Speaker 1: Blood on the Tracks is the production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Double Elvis. Bob Dylan was a musical genius
Speaker 1: and one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He
Speaker 1: didn't follow leaders. He chased that thin, wild mercury sound.
Speaker 1: He never looked back. Even as the times changed, and
Speaker 1: as the times changed, Bob Dylan changed. He tried on
Speaker 1: and discarded identities like they were mass He transformed. He
Speaker 1: transfigured in somewhere along the way, the Bob Dylan that
Speaker 1: you thought you knew died. This is his story. It's
Speaker 1: the morning of day three, Sunday, July nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: It's been a long night here at my home in Middletown,
Speaker 1: New York, and the patient, Robert Zimmerman, a k a.
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, is still in distress and seems to have
Speaker 1: had a slight reaction to the pain killers I've given him.
Speaker 1: His fever like state continues, although at this stage they
Speaker 1: are more lucid moments than not. I have put psychological
Speaker 1: evaluation on hold for the time being. It's my suggestion
Speaker 1: that we treat his physical injury fully before we explore that.
Speaker 1: He's also refusing to go home, so he'll remain in
Speaker 1: my care here in my house for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: That was a decision that was made with the patient's wife, Sarah.
Speaker 1: We primarily made this choice because, well, to be honest,
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure that at this moment Bob knows
Speaker 1: where his homeless Nashville. That was important to me. Transfiguration, invention, reinvention,
Speaker 1: those can all come in different forms. But you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you actually need physical movement. Sometimes you need a
Speaker 1: change of scenery. If I never went to New York,
Speaker 1: then I would have existed if I'd never gone to Nashville.
Speaker 1: Who knows, creativity is a funny thing. You never know
Speaker 1: what's going to move the needle or how I went
Speaker 1: to that country town for the first time in it
Speaker 1: put my head into a different space. It put my
Speaker 1: music into a new lane. And now I can see
Speaker 1: that it left a whole lot of blood on the tracks.
Speaker 1: Chapter three, Bob Dylan is a Nashville cap M. I
Speaker 1: need to get out of here. I need to get
Speaker 1: out outside. Hyde Park goes spinning by, and I feel
Speaker 1: like I haven't slept in days. I turned to the
Speaker 1: man next to me and say, I wish we could
Speaker 1: speak English, and he laughs. I thought I'd always record
Speaker 1: in New York. You know, it was Bob Dylan's hometown. Sure,
Speaker 1: Bobby Zimmerman was born in Duluth, but Dylan, he was
Speaker 1: a New Yorker. But you can't just stay on one
Speaker 1: track your whole life. Remember, life is all about inventing yourself.
Speaker 1: At some point I would have to leave New York
Speaker 1: physical movement, and it all started on August four. We've
Speaker 1: been working on the Highway sixty one revisited album on
Speaker 1: which I decided to close. The whole thing was called
Speaker 1: Desolation Row. Another decision we'd come to was that it
Speaker 1: would be an acoustic song. We'd cut some electric takes,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I knew an acoustic one would
Speaker 1: just be better. So we booked some more studio time.
Speaker 1: But it didn't I don't know. It just needed something transfiguration, invention, reinvention.
Speaker 1: Bob Johnston, the producer in charge of the session, mentioned
Speaker 1: that he had asked a guy to come and watch
Speaker 1: us record. Now, I hadn't been with Johnston for too
Speaker 1: long at this point, but I trusted him. It turns
Speaker 1: out I was right to That guy who came by
Speaker 1: to watch us called himself Charlie McCoy. Charlie was a
Speaker 1: Nashville player, a country guy. I knew Charlie's work. I
Speaker 1: think most people knew his work without even knowing they
Speaker 1: knew it. He was a killer harp player, still young,
Speaker 1: but man could he play. He did a spot on
Speaker 1: a song called Harpoon Man Blew Me Away. We had
Speaker 1: a little introduction courtesy of Bob Johnston, and just as
Speaker 1: he was gonna leave, I figured I'd throw him a
Speaker 1: curveball the new lane. I told him that we were
Speaker 1: just about to do a song and wondered if he
Speaker 1: fancied sitting in. I wanted to see how he'd react. Sure,
Speaker 1: he said, completely unfazed. I told him to grab the
Speaker 1: acoustic guitar at the back of the studio and give
Speaker 1: us some licks. We had finished the take of Desolation
Speaker 1: Row within the hour. Within the hour, he put my
Speaker 1: head into a different space. We tried to get it
Speaker 1: in three different sessions before Charlie, but with him, the
Speaker 1: song just fell into place. He did these Flamenco type fills.
Speaker 1: It gave the song a real identity Nashville. After he left,
Speaker 1: Bob Johnston told me that that's what it was like
Speaker 1: and now Shille That's how they did it. We released
Speaker 1: the Highway sixty one album later that month. That song
Speaker 1: with Charlie was the last thing we cut for the record.
Speaker 1: By the end of the year, I was back in
Speaker 1: the studio man that year Transfiguration. I started cutting songs
Speaker 1: for Bringing It All back Home, and then we cut
Speaker 1: Highway sixty one. Then before the year was out, we
Speaker 1: were making Blonde on Blonde, Invention. The workload was beginning
Speaker 1: to show reinvention. Those first sessions for Blonde on Blonde
Speaker 1: in New York, they weren't good. I take responsibility. We
Speaker 1: didn't really have the songs, but the band. The band
Speaker 1: was the band, you see. I remember one session we
Speaker 1: were trying to get the track She's Your Lover. Now.
Speaker 1: Back then it was called just a Little Glass of Water.
Speaker 1: I'd written it about a relationship I'd been in and
Speaker 1: out of. We spent all day on that song. I
Speaker 1: mean all day. Do you actually need physical movement? It
Speaker 1: started it too in the afternoon. Garth Hudson, Rick Danko,
Speaker 1: Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, all those guys I'd relied on before.
Speaker 1: We're there in a setting I knew well too Columbia's
Speaker 1: Studio A in New York City. It should have been easy,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. Like before we started to cut the track,
Speaker 1: Bob Johnston asked me what the song was called from
Speaker 1: the control room, and before I could properly answer, Robbie said,
Speaker 1: it's called you Can Have Her. We shared a laugh
Speaker 1: about that, but there wasn't much more laughter that day.
Speaker 1: As the minutes of the studio time ticked on, we
Speaker 1: tried the song a number of ways. By three pm,
Speaker 1: we changed the tempo and the arrangement. By four I
Speaker 1: was at the piano, then the guitar. By five pm
Speaker 1: we were no closer than we've been at two. Do
Speaker 1: you need a change of scenery? I lost my temper
Speaker 1: with them on one take. I don't know which one,
Speaker 1: take four thousand Maybe I just said to them together,
Speaker 1: you've just got to play it together. Robbie bit back
Speaker 1: at me. We are, he yelled. He moaned that every
Speaker 1: take was different. They needed time to process it, to
Speaker 1: process my ideas. Creativity is a funny thing. Well, we
Speaker 1: didn't have time. Of course, every take was different. We
Speaker 1: were in the studio, which means you're paying for every second.
Speaker 1: You literally don't have time to waste. Plus, when I'm
Speaker 1: in the studio, I can't stand too many retakes. Doing
Speaker 1: the same song again and again sucks the life out
Speaker 1: of them. He need to capture that magic. We try
Speaker 1: it again again. It fell apart. I shouted about how
Speaker 1: ugly the song was. We took a break at five thirty.
Speaker 1: I smoked and smoked and smoked. Seven pm. Still no
Speaker 1: good takes. We switched tactics and rehearsed a version we
Speaker 1: all liked. I remember looking at the big studio clock pm.
Speaker 1: We should have had the thing in the can hours ago.
Speaker 1: Another break, Then eleven PM came and went still working
Speaker 1: out the damn song. Then midnight I remember saying, I
Speaker 1: can't hear the song anymore. It's gone and it had.
Speaker 1: It was two am when the band went home. I
Speaker 1: was alone with Bob Johnston. He asked me if I
Speaker 1: wanted to do another take. I said sure, Sometimes you
Speaker 1: need a change of scenery. So I sat at the
Speaker 1: piano and mumbled my way through the first verse. But
Speaker 1: then then something clicked. It all fell into place, what
Speaker 1: it should sound like, how we should structure it. The
Speaker 1: song's d n A. It just formed in front of me.
Speaker 1: It put my head into a different space. By the
Speaker 1: time I had finished running through it, the song was there.
Speaker 1: We had our first complete take that I was happy with.
Speaker 1: Johnston asked from the control room if I should get
Speaker 1: the guys back to do one last take. No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: I realized that very second the fault was with the band.
Speaker 1: I pressed the talk back button to the control room
Speaker 1: and I asked Bob a question, Hey, what time is
Speaker 1: the next flight to Nashville? I thought I was going
Speaker 1: to be sick. I tried to breathe, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: get an affair. I put my fingertips over my eyes.
Speaker 1: What time was it? Six seven? I couldn't remember where
Speaker 1: the last twenty four hours had gone. The time I
Speaker 1: spent in Nashville recording from ninety six to nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine was an important time in my career. I cut
Speaker 1: some good albums there and also got to work with
Speaker 1: a hero of mine. I first met Johnny Cash at
Speaker 1: the Newport Folk Festival on one of my shall we say,
Speaker 1: less eventful shows there. I remember after back in my
Speaker 1: hotel room, I jumped on the bed shouting, I've just
Speaker 1: met Johnny Cash. I couldn't believe it. You never know
Speaker 1: what's going to move the needle. By the end of
Speaker 1: the decade we were recording together, I was working in
Speaker 1: Nashville on the Nashville Skyline LP. The city had become
Speaker 1: my new recording home since the collapse of those Blonde
Speaker 1: on Blonde New York sessions. It was bearing fruit too.
Speaker 1: I was cutting albums that I liked in a way
Speaker 1: that I liked Nashville Skyline like all them, Nashville LPs
Speaker 1: was quick to make, and it contained tunes that I
Speaker 1: still stand by today. Lay Lady Lay, for example, That's
Speaker 1: a big song for me. Norman Blake steel guitar and
Speaker 1: Kenny Buttery's drums and the highlight of that song. I'd
Speaker 1: wanted some bongos on the tunes, so Kenny found me some.
Speaker 1: I remember him running a cigarette lighter underneath them to
Speaker 1: tighten the skin. We added some cow was on top
Speaker 1: of that too. Chris Christofferson, who would win his first
Speaker 1: Grammy only two years later, was working as a studio
Speaker 1: janitor at the time. Yeah, that's the truth. Chris had
Speaker 1: to hold the bongos and cow bell next to Kenny's
Speaker 1: drum kit. He just stood there holding them for all
Speaker 1: the takes. He should have won a Grammy for that reinvention.
Speaker 1: The sessions weren't always a breeze. There were also months
Speaker 1: of bitter disappointment. Jerry Lee Lewis was recording in Nashville
Speaker 1: at the same time as us. Bob Johnston took me
Speaker 1: to see him, knowing I was a big fan. We
Speaker 1: went into his studio with Johnston being his usual affable self. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Louis was, well, whatever the opposite of affable is, this
Speaker 1: is Bob Dylan, Johnston said. The killer turned to me shrugged,
Speaker 1: said so, I suggested in my most friendly voice that
Speaker 1: we could do something together in the studio. He just paused,
Speaker 1: then said no, that was it. Two words, so and no.
Speaker 1: I would have admired his attitude if I weren't such
Speaker 1: a fan. But Johnny Cash and I we had a
Speaker 1: much better meeting. Johnny was recording in the studio next
Speaker 1: to us. He came in and saw us cut Nashville
Speaker 1: skyline Rag and tonight I'll be staying here with you.
Speaker 1: He was very complimentary. He'd always been supportive. He had
Speaker 1: recorded a version of my song it Ain't Me Babe
Speaker 1: a couple of years before it beats mine by a
Speaker 1: country mile. He was truly the greatest of the grades.
Speaker 1: We stayed in touch since that first meeting, trading letters
Speaker 1: and postcards. He defended me when all this acoustic electric
Speaker 1: nonsense started. He rightfully pointed out that country music was
Speaker 1: always electric, and no one found issue with that. After
Speaker 1: that session, we went out for dinner and the next
Speaker 1: day decided it was time we record it with each other.
Speaker 1: Bob Johnston had produced Johnny's Fulsome Prison album the year before,
Speaker 1: so everybody was comfortable in the studio. We also like
Speaker 1: to work in the same way. While recording quickly with
Speaker 1: little or no overdubs, Johnston had made the studio into
Speaker 1: a sort of nightclub. The main lights were down low
Speaker 1: and he'd set up little lights everywhere. There was a
Speaker 1: ton of guitars on hand and a couple of microphones
Speaker 1: for me and Johnny. Before we started, Johnston said to us, both,
Speaker 1: I can't produce YouTube. You produce yourselves. Creativity is a
Speaker 1: funny thing. We both laughed, and before we knew it,
Speaker 1: we'd recorded eighteen songs. Johnston wanted us to do another
Speaker 1: session together for a duets album, which I would have loved,
Speaker 1: but it never happened that session with Johnny though. That
Speaker 1: remains a defining moment for me. And while for the
Speaker 1: longest time only one song was released from it, Girl
Speaker 1: from the North count Free, the opener to Nashville Skyline,
Speaker 1: it meant everything to me. Johnny was and is the
Speaker 1: north Star. You could guide your ship by him. It
Speaker 1: was a big time for him too. He had signed
Speaker 1: a deal with ABC for a new television show, imaginatively
Speaker 1: titled The Johnny Cash Show. Now I hated doing TV,
Speaker 1: really I did. I hated it. But when john asks
Speaker 1: you to appear on his show, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Say no? No one says anything but yes to Johnny Cash.
Speaker 1: So I agreed to be on the first ever episode.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was live live. Usually these things
Speaker 1: are taped, but this was live. Playing live had become
Speaker 1: so alien to me. And now I was having to
Speaker 1: do it in front of the whole country. And I
Speaker 1: do mean the whole country. People from coast to coast
Speaker 1: were tuning in to see Johnny and his music. Can
Speaker 1: hear they had Bob Dylan doing the thing that they
Speaker 1: all loved country music. Man, I had to do it well.
Speaker 1: Creativity is a funny thing. It was at the Rhyman Auditorium,
Speaker 1: a small venue at the best of times, but when
Speaker 1: you add in a camera crew, stage, set equipment, and
Speaker 1: studio audience, well, it's suffocating. Johnny assured me it would
Speaker 1: be okay, but for the first time in a long time,
Speaker 1: I was nervous, beyond belief. They asked me to wear
Speaker 1: a velvet suit for the show. It's TV, they told me.
Speaker 1: I tried it on and felt even more terrified about
Speaker 1: the whole thing. I declined their offer. I knew I
Speaker 1: must have looked nervous because Kenny, the drummer, asked me
Speaker 1: if I was okay. Ship Man. He said, you look
Speaker 1: like a frightened kid at a talent show. You know what?
Speaker 1: Kenny was right? Man Transfiguration H Jones. People led us
Speaker 1: to the stage and told us would be on in
Speaker 1: two minutes after his introduction, I was sweating. It was
Speaker 1: a mistake, all of it. I was sure of it.
Speaker 1: It put my head into a different space. Why was
Speaker 1: I even doing this? Why was I here? I hadn't
Speaker 1: rehearsed properly. If you run a marathon without training, you'd
Speaker 1: crash out after the first mile. Why did I think
Speaker 1: this would be any different. Johnny was on the other
Speaker 1: side of the auditorium and he nodded to me. As
Speaker 1: the lights went out. They had the band in darkness,
Speaker 1: I mean complete darkness. They might as well have not
Speaker 1: been there. No one could even see them. It was
Speaker 1: just me in the spotlight, like I was at a
Speaker 1: James or something. At last. I was never comfortable with
Speaker 1: that pop star ship, especially not at this moment in
Speaker 1: my life that was important to me. Someone start to
Speaker 1: counting down from five to four. I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: what if I ran, just ran out that door now?
Speaker 1: And then I cursed myself for picking a new song.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have picked something I'd played a thousand times
Speaker 1: before on a thousand stages. No. But before I could
Speaker 1: even finish that thought, I heard three, two one, and
Speaker 1: then a huge red light illuminated everything, followed by a spotlight.
Speaker 1: Johnny and his trademark drawl said, ladies and gentlemen, here's
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, and I felt my stomach dropped. Fifteen stories
Speaker 1: I played, I threw it all away, and somehow I
Speaker 1: didn't throw it all away. You never know what's going
Speaker 1: to move the needle or how even though the song's
Speaker 1: run time is only two and a half minutes, it
Speaker 1: felt like it went at a glacial pace. Later, I
Speaker 1: sang with john A live on air, which was even
Speaker 1: more exhilarating than in the studio. But the whole thing
Speaker 1: reminded me I wasn't the man I was before. Something
Speaker 1: had changed, maybe forever. I didn't know it that night,
Speaker 1: but the Johnny Cash Show would be my last fond
Speaker 1: memory in Nashville. Music City would soon turn sour and
Speaker 1: I'd once again have to pack my bags and find
Speaker 1: a new creative home. We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 1: We were were. My cigarette was burning to the bitter end.
Speaker 1: I took one last drag and tried to get my
Speaker 1: vision and focus. I turned to the person next to
Speaker 1: me and saw the most famous man in the world,
Speaker 1: and he looked angry. Nashville saved Blonde on Blonde, no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. Me though I was pretty beat up
Speaker 1: at that point. The pace I was living at during
Speaker 1: that time wasn't livable without drugs. The rate I was
Speaker 1: going always meant I was going to crash. The pills
Speaker 1: they could prolong that speed well for a little while.
Speaker 1: At least. Sometimes you actually need physical movement. When we
Speaker 1: were recording Blonde on Blonde in Nashville, I was still
Speaker 1: writing the songs. Some days I'd make the session players,
Speaker 1: Charlie McCoy, Wayne Moss, Pig Robbins, all those Nashville cats.
Speaker 1: I'd make them hang around in the studio until I
Speaker 1: had finished the songs. Some nights they'd wait until two
Speaker 1: or three in the morning. I'd saunter in and say, okay,
Speaker 1: we're ready. Creativity is a funny thing. At first, I
Speaker 1: think they enjoyed it, but after a while boardom set in.
Speaker 1: They played cards and even invented a game where they'd
Speaker 1: throw quarters into the ceiling tiles. You could get them
Speaker 1: lodged in there if you threw them just right. This
Speaker 1: pressure for creativity meant that I had to have a
Speaker 1: stimulant to keep me going, and it worked just about
Speaker 1: Who got the album done, didn't we? Even if the
Speaker 1: final session literally lasted all night until the dawn. Those cats, man,
Speaker 1: they could play Nashville. They got the songs, they helped
Speaker 1: get down on tape what was in my head. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you need a change of scenery. There was one evening
Speaker 1: that stayed with me though after a rehearsal of the
Speaker 1: song Rainy Day Women. I asked the guys in the
Speaker 1: band what they did here, you know, when they weren't
Speaker 1: busy making records. They weren't used to artists asking them that.
Speaker 1: I could tell the song talks about getting stoned. So
Speaker 1: is it about drugs? Make up your own damn mind,
Speaker 1: use your own ears. I'm not here to discuss that.
Speaker 1: But for the song to work, to have the atmosphere
Speaker 1: that I wanted to have, I needed everyone in the
Speaker 1: studio to be in the right frame of mind. It
Speaker 1: put my head into a different space. I couldn't make
Speaker 1: this song with everyone straight. So we came up with
Speaker 1: a plan. We sent one of the studio custodians out
Speaker 1: to a bar. Now Nashville cats never drank in a
Speaker 1: studio ever, so this was quite new to them, and
Speaker 1: they took to it instantly. There was one slight problem, however,
Speaker 1: I had sent out for a drink I had seen
Speaker 1: somewhere um lepre con cocktail. You heard of him? No,
Speaker 1: me neither, Well, not before Nashville. Anyway. They're supposed to
Speaker 1: come in a shot glass of miniature yet highly toxic concoction.
Speaker 1: But the custodian became back with all these drinks in
Speaker 1: milkshake cartons. They were gigantic transfiguration. We drank him down,
Speaker 1: of course, they were like razors on your throat, and
Speaker 1: that feeling only got wilder when we passed round joints too.
Speaker 1: The atmosphere was finally taking shape. That was important to me.
Speaker 1: Later someone had the idea of putting a trombone on
Speaker 1: the song, and so we called up a friend of
Speaker 1: one of the cats, Wayne Butler. Woke him up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night. He got dressed, grabbed his trombone,
Speaker 1: came to the studio, took a quick swig from the
Speaker 1: milkshakeed Carton, played his part, and then went right back
Speaker 1: to bed. That was it. I wanted them all to
Speaker 1: sound like a salvation army vand that had been defiled,
Speaker 1: and let me tell you, they delivered. That's what it
Speaker 1: was like in those sessions. But that's not what it
Speaker 1: was always like with drugs. Later that year, I was
Speaker 1: in London, Man London had become a drag. This was
Speaker 1: on that Judas tour. You recall, I'm still struggling to
Speaker 1: escape from that damned tour. I'll be struggling to escape
Speaker 1: it for the rest of my life, mark my words.
Speaker 1: Who knows. I'd been up all night with John Lennon
Speaker 1: at his house in the Suburbs. We decided to get
Speaker 1: his driver to take us into London to have a
Speaker 1: look around the place. It all seemed so pretty in
Speaker 1: that spring morning light. But somewhere between the Rits and
Speaker 1: Hyde Park, the hangover and come down kicked in. The
Speaker 1: whole thing was filmed for that ABC documentary, the one
Speaker 1: I was supposed to be working on in Woodstock. Look,
Speaker 1: the footage is awful. There you have two of the
Speaker 1: biggest musicians in the world, not solving any problems, not
Speaker 1: writing any songs, just blabbing on, talking shit. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just the drugs though. John and I were too tens
Speaker 1: around each other. I can never exactly say why. We
Speaker 1: were similar in a way I guess too similar. We
Speaker 1: would never have made it work in the studio together.
Speaker 1: Creativity is a funny thing now. George Harrison he was
Speaker 1: a good writing partner. I always got on with George.
Speaker 1: We wrote and spent time together. We ended up becoming
Speaker 1: good friends. Hell, we'd even end up in a band together.
Speaker 1: But John, John was different. He'd tell me years later
Speaker 1: about how uptight he was in the car that day,
Speaker 1: and not just because of the junk we were on.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was embarrassed about it all, being
Speaker 1: out of control, burnt out. I didn't want him to
Speaker 1: see me like that. That was important to me. I
Speaker 1: was a mess. You know, you can't hide it when
Speaker 1: you're a mess. The veil had slipped and I didn't
Speaker 1: have the energy to pick it back up. As the
Speaker 1: car journey wore on, I knew I was going to
Speaker 1: be sick. I remember saying I was going to be
Speaker 1: sick right into the camera. I've done and said everything
Speaker 1: else straight into that fucking camera on that tour, so
Speaker 1: why not be sick in front of it. They'd love
Speaker 1: that Judas crowd that would finish off their story, the
Speaker 1: final miserable act of their former folk hero. I was
Speaker 1: sweating and I couldn't see straight. My mouth tasted of
Speaker 1: cigarettes and snot. Even the pale morning light gave me
Speaker 1: a headache through my shades. I said to John, look,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be sick in here, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to be sick. He made some quip about a
Speaker 1: remedy for sore eyes, groovy forehead or curly hair. I
Speaker 1: couldn't even respond. Sometimes you need a change of scenery. Later,
Speaker 1: when he dropped me off at the Mayfair Hotel, I
Speaker 1: made good on my promise and spilled my guts everywhere.
Speaker 1: I thought back to Nashville. While in that hotel, sobering up,
Speaker 1: I thought about how fun drugs used to be. That
Speaker 1: crazy night while still recording Rainy Day Women in the
Speaker 1: morning after two those quarters still dangling from the ceiling tiles.
Speaker 1: As I was finishing off some lyrics, the cats were
Speaker 1: in the next room on a break, playing with a
Speaker 1: Luiji board. I'm not even joking. They were having to
Speaker 1: find new ways of keeping boredom at bay. Between takes.
Speaker 1: The bass player, this guy named Henry Stress Lucky. He said,
Speaker 1: you know this is going to be the biggest album
Speaker 1: in the world, or it ain't gonna do nothing. Then
Speaker 1: I grabbed the lyrics sheet to I Want You and
Speaker 1: told him I was ready to go again. J New
Speaker 1: York City. Tom Wilson stood in the middle of Columbia
Speaker 1: Records Studio A and narrowed his eyes at Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: His scrunched up eyes did the talking forum. What the
Speaker 1: fuck man? Tom Wilson was the producer, not Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: Dylan didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
Speaker 1: He was way out of his league. He wanted Wilson
Speaker 1: to actually turn the organ up in the song's mix.
Speaker 1: Wilson shook his head. That cat's not even an Oregon player. Man.
Speaker 1: Dylan jumped out of his seat and moved the goddamn
Speaker 1: fader himself. He looked Wilson in the eyes. Don't ever
Speaker 1: tell me who's an organ player and who's not. Tom
Speaker 1: Wilson kind of had a point. The guy on Oregon,
Speaker 1: Al Cooper, wasn't actually an organ player, or a piano
Speaker 1: player for that matter. He was laboriously working out the
Speaker 1: song's chords and sequence on the HAMM and B two keyboard,
Speaker 1: which he did by waiting for the rest of the
Speaker 1: band to play a chord before he would join in
Speaker 1: behind them. It resulted in a delayed organ riff that,
Speaker 1: to Tom Wilson sounded like a child's third lesson, but
Speaker 1: to Bob Dylan sounded just right. When Dylan's Like a
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone was released as a single in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen, it shattered the earth, and that argued over
Speaker 1: organ riff was left up high in the mix just
Speaker 1: where Bob Dylan had put it. Bob Dylan's journey to
Speaker 1: Nashville was a long time coming, and it actually started
Speaker 1: before the fateful Newport Folk Festival. Up until the recording
Speaker 1: of Like a Rolling Stone, Dylan had made most of
Speaker 1: his records with producer Tom Wilson, but for both the
Speaker 1: producer and the artist, the sessions for Like a Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone would prove to be the last straw. The relationship
Speaker 1: soured when Wilson named Dylan's fourth album Another Side of
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan. Dylan wasn't overly impressed with it, but he
Speaker 1: was less impressed when, just the year before, Wilson had
Speaker 1: booked a session without Dylan's knowledge in order to add
Speaker 1: some overdubs to his recordings. While Wilson was a godfather
Speaker 1: of folk music, Dylan decided he'd had enough. He needed
Speaker 1: a facilitator in the producer's chair, not a babysitter, and
Speaker 1: since Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman also had a fraid relationship
Speaker 1: with the producer, the decision was an easy one. Wilson
Speaker 1: was out after the Newport Folk Festival, Bob Johnston was
Speaker 1: in the control room. He received the call from Columbia
Speaker 1: Records a few weeks before ever the Southern Gentleman. He
Speaker 1: actually called Wilson to explain the situation, to which Wilson replied, help,
Speaker 1: I knew they were going to fire me. Bob Johnson,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it long admired Dylan and had
Speaker 1: even explicitly expressed his desire to work with him, and
Speaker 1: now he could go into the forthcoming sessions with a
Speaker 1: clear conscience. In those early Highway sixty one sessions, while
Speaker 1: in the presence of Grossman and Columbia Records Vice chairman
Speaker 1: Bill Gallagher, Johnston suggested Dylan might one day want to
Speaker 1: record in Nashville, and Dylan brushed off the suggestion as
Speaker 1: he did, and Johnston couldn't help but notice Gallagher and
Speaker 1: Grossman exchange glances. A week later, Johnston sat outside Gallagher's
Speaker 1: office at the Columbia Records Building, and he tried to
Speaker 1: comb his messy hair with his fingers, and he buttoned
Speaker 1: up a shirt. He attempted to calm his nerves. He tried,
Speaker 1: but could not imagine any scenario where the record producer
Speaker 1: being summoned to the vice chairman's office was a good thing.
Speaker 1: Columbia Records Vice Chairman, Bill Gallagher's secretary appeared and he
Speaker 1: was ready. Johnston walked inside Gallagher's office and after Grossman
Speaker 1: sat next to the vice chairman's large wooden desk, gross
Speaker 1: and dwarf the damn thing. His huge physical presence was
Speaker 1: matched only by the presence of his character. Grossman didn't
Speaker 1: say hello. In fact, he didn't say anything until after
Speaker 1: five minutes of forced conversation between the other two men.
Speaker 1: He addressed Bob Johnston directly, if you ever mentioned Nashville
Speaker 1: to Dylan again, we will fire you. The words were
Speaker 1: half spoken and half spat. Gallagher attempted to soften the delivery.
Speaker 1: What Albert is trying to say is we're having too
Speaker 1: much success the way things are at the moment. Gallagher
Speaker 1: and Grossman outlined in no uncertain terms that Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: was the quintessential New York hipster and after everything that
Speaker 1: had happened with his career image, that the music over
Speaker 1: the last few months Nashville will be a change that
Speaker 1: Columbia was not willing to accommodate, so instead Johnston brought
Speaker 1: Nashville to Bob Dylan. The next month, he called Charlie
Speaker 1: McCoy into the Desolation Rose Session, and Nashville immediately became
Speaker 1: an inevitability. Once Dylan had seen what Nashville could offer
Speaker 1: in the form of McCoy's stunning guitar work, it rendered
Speaker 1: both Gallagher and grossmen powerless, and if they wanted to argue,
Speaker 1: they would be the ones who would be fired, and
Speaker 1: they'd wind up wherever it was Tom Wilson had crawled
Speaker 1: off to Bob. Dylan's time in the Capital of Capital
Speaker 1: c Country was time well spent, and not only did
Speaker 1: it deliver one of his greatest albums in the form
Speaker 1: of Blonde on Blonde, but it also brought him back
Speaker 1: into the studio after his nineteen sixty six motorcycle crash.
Speaker 1: Once installed in the city fully, he recorded his next
Speaker 1: three LPs there. Two of those albums, seven John Wesley
Speaker 1: Harding in sixty nine Nashville Skyline, were commercial and critical hits,
Speaker 1: confirming Dylan's artistic status debilitating motorcycle accident be Damned, and
Speaker 1: simply by making those records, he changed Nashville forever. After
Speaker 1: it was revealed that he cut his magnum opus and
Speaker 1: one of rock's first and finest double albums in the city.
Speaker 1: The floodgates opened, Nashville became not just a center for
Speaker 1: country music, but a center for music, partly due to
Speaker 1: the fact that Dylan had included the names of the
Speaker 1: album's musicians those Nashville Cats across the LPs gatefold. However,
Speaker 1: by the turn of the decade, the magic and refuge
Speaker 1: Nashville had given Dylan was starting to wear off, and
Speaker 1: for the nineteen seventy album New Morning, he returned to
Speaker 1: New York. He wouldn't cut another studio album in Nashville.
Speaker 1: His time in Nashville also coincided with the end of
Speaker 1: the sixties, a decade where Dylan had been both the
Speaker 1: poster boy for a generation and its saboteur. His celebrity
Speaker 1: had swelled and burst. He'd gone on a supersonic pace
Speaker 1: and then slowed to a crawl. It was a decade
Speaker 1: of change and reinvention for both him and for the world,
Speaker 1: and in many ways the fate of both were intertwined.
Speaker 1: The next decade, the nine seventies, would bring even more change.
Speaker 1: The ride would be rougher, fate's simple twists not so simple,
Speaker 1: and there would be plenty of blood on the tracks.
Speaker 1: Blood on the Tracks is produced by Double Elvis in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. It's hosted an executive produced
Speaker 1: by me Jake Brennan, also executive produced by Brady Sadler.
Speaker 1: Zeth Lundie is lead editor and producer. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Ben Burrow, Story and copy editing by Pat Healy,
Speaker 1: Mixing and sound designed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and
Speaker 1: score elements by Ryan Spreaker. This episode featured Chris Anzeloni
Speaker 1: is Bob Dylan. Sources for this episode are available at
Speaker 1: double Elvis dot com on the Blood of the Tracks
Speaker 1: series page, follow Double Elvis on Instagram at double Elvis
Speaker 1: and on Twitch at s Grace Slant Talks, and you
Speaker 1: can talk to me per Usual on Instagram and Twitter
Speaker 1: at Disgrace Landpond, rock and Roll Crazy, or Dad