John Howells - Skipping Reels of Rhyme: A Guide to Rare and Unreleased Bob Dylan Recordings

Skipping Reels of Rhyme

A Guide to Rare and Unreleased Bob Dylan Recordings

John Howells

Dedicated to the memories of Paul Williams and John Bauldie

Introduction

The purpose of this book is twofold. First, this book is intended to document some of the contents of the first comprehensive Bob Dylan website on the Internet: Bringing It All Back Homepage, which was started in 1994 at the birth of the World Wide Web, and continues to this day (as of this writing). See the Appendix for some of the articles from that website. The second, and larger purpose is to document, in book format, the unreleased recordings of Bob Dylan, which at the time of publication on the website consisted primarily of cassette tapes as well as bootleg vinyl and CD.

Since the original content was written, two things have occurred. First, tape trading became largely a thing of the past and Bob Dylan collectors around the world found a new and more convenient way of circulating the rarities that fans have longed to hear, not to mention the tons of newly recorded live shows which continue to this day (as of this writing). Now its all about downloading from bit torrent sites and various other file sharing platforms. The world is now digital instead of analog, for the most part, and the availability of Dylan recordings is much more widespread. This leads to the second occurrence: Sony (Dylans recording company) has been releasing most of the recordings discussed in this book in various editions designed to prevent material older than fifty years from entering the public domain and allowing bootleggers to release legal product containing previously hard-to-find gems, thus depriving the record company of substantial revenue. This is being done not only through the Bootleg Series of releases, available to the general public, but also through a series of 50 th Anniversary copyright protection releases available in extremely limited quantities in the European market, where the fifty year rule is most important. In most cases, these releases are limited to 100 copies in either CD-R or vinyl format, although in one case made available strictly through MP3 download aimed at customers who purchased a specific Sony product. These releases will be discussed in more detail later in this book.

While going through the various articles I intended to include in this book, it became obvious that much updating needed to be done, especially now that so many of the recordings mentioned have become more readily available to the general public, but at the same time the original articles present a sort of time capsule of what it was like to be a tape collector in the 80s and 90s. In some cases I have updated the articles in question, but in many other cases I decided to leave them the way they were and include postscripts to bring us up to date on what has happened with the recordings as far as official release is concerned. In a great many cases there are new recordings that were entirely unknown (or merely rumored) when these articles were written, such as the entire studio sessions for Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited , and Blonde on Blonde which are all available in the massive Bootleg Series Volume 12: The Cutting Edge. Where it is relevant, I have noted where previously unavailable recordings are now part of the new Bootleg Series and Copyright protection releases.

This is an attempt to document all of the circulating tapes known to be in existence. I believe I have heard every one of these tapes, but there may be a reference to an occasional item here and there that I have yet to hear. The views expressed here are my own subjective opinions on the quality of these tapes and performances, and the work herein is intended to be an overview of all the material that's currently available and is certainly not definitive.

In addition to comments about sound and performance quality, I also try to indicate on which CDs and LPs this material is available. More and more of this material is becoming available on CD, and when I originally started this project some years ago, there were relatively few CDs of this nature in existence and most of the unreleased material was available on vinyl, a sadly disappearing medium. Therefore, my information about CD releases is no doubt incomplete. This is an ongoing project. Many of the items listed below have not been completed yet. Those that are completed may have missing or incorrect information. In particular, I would like to know of any CDs or LPs that I haven't mentioned. If you have more information on any of these items, please drop me a line.

Please note that at this time I have only listed tapes up to 1975. There are two reasons for doing this. First, Dylan's life after 1975 became very hectic and he began to tour frequently, thus providing an overwhelming number of tapes. It is not my intention to discuss each and every concert tape individually, so I will just talk about each tour separately and describe in greater detail what I consider to be the highlights. Secondly, although I will continue to describe all studio and other non-tour tapes individually, I would like to wait until I've finished with the pre-1975 years first. So, for now, if you see items missing from the end of the list it's not because I don't know about them, it's just that I haven't gotten around to listing them yet!

Before we get to the tape discussions, the next two sections will discuss what Sony has been doing to release most of the rarities that up until now were very hard to find.

The Bootleg Series

In 1991 Columbia launched the first in a series of official releases featuring previously unreleased recordings from various sources, mostly from their own vaults but also including some famous circulating recordings that had heretofore been unavailable to the general public. The first in this ongoing series was a 3-CD and 5-LP edition titled The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 . The recordings were somewhat chronologically random giving a great overview of the gems that had been hidden from the public but available to the most fanatical collectors. Most of the recordings were already fairly well known, but there were some surprises as well. The success of the first Bootleg Series release led to further editions, which in the future dispensed with the multi-volume designation in favor of a single volume title regardless of how many discs were involved. Thus, the second Bootleg Series release was the 2-CD live album The Bootleg Series Volume 4: The Royal Albert Hall Concert the quotes acknowledging the mistaken belief that what was actually a concert taking place in Manchester was long presumed to be from the Royal Albert Hall.

As the series continued, the releases became more elaborate, often with deluxe collectors editions containing additional discs or other materials, along with a more affordable standard 2-CD version. For example, Volume 8: Tell Tale Signs featured a deluxe edition with a bonus disc and a hardcover book, along with a standard 2-CD version. Volume 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) contained the entire 1969 Isle of Wight concert as a bonus disc, along with a remastered Self Portrait and other materials. The most elaborate of these to date is Volume 12:The Cutting Edge which came in three different editions: the standard 2-CD set; a 6-CD Deluxe edition; and best of all, the 18-CD Collectors Edition which contained everything recorded in the studio in 1965 and 1966. This means the entire Bringing It All Back Home , Highway 61 Revisited , and Blonde on Blonde sessions every note recorded in the studio during those years.