Highway 61 Revisited Revisited
Creem, June 1974
Since I wrote the report on the Oakland Dylan-Band concerts that appeared in the last issue, my crafty brother Steve has come up with a good, rough tape of one of the shows, which suggests a footnote both on the concerts and the live album that is presumably set to follow.
The tape makes clear that nearly everything good I had to say about the performances ought to be raised to the tenth power. The music was wilder than I remembered, and Dylan's singing more exciting. Though musically very different, I haven't the slightest doubt that what Dylan and the Band did in 1974 was as memorable as what Dylan and the Hawks did in 1965 and '66, or that a live album drawn from the tour should burn with all the force of the classic Live at Albert Hall bootleg, and carry with it an altogether new kind of humor and confidence. I wasn't sure, writing about the concerts, if the music would come across on record—Dylan's presence, and the Band's, was part of it all, perhaps an essential part. The tape proves that I was wrong. The music is potent in ways I haven't even hinted at. It may be that Dylan's presence, though part of the music, also overshadowed it.
It's possible that none of this will survive on official vinyl—not if Dylan, Robertson, or whoever else will be involved in producing the live album give in to the natural temptation to tone down and refine what was in fact a brash and unruly performance. If you insist on getting perfect stereo separation when you record an earthquake, you may produce a more professional product, but it won't sound like an earthquake. Too much precision, too much balance, mixing down the Band and mixing up Dylan—as Bob Johnston did on the Isle of Wight cuts on Self Portrait—will take the life out of the music. So, a plea: go for the total sound, even if it means you have to leak tracks all over the studio. Try and keep the momentum of the music. Let some distortion and confusion bleed through the songs, as it did when they were played. If you have to put anything in front, make it the drums.
And don't wait until Christmas.
Originally published in Creem magazine, June 1974
Before the Flood was oddly enough my first Dylan album. My father used it to “turn me on” to Bob and his lyrical brilliance when I was about ten, picking up the stylus to repeat Dylan’s words after each line of “Rolling Stone.” To me it’s how all the songs are supposed to sound. Dylan sounds like…my Dad…and how I perceived him trying to “push through” all his frustration, confusion, and disappointment to “step up” and be a good man. That’s what I hear on the album: a family man in his early thirties carrying a heavy burden because he said he would.
What strikes me about Dylan every time I hear him live, or even listen to an album like "Highway 61 Revisited" is how hard he rocks. Heck, his first album of hillbilly folk songs and Woody Guthrie tributes has the hardest acoustic guitar I've ever heard, still. I guess that's how he became a "rock and roll star." He plays rock & roll at its hardest, finest, not on volume, but on intensity, energy.