “Tombstone Blues”
To Ramona
Bob Dylan recorded all 11 songs on his fourth album — Another Side of Bob Dylan — on a single night, June 9, 1964. As demonstrated in the title, the songs reflected a shift in Dylan’s writing style. The writer Nat Hentoff was present for the recording of the album on that night in JuneContinue reading “To Ramona”
Time Passes Slowly
In 1940, the German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin wrote a piece called “On the Concept of History” as he was trying to escape from Vichy France. Within the essay, Benjamin shares a rhyme that was written in the midst of France’s July Revolution of 1830, when it was reported that people had shot atContinue reading “Time Passes Slowly”
Things Have Changed
In 2001, Bob Dylan won both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for his prophetic and pessimistic song “Things Have Changed” which was released the previous year as part of the movie Wonder Boys: The film was an adaptation of a 1995 novel of the same name by MichaelContinue reading “Things Have Changed”
Tell Me, Momma
Bob Dylan’s tour of the world in 1966 was a bizarre traveling circus. This description by Robbie Robertson, guitar player of The Hawks who was backing Dylan on this tour, described the experience to Cameron Crowe in 1985 for the Biograph liner notes: “That tour was a very strange process…We’d go from town to town,Continue reading “Tell Me, Momma”
Tangled Up in Blue
The artist Jasper Johns wrote the following in his “Sketchbook Notes”: “Make something, a kind of object that as it changes or falls apart (dies as it were) or increases in its parts (grows as it were) offers no clue as to what its state or form or nature was at any previous time. PhysicalContinue reading “Tangled Up in Blue”
Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)
There’s a moment during the climax of Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 ultra-violent Western The Wild Bunch that is a direct connection to Bob Dylan’s song “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)” off of his 1978 album Street-Legal. In the film, the outlaw gang, who serve as the plot’s anti-protagonists, are engaged in the biggest, bloodiest shootout depictedContinue reading “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)”
See You Later, Allen Ginsberg
“See you later, alligator” is an expression of which we don’t know the original author or point of origin, similar to a street joke. According to research, the first known recorded usage of the phrase was “published in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Honolulu, Hawaii) of 1st May 1952” in a column titled “Teenagers’ Slang Expressions AreContinue reading “See You Later, Allen Ginsberg”
Recliner Notes 