[Bob Dylan turned 80 on Monday. But what’s his greatest song?
Stars pick their favorite – and recall their own encounters, from
Marianne Faithfull turning him down to Judy Collins whacking a
policeman to get backstage] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

MY FAVOURITE DYLAN SONG – BY MICK JAGGER, MARIANNE FAITHFULL, TOM
JONES, JUDY COLLINS AND MORE  
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Interviews by Dave Simpson
May 24, 2021
The Guardian
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_ Bob Dylan turned 80 on Monday. But what’s his greatest song?
Stars pick their favorite – and recall their own encounters, from
Marianne Faithfull turning him down to Judy Collins whacking a
policeman to get backstage _

‘Scary and apocalyptic lyrics, viciously delivered’ … Mick
Jagger’s verdict on Desolation Row by Dylan, pictured at the BBC in
June 1965, Photograph: Val Wilmer/Redferns

 

MICK JAGGER

DESOLATION ROW (1965)

I was playing Bob Dylan records at my parents’ house when he was
still an acoustic folk singer, but he was already very important and
his lyrics were on point. The delivery isn’t just the words, it’s
the accentuation and the moods and twists he puts on them. His
greatness lies in the body of work. I was at a session for Blood on
the Tracks [1975] and really enjoyed watching him record Lily,
Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
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depth of storyline, surrounded by all these boring people from the
record company who he had sitting in the control room. I couldn’t
record like that.

Desolation Row’s lyrics are just so interesting and diverse. It
isn’t a real street so you create your own fantasy. I imagine an
unforgiving place, somewhere you don’t want to spend much time,
peopled with strange characters. The opening line about the
“postcards of the hanging” sets the tone, but then this awful
event is juxtaposed with “the beauty parlour filled with sailors”
and all these circus people. The lines “The agents and the
superhuman crew / Come out and round up everyone that knows more than
they do / Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack
machine is strapped across their shoulders” are scary and
apocalyptic, viciously delivered.

My reading is that that’s about governmental, military control, but
then there’s the payoff: “When you asked me how I was doing, was
that some kind of joke? Don’t send me no more letters unless you
mail them from Desolation Row.” That sounds like a really personal
thing. Musically, he prettifies it. I love the lovely half-Spanish
guitar lines from the session guitarist, Charlie McCoy. It’s
actually a really lovely song, which shouldn’t work with the imagery
but does. You can listen to it all the time and still get something
wonderful and new from it.

JUDY COLLINS

BOB DYLAN’S DREAM (1963)

I met Bob in Denver in summer 1959, when he was still called Robert
Zimmerman. Then he came to see me in Colorado and, as he still reminds
me, sat at my feet. Back then, he was always trying to get slots on
the hootenannies and sang Woody Guthrie songs very badly. He was a
nice guy. We’d get drunk together. He was homeless, so would sleep
on people’s floors, devouring their books. Then in 1961 folk bible
Sing Out! printed the lyrics to Blowin’ in the Wind, by which time
he’d changed his name, and I was astonished. Soon after that I sat
outside a blue door in the basement of a party in Woodstock listening
to him playing Mr Tambourine Man over and over again. It was a moment
I’ll never forget.

I’ve sung lots of his songs, but my favourite is Bob Dylan’s
Dream. [British folk singer] Martin Carthy had taught him the melody
of a traditional song called Lady Franklin’s Lament, the story of
the North West Passage, but Bob’s lyrics transform it into something
personal and dreamlike that’s always haunted me. [Sings] “While
riding on a train goin’ west / I fell asleep for to take my rest
…” By then I was a raging Dylan fan. I once saw him at Madison
Square Garden when I was very drunk and when a policeman tried to stop
me getting backstage I actually slugged him, but not hard, with my
purse.

MARIANNE FAITHFULL

IT’S ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE (1966)

I first met Bob at the Savoy in 1965. There’s a clip of me and Joan
Baez singing As Tears Go By
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Bob is hammering away on a typewriter. Later when I turned him down,
he told me that it had been a poem about me, but he’d torn it up. I
was so upset, but we got over that and have been friends for 56 years.
I really like him.

I think It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue is about those times in life
where you just have to say, “OK, we tried, it didn’t work”, but
it’s a much sleeker way of saying it. It’s very loving, but
obviously it’s all over. I don’t really know why I love it so
much, but I’ve been in many situations where I would have liked to
have time stop and have a band playing and sing that song to people.
I’ve recorded it twice. The second time
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experiences and really felt it. I love the way his songs change
octaves. I’m suffering long Covid and my voice is cracked, but I’m
trying to recover it by singing It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.

YOLA

CORRINA, CORRINA (1963)

From his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. It’s his
adaptation of a country blues song written in 1928, but what gets me
is his beautiful delivery. He sings it in the same tone he sings Lay
Lady Lay [1969], almost a speaking style. It’s a song about someone
he wants to come home and there’s real delicacy in his voice. He’s
thought of as a folk singer but the blues are another foundation of
his career, and you can hear him starting to flex his vocal muscles
and finding ways of using his voice so you can hear every word.

TOM JONES

BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND (1962)

I was on tour in the States in the summer of ’65 with a British act,
Peter and Gordon. Gordon Waller was a huge Dylan fan and played his
records in the Holiday Inns. I wasn’t struck by Dylan’s voice at
first but then I heard Blowin’ in the Wind and I’ve been a fan
ever since. The lyrics are fantastic. He’s basically asking, “How
many times do we have to go through all this shit before we realise
that we’re fucking up the world?” He paints pictures with his
songs so you can see things happening. It’s the same with What Good
Am I [1989], which I’ve recorded. What good am I if I just stand by
and let things happen that I know I should be changing? He was the
first singer-songwriter to make me think.

LEE FIELDS

BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND (1962)

When I was a kid and Martin Luther King was trying to enlighten
people, Blowin’ in the Wind personified the future. That opening
line, “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a
man?” is amazing. That song helped me as a person of colour and the
things Dylan was singing about are still happening, from hate crimes
and attacks on Asians to the George Floyd situation. We’re still
walking those roads, because that’s the only thing the common man
has against power. We come together, we protest and hopefully build up
enough momentum for things to change.

SUZANNE VEGA

A HARD RAIN’S A-GONNA FALL (1963)

This song is so prophetic that it still speaks to the age we live in
today. Lines such as, “I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of
young children” or “the pellets of poison are flooding their
waters” are now facts found in today’s newspapers. Other lines are
the embodiment of mystery. The imagery in “I saw a white ladder all
covered with water” will always haunt me, along with “I saw a
black branch with blood that kept dripping.” Each image stands
alone, a miniature painting, a snapshot in the landscape of the soul.
Still filled with power, needing no explanation.

GILLIAN WELCH

BALLAD OF A THIN MAN (1965)

I bought my first Dylan record – The Times They Are a-Changing
[1964] - when I was 17, but to experience those early records in real
time as he was releasing them must have been like being around when
Shakespeare was creating new plays. Ballad of a Thin Man typifies the
way Dylan’s songs shine a spotlight on the world and human truths.
The derision in his finger-pointing at Mr Jones [“Something is
happening and you don’t know what it is, do you?”] instilled in me
at a young age that I did not want to be the person that didn’t
understand or he’s calling out – the judge, the man in power. You
want to be the person who knows what’s up. This song changed my
life.

WAYNE COYNE, THE FLAMING LIPS

IT’S ALRIGHT MA (I’M ONLY BLEEDING) (1965)

I heard this in 1971, by which time we’d been through Woodstock,
Vietnam and the hippie era and he was already hailed as a genius. My
10-year-old ears agreed. I loved the line, “They made everything
from toy guns that spark to flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the
dark.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but I wanted a
flesh-coloured Christ. It sounded cool. As I’ve got older the song
sounds even better. My favourite Dylan is when he’s pissed off and
he knows he’s right. It’s such a remarkable torrent of lyrics. It
feels like it could go on for hours and not lose the energy. People
didn’t stop war because of Dylan. They all started singing about war
being wrong, but his legacy is intact before he’s dead. I think that
in 200 years, no one will want to be an Adolf Hitler or a Donald
Trump. They’ll want to be a Bob Dylan.

BILLY BRAGG

MR TAMBOURINE MAN (1965)

In 1972, I had a Saturday job in a hardware shop that had a record
store in the basement. One day the guys there put on Dylan’s
Greatest Hits. I’d heard the Byrds’ version of Tambourine Man but
they only used one verse. Hearing the full four verses aged 14 blew my
mind. Dylan gave me the blueprint for my career of a solitary figure
on stage, holding a mirror up to the world and the idea that a song
can’t change the world but can change someone’s perspective. “To
dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted
by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate,
driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until
tomorrow.” I can still recite huge chunks of it, and if I hear that
song now, it stops my day.

MEGHAN REMY, US GIRLS

CHANGING OF THE GUARDS (1978)

I loved Dylan but had been put off the Street Legal album by the cover
until someone told me to check it out because it was a perfect example
of live recording with all the mistakes left in. It’s like the
backing singers have never heard the song before. They aren’t on
time, the second voice is always late but that’s the charm and
spirit of the recording. The lyrics are like a fantasy – you’d
think they’re impossible to sing but he somehow cuts the syllables
up so they fit in. It’s an insane skill to have, and meanwhile the
hooks just keep on coming.

DAN BEJAR, DESTROYER

THE GROOM’S STILL WAITING AT THE ALTAR (1981)

This is on Shot of Love [1985; it was initially a 1981 B-side], the
last of his Christian albums. It’s a real burner blues number that
harks back to his 60s style and has a lot of wild imagery and equally
wild singing. He’s older and in some ways more interesting. It’s a
doomsday song about a world in need of salvation in a Christian sense.
Many of his songs take place on the brink of destruction and there’s
a lot of apocalyptic stuff about a world burning, but then there are
all these asides about a woman named Claudette. He’s effectively and
kinda manically describing a world that’s falling apart, but makes
it sound fun. The chaos is infectious. Suddenly all that 60s
mumbo-jumbo about Dylan being a prophet started to make sense to me.

MIKE SCOTT, THE WATERBOYS

LONESOME DAY BLUES (2001)

When I was a kid of 12 or 13 in the 70s listening to Bob and wishing
he’d go back to rock’n’roll, Love and Theft is the album I’d
have wanted him to make. He’d been ill and rallied, and it’s so
full of life force. I bought it on tour in America on 9/11, the day it
came out. Lonesome Day Blues won my heart very quickly. It’s about a
guy who has lost everything but never loses that sparkle in his eye.
When I listen to it, the scenes in the song – driving a car,
“weather not fit for man nor beast”, somewhere in the south like
Mississippi and seeing “your lover man, comin’ ’cross the barren
fields” – play in my mind like a movie. It’s got gravity, power,
it’s funny. The relentless minimalism of the repeated, hypnotic riff
drives it. It’s punk, too. When I played it at the 75th birthday
tribute in Greenwich Village
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guitar solo.

ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER

I’VE MADE UP MY MIND TO GIVE MYSELF TO YOU (2020)

Rough and Rowdy Ways came out during the pandemic when we were all
trapped at home, and this song hit me hardest. Dylan writes
super-beautiful, romantic love songs. This one is a travelling song,
and he does something that I’ve stolen and mentions specific place
names [“From Salt Lake City to Birmingham, from East LA to San
Antone”], which makes it real and relatable. We don’t think of
Dylan as vulnerable, but he lays himself on the line. He’s
world-weary, and his delivery is so languid as he stretches out the
words. He was almost 80, and made an album just as great as the ones
he made decades ago.

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