Dylan’s lost album, track 4: “Important Words”

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Just recently we’ve been engaged in a project listening back to some of the outtakes from the 1986 and 1987 sessions that produced the majority of Bob Dylan’s “Down In The Groove” album, as well as some of the live shows from the era.

And between us we reached the conclusion that, as many people said at the time, the album is, to be fair, not very good. Robert Christgau called the album “horrendous product”.

So we decided to see if we could compile a better album ourselves from the outtakes and live shows from the period. Just in case the guys upstairs fancy issuing a new version when they run out of materials for the Bootleg series.  (Full acknowledgement to Untold Dylan would be nice too – how about “Musical consultants”?  That would do it).

Thus we are re-creating Bob Dylan’s Lost Album and it is called “Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing”.   So far we have got

• Track 1 Twist and Shout
• Track 2: Just when I needed you most
• Track 3: Willie and the Hand Jive

The song we’ve chosen for track 4 of “Sheep In Wolves’ Clothing” is Dylan’s cover of Gene Vincent’s “Important Words”.

Gene Vincent And The Blue Caps originally released the track in 1956 as the b-side to the “Crazy Legs” single.

In fact Crazy Legs was a song that lived on for a long time, as the title was ultimately used as the name of a studio album by Jeff Beck in 1993 – an album of Gene Vincent songs.

Gene Vincent was born in 1935 and died in 1971 and is remembered as one of the pioneers of rock n roll and particularly of what became known as rockabilly.  His 1956 worldwide hit Be Bop a Lula is often cited as the start of the popularity of rockabilly.

And indeed we really can’t let an opportunity like this pass by (just in case you have no idea what we are talking about).  Here it is…

Now here is Dylan’s take on “Important Words” which we are making the fourth track of the lost album…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8hLG5sn7Uj4

The track was actually originally included on early promo copies of the album, when it was still known as “Sheep In Wolves Clothing”. It was eventually replaced with “Had A Dream About You, Baby”.

It’s easy to see why the track was dropped from the finalized album, the album already had its fair share of crooner ballads such as “When Did You Leave Heaven” and “Shenandoah”. Therefore, excellent tracks like “Important Words” and “Just When I Needed You Most” were dropped to make way for more rock n roll numbers. Which was unfortunate as they are fine performances and deserve to be heard.

At the time Dylan had mentioned in interviews his desire to make an album of romantic ballads, and repeatedly mentioned artists like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. He also performed songs such as “All My Tomorrows” and “We Three” in concert during these years. Maybe he should have followed through with this idea after all.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WrGaR_7icBs

Here are the lyrics

Important words
That mean a lot
They say, say
I love you

Important words
That’s all I’ve got
They say, say
I love you

The days, the nights, the hours
We spent makin’ plans
Have made both of us feel the same
Since we first held hands…

Important words
They say I love you
They say, say
I do

(Important words)
That say I love you
They say, say
I do

This really is a fine performance by Bob Dylan, and it is desperately sad that it was lost as the album was recreated and the original concept was chopped away.  Bob’s voice is in particularly fine form, and this recording deserves to be better known than it now is.