Mar 20, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Link to Song: Gotta Serve Somebody
Etta James Version: Gotta Serve Somebody
What you should know about this song: “Gotta Serve Somebody” was the opening track for the radically different Slow Train Coming album. The song won Dylan his first ever Grammy Award, winning Best Male Vocal Performance of 1979.
“Me like his song ‘serve Somebody’ quite a bit. I glad he do it, too, y’know, because there comes a time when an artist just cannot follow the crowd. If you are an artist like Bob Dylan, you got to make the crowd follow you.” – Bob Marley
*Source: “Dylan: 100 Songs and Pictures” by Fine Communications
Bob Dylan, 1978 at the Dane County Coliseum, Madison, Wis.
Photo Source: Concert LiveWire
Mar 19, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Link to Song: Senior (Tales of Yankee Power)
What you should know about this song:
“‘Senior’ was one of them border type things… sort of lost Yankee on gloomy Sunday, carnival type of thing… I see this as the aftermath of when two people who were leaning on each other because neither one of them had the guts to stand up alone, all of a sudden they break apart.” – Bob Dylan, 1985
*Source: “Dylan: 100 Songs and Pictures” by Fine Communications
Photo Source: MetroActive Music
Mar 18, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Link to Song: Romance in Durango
What you should know about this song: This song was partly inspired by Dylan’s experiences in Mexico on the set of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Dylan co-wrote it with playwright Jacque Levy.
“The first thing that came was an image I had from a postcard that was once sent to me… with a picture of a Mexican hacienda, or something – some Mexican shack – a shack with a bunch of chili peppers on the roof in the sun. So the first line was ‘Hot chili peppers int he sun’, and I remember saying, “No, blistering sun’, so we had the first line.” – Jacques Levy
*Source: “Dylan: 100 Songs and Pictures” by Fine Communications
Bob Dylan at the Secret Sound Studio 1976
Photo Source: Lynn Goldsmith
Mar 17, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Link to Song: Oh, Sister
What you should know about this song: This spontaneous and remarkable piece was the result of minimal rehearsals between Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris, the vocalist tasked with harmonizing to Dylan’s lead. For the next three years until July 1978, Dylan included the song in his live performances.
“I would have been very intimidated, except that we just got right down to work, and the work was reading the lyrics off the page. We were cutting the song, watching him and trying to phrase with him while not really knowing the song. It was all live. It was like a painter that works by just throwing paint up on the canvas and yet there’s this real method to his madness. He knew what he was doing. It was an extraordinary experience.” – Emmylou Harris
*Source: “Dylan: 100 Songs and Pictures” by Fine Communications
Bob Dylan at the Secret Sound Studio 1976
Photo Source: Lynn Goldsmith
Mar 16, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Link to Song: One More Cup of Coffee
What you should know about this song: Jacques Levy co-wrote this song with Bob Dylan for the Desire album, which was later featured in the movie Renaldo & Clara.
“It’s a gypsy song. That wrong was written during a gypsy festival in the south of France one summer. Somebody took me to a birthday party there once, and hanging out there for a week probably influenced the writing of that song. But the ‘valley below’ probably came from some place else.” – Bob Dylan, 1991*
*Source: “Dylan: 100 Songs and Pictures” by Fine Communications
Photo Source: NAMM
