My Life In 100 Songs: Song #77 - Diamonds And Rust

The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond

It is a truism that you either get Bob Dylan or you don’t. The fact that it is a truism does not mean that it is not true. It is true. But more, you either get those who don’t get Dylan or you don’t. The Bootleg Series, vol 1 – 3 was released in 1989. There was a song called Moonshiner. The liner notes proclaimed that this ought to still all those voices who claimed that Dylan couldn’t sing. "...If anyone should dare question Bob's ability as a singer, play them [sic] this track." I don’t know. To me it sounded like everything about it exemplified exactly why the “not getting Dylan” crowd said he couldn’t sing.

John J was my classmate in law school and he was a Dylan fan. John J was one of those short-hair types, probably voted conservative. But he was a Dylan fan and the owner of some interesting bootlegs. And John J let me listen to those bootlegs, because Dylan fans stick together, even when their political agendas clash.

It was about that time that Shot Of Love was released, and neither one of us having been enamoured with Dylan’s pin-headed expressions of Christian faith, we were both somewhat relieved to note that at least some of the tracks had secular themes. He lent me his copy of that too.

I got my first Dylan bootleg in Toronto in 1979. It had a plain white cover and with a piece of paper under the shrink wrap, with fake song titles, and the artist's last name was "Dillon.". I guess that gave it away. I remember that it listed a song as “Masking Tape.” That was the Carnegie Hall bootleg; all but one of the tracks had never (then) been officially released.

Later I went to a record collectors’ convention and I got what I thought was the Albert Hall bootleg. It wasn’t; it was a live recording of Dylan’s UK concert from 1965, one year too early. Still, a Dylan bootleg was a Dylan bootleg, and I owned it.

I did finally get the Albert Hall album. This was before it became legally and commercially available. I got it at Into The Music, the last real reliable source of used LPs in Winnipeg before I left. Now, of course, you can buy it, it’s called The Bootleg Series vol 4, and the fun is gone.

The whole Bootleg Series thing started just a few years after Biograph, which started the ball rolling really. Biograph was a self-contradictory mix, a greatest hits package which would appeal to newbies, with previously unreleased tracks that would appeal only to seasoned fans. It was the first appearance of I’ll Keep It With Mine, recorded c. 1964, and Abandoned Love, recorded for Desire and shelved. We knew that Dylan didn’t release all his good stuff, but this was incendiary.

And so came the legal bootlegs: the Rolling Thunder Review concert from Montreal, A Philharmonic Hall concert from 1964, outtakes from Self Portrait, outtakes from the mid-60s, demos, rehearsals, studio talk. It goes from revelatory to incestuous.

And all that past parallels an increasingly demented present, as Dylan records an unironic Christmas album, a radio show, a standards album, and who knows what next. I lost track after Oh Mercy.

So there are those of us who claim to get Dylan and those of us who don’t. And Dylan himself has dedicated his entire career to turning everyone into someone who doesn’t get him. And I think that he has succeeded...

You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague...