The nightingale’s code: Bob Dylan’s ‘Cutting Edge 1965-1966’ examined
Harold Lepidus
Posted On November 5, 2015
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On page 13 of the booklet included in the new 6-CD set, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 12, Bob Dylan 1965-1966, The Cutting Edge Deluxe Edition, there’s a photograph taken in mid-June, 1965, at Columbia Recording Studio A in New York City, during a session for “Like a Rolling Stone.” On the back wall, we can see that it is almost 4:00 p.m., and there’s a sign warning that smoking is not allowed. In the foreground, we can see the anarchist-poet sitting in front of a piano, back to the wall, taking a break, planning his next move, a lit cigarette in his right hand. Bob Dylan is wearing his shades. He doesn’t see the signs, and is not constrained by time, or rules.
The Cutting Edge Deluxe Edition is a collection of more than seven hours of music and studio chatter, recorded in an unmatched spurt of revolutionary musical creativity, conjured up during an intense 15-month period beginning in early 1965. The audio result was three of Dylan’s most groundbreaking and game changing releases – Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde, not to mention a 45 or two. The Cutting Edge was necessitated by Europe’s copyright laws, which dictated that any unreleased recordings older than 50 years become public domain in those territories. While this is clearly unfair in this day and age when music, and musicians, continue to be both financially and culturally relevant well past their supposed expiration date, the “up” side is that we fans get to hear these rare treasures before we all die.
While listening to this collection, I couldn’t help but think of the movie, Being John Malkovich, though, instead of the actor’s skull, here we are inside Dylan’s head. The sound is so sharp and clear that you can almost hear Dylan change his mind. Liberated from the solo act which brought him fame, fortune, and notoriety, here the electrified Dylan is like a kid in an amphetamine candy shop.
The Cutting Edge shines a light on Dylan’s creative process during this period. First of all, we can see why Dylan needed additional instrumentation after four (more-or-less) solo albums. The early solitary takes from the Bringing It All Back Home sessions make it clear that this sound would have made Dylan’s fifth studio album a sonic repeat of his previous release, effectively The Same Side of Bob Dylan. While it might have been a small step forward in the folk music world, it would not have had the explosive global impact of the revolutionary act of adding rock and roll instrumentation to the proceedings. Things like that mattered back then, unfathomably.
Dylan often appears to have entered the studio with typewriter ink still wet on the page. Many early acoustic takes are tentative and fragile, with Dylan working things out, making corrections and adjustments on the spot. However, when playing with other musicians, Dylan is practically giddy, often laughing and joking during various takes. You’d be tempted to call him a brat if he weren’t coming up with the goods.
On this collection, Dylan is nothing if not fearless. He isn’t afraid to mix things up, and he isn’t afraid to fail. A version of “Just Like a Woman” with a Bo Diddley beat may have been a misstep, but it was a necessary one, exorcizing it from his system in order to eventually find the delicate take we all know and love. He also wasn’t above abandoning his touring band, the Hawks (4/5 of the Band), when the magic they created on stage could not be replicated in a studio environment.
While I detest the manipulative click-bait internet articles that proclaim “The 20 best songs ranked best to worse…” or “50 things you must do/hear/see/buy,” I will go on record as saying Dylan’s 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited is not only a masterpiece, but a perfect album. From its poetry to its place in history, from the cover photograph to Dylan’s liner notes, from the out-of-tune guitars to the length of the songs, from the rules it broke to the toll it took, it could not be improved upon. However, it is extremely likely that I might never choose to listen to it again for the rest of my life. I’ve heard it so many times, it’s difficult to hear it anew. There is so much other media, so much more music, so much more Dylan, that unless I am particularly inspired, my LP’s and CD’s, mono and stereo, could conceivably remain on my shelves forever. The same could probably be said of Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde on Blonde.
What makes The Cutting Edge so exciting, so essential, is that listeners can hear this spectacular music in a different context. We have to pay attention. We have no choice. The musicians who, at least to me, were anonymous when I first heard this music are now celebrities, thanks to years of Dylanologists researching and documenting Dylan’s work. While Michael Bloomfield and Al Kooper still shine on the Highway 61 sessions, listening to Harvey Brooks’ bass playing nimbly filling in the spaces on “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” and other tracks is simply a revelation. You’ve heard “Like a Rolling Stone” a billion times, but listen to Bloomfield’s isolated guitar track. It’s so precise and delicate, full of tension and release, hiding in plain sight … a thing of beauty. The same thing can be said of Paul Griffin’s piano and novice organist Kooper, all working together with the other musicians to create magic on the spot like an inspired jazz septet. If, indeed, a tambourine man can be included in a jazz septet. There are dozens of such moments on The Cutting Edge.
Dylan has a reputation for keeping some superior takes in the vault, but that claim emerged in the 1970s. Here, Dylan made the right choices, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some breathtaking material included. The highlights are many – Early takes of “She Belongs To Me” and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” a toned-down version of “Tombstone Blues” with a descending bass riff, the piano demo of “Desolation Row,” Dylan surprising everyone with a children’s toy whistle on “Highway 61,” the evolutions of “Visions of Johanna” and “Memphis Blues Again,” and so much more. Not to mention the mostly Jewish musicians jamming on “Jingle Bells” during the summer, 1965, session for “Crawl Out Your Window,” a hint at what was to come 44 years later. And kudos to Bill Flanagan and Sean Wilentz for documenting and de-mythologizing the proceedings.
As of Friday, everybody will have the chance to experience these sessions. Sony has now cleared the deck. Aside from Dylan’s live recordings from this era, for the next few years there will be relatively little material that Dylan and his label have to worry about protecting, at least as far as we know. Now maybe, in the not-too-distant future, we’ll get the Blood on the Tracks 1974 sessions box set we were promised as volume 10 of The Bootleg Series a few years back.
But for now, pull yourself together, put on your sore eyes, groovy forehead, and curly hair, take some Zimdon, and get ready to enter another dimension … the “Electric Zone.”
Fade it out …
Photo Credits: Color (c) Jerry Schatzberg, B&W (c) Don Hunstein
Check out sample tracks on BobDylanVEVO.
Purchase Bob Dylan The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: Bootleg Series Vol. 12 from Amazon:
- 2CD amazon.com – .co.uk – .de
- 3LP vinyl amazon.com – .co.uk – .de
- Deluxe Ed. (6CD) amazon.com – .co.uk – .de
- [Blu-Spec Cd2] 2CD amazon.de
- [Blu-Spec Cd2/Book] amazon.de
Note: This article was also posted at my Bob Dylan Examiner column.
