May 2011 sees the 70th birthday of Bob Dylan. To celebrate, we're taking you on a journey through the lesser celebrated avenues of his back catalogue. A journey down Highway 61 that won't stop off at 'Blowin' In The Wind', 'All Along The Watchtower' or 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' but will call by... Can’t Wait (1997)
There was a firmly held belief around the start of the 1990s that Bob Dylan’s voice was shot. It’s not hard to hear why; one listen to the 1992 ‘Good As I Been To You’ album suggests he’s struggling to overcome a permanent death-rattle in a throat ravaged by years of smoke and a general refusal to sing from the diaphragm. At times this handicap would lead to a phenomenon that seasoned Dylan watchers referred to as up-singing (where he’d sing the whole of a previously melodious song line on a single note with the only concession to a tuneful flourish being a sudden octave leap right at the end...repeatedly...song after song).
So in 1997 ‘Time Out Of Mind’ comes out and it’s awash with that deep, muddy Daniel Lanois production which fills out the aural scenery around an apparently unchanged Dylan voice. And again years pass before it is revealed that a track, which appeared on the album but in a vastly altered almost distorted form, was also cut with another version on which Dylan sang with a vocal clarity that people had given up for dead. It’s a soulful, bluesy kind of performance that would have been a breathtaking centrepiece on any record he’d released in over 20 years (if it had gone on). And whilst no one would expect a return to the ‘Nashville Skyline’ croon of ’68 it does make you wonder just why he’s almost always stuck with that smokey, huskey, semi-spoken rasp? Maybe he just found a really good packet of throat lozenges that day and knew revealing the effects hastily would raise his audiences’ expectations too high? Instead they had to wait until the bootleg series’ next instalment ‘Tell Tale Signs’ in 2008. Make no mistake, there’s no confusion about who you’re listening to, just a touch of awe at how much he keeps up his sleeve and how liberally and unexpectedly he reveals his musical arsenal. For this one, we can play you the Bob Dylan version we’re writing about too:
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