Someone pushed the wayback button on me this week.
There it was again, the music which helped get me into real rock music, way back in the mid-1970s.
The 1974 Live Recordings, from Bob Dylan and The Band, is being released this Sept. 20. In all, it's a box set of 27 CDs, 431 tracks of music, 417 of them previously unreleased.
Not to mention 133 recordings newly mixed from a 16-track tape, plus every single surviving soundboard recording, extensive liner notes and previously unseen photography.
It's music from 30 shows or concerts in 42 days, so some afternoon and evening sets, before an average audience of 18,500.
It's also a treasure trove of some truly unique music, played live by master craftsmen of their trade.
And it all happened before disco ruined (or some say saved) music during that decade.
I’ve heard some of it, of course. Back then, it was called Before the Flood, two LPs, two sides of Dylan with The Band, half a side of Dylan playing acoustic, one and a half sides of just The Band.
The album cover is distinctive, with what looks like 20,000 lighters held up at once, in the darkness of a stadium during this tour.
I’m assuming my LP copy is pretty scratched up, long ago replaced with digitally remastered compact discs.
There’s a story behind this music that will be told, of course, in the liner notes.
One of a semi-legendary musician who hadn’t toured in almost eight years, since the spring of 1966, with most of the musicians who would later become The Band, but who were looking for a new, different challenge in 1974.
And of Dylan’s almost complete disregard for how this music sounded in his halcyon days.
Dave Marsh, in the Rolling Stone Record Guide, writes: “Dylan reinterprets all of his old material drastically, singing the lyrics as though they either mean nothing at all or something very different from what we’ve always understood them to signify. This can be discomforting, but it is at least interesting, and with the able support of The Band, always at its best onstage, the record can reach the point of fascination.”
Yes, I was fascinated with Before the Flood, in part because I had not heard the originals of Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, It Ain’t Me Babe, Just Like a Woman, All Along the Watchtower, Highway 61 Revisited, Like a Rolling Stone, Blowin’ in the Wind (except for the Peter, Paul and Mary version), and more.
What did I know? I was a teenager.
So out I ventured out to purchase Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, and was shocked by his 1960s voice — that hard, nasal twang that gave his vocals so much edge and feeling. It took some getting used to.
But then so did Dylan’s singing on Before the Flood. The Band was so loud Dylan practically had to shout to be heard over Levon Helm’s powerful drumming, Garth Hudson’s orchestral keyboards, Rick Danko’s thumping bass, Richard Manuel’s boogie piano, and Robbie Robertson’s precise, melodic lead guitar.
Dylan held down rhythm guitar, but it could barely be heard, little more than kicking off a song — within The Band’s powerful sound.
What will we get with The 1974 Live Recordings that wasn’t on Before the Flood, you might ask?
Well, different versions of songs on Before the Flood, also songs that didn’t make the live album for one reason or another.
Word is the music was much rougher in the show’s early days, and that would be interesting to hear.
There are only three acoustic songs on Before the Flood, so now we would get more of Dylan’s rough-hewn guitar playing, harmonica and twisted vocals, with nowhere to hide, let alone within The Band’s musical roar.
Stark music, in other words, as Dylan slipped back into his troubadour days for Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, Just Like a Woman and It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding). His harmonica playing getting an ovation, as always.
Greil Marcus, in his book on Dylan Writings 1968-2010, had this to say at the time about the live album:
“Dylan’s tour was an opportunity for music, a chance for six people to break through the limits with which they’d surrounded themselves. Most other music will sound careful, hedged, and a bit false after Before the Flood — that may be why I haven’t heard a single cut from the album on the radio since it was released,” Marcus wrote, in part.
Dylan, now in his early 80s, perseveres and is still on the road, playing concerts of his ever-changing brands of music. Of The Band, only Hudson remains with us, although the group’s legend remains strong.
But in September I can go back and listen to all of this music, and it will return me to the mid-1970s, which was a pretty good place to be with Bob Dylan and The Band.
Bob Bruton covers city council for BarrieToday, but in the summer he gets to write about other things besides city politics.
