By Tony Attwood
We were debating the songs that Dylan has written or maybe just recorded but not composed, but then never played in concert, and tried to come up with sensible answers of the tracks we really wanted him to play suddenly for the first time. But, of course, being old men we found our memories fading so we had to get some on line help.
Fortunately the official Dylan website has a complete list – you can find it here – and we cheated a bit and managed to forget some more, so that we spent as much time saying, “What was the one he did after ‘Self Portrait’?” (or pick any other album you want to mention), as we did coming up with answers.
I didn’t keep track of every suggestion that was made, or how many pints of beer or glasses of wine were consumed during the debate, but I reckon by the end pretty much every single album Bob has made got one of its tracks mentioned somewhere. And we did wander between “songs he wrote but never performed” and some that he “didn’t perform very often” or “hasn’t performed for a long time”.
So we also talked about which album we’d like Bob to come on stage and sing from start to finish. I went for “Blood on the Tracks” because it has so many of my favourite Dylan compositions within it. Songs such as “Tangled up in Blue”, “Idiot Wind”, “Lily, Rosemary…” but really I could have been persuaded into any of half a dozen other ideas.
Of course with us being what you might be tempted to call “old” there was an awful lot of “What was the album he did after….” as well as a lot of argument as to whether a certain track was on that album or this album… and from there it became clear that most of us didn’t actually play the albums, but had collected our own favourite tracks together onto a CD of our own making.
And I wondered what Bob would think of that. After all, in a sense he has had a lifetime in which he has been doing this, deciding which of his songs he is going to offer us in the concerts this time around, and which songs he has recorded but is never, ever, going to sing on stage.
Which then led me back to what we were trying to talk about in the first place – one of my favourite topics (my favourite because not too many other people have picked up on it): all the songs Dylan has never played on tour, but actually should have.
Not that we want to tell Bob what to do, of course. But just the thought that maybe we would like to push him in this or that direction, when it comes to forgotten masterpieces, really was quit a bit of fun.
After all there are 323 songs listed on the official website which indicate that they have never been played at all in concert by Bob, but have either been recorded by him, or written by him. Yes really 323 songs he has either written or recorded (or both) but has NEVER performed on stage.
I mean I would love to hear him sing “Angelina” (that is the song “Angelina” not “Farewell Angelina”), just to see what he made of it now – I love that song so much. Then there is “Foot of Pride” which again has been utterly ignored.
Then that song I seem to often come back to “Ballad for a Friend”. And of course I have to add “Tell Ol’ Bill” – a song which I hold in such high regard, and which Bob seemed to put so much work into – but which never made it beyond the collection of tracks that didn’t get into the album.
But of course that is just me thinking of my favourites, and wondering if Bob remembers them at all. Indeed what must it be like to have written that many songs and still be playing some of them?
Perhaps one day I might try and put together an album of “The greatest Dylan songs that Dylan never played on tour.” Not the snappiest of titles for an album I must admit, but when it comes to Dylan, albums don’t have to have clever titles. So maybe just “Dylan Unplayed” would be enough.