Previously: Highlands (1997) part 1: Wild rose in the heather
Highlands part 2: You can hear the air around it
by Jochen Markhorst
“Probably the last time I bought a record that was just brilliant all the way through was Nick Cave,” Henry Rollins tells in an interview with DVD Talk, in 2004. “I wrote him a letter after I played it and said you and Dylan are like the only guys writing songs right now. I think the last two Dylan records have just been incredible – Time out of Mind and Love and Theft. Those were just amazing.”
Further on in the same interview, he explains what touches him, apart from the songs, even more: the sound. Henry Rollins is a man of knowledge and moreover blessed with the gift of words, so he can perfectly articulate what touches him so, in terms of sound: “I miss the space, I miss the sound of a guitar in a room where you can hear the air around it. Who makes records like that still? Tom Waits does, Bob Dylan does.”
It demonstrates a kinship with Dylan, as evidenced by the words of session musician Jim Dickinson, the keyboardist on “Highlands”:
“One thing that really struck me during those sessions, Dylan, he was standing singing four feet from the microphone, with no earphones on. He was listening to the sound in the room.”
… almost the same words Rollins uses to describe his preferred sound, the sound he hears on Time Out Of Mind. Which is also confirmed by engineer Chris Shaw;
“And I’d say about 85 per cent of the sound of that record is the band spilling into Bob’s microphone, because he’d sing live in the room with the band. Most of the time without headphones. That’s why the record has this big, I think, almost kind of swampy sound to it, and he loves it, he really goes for that sound.”
… the sound that Dylan hears on those famous “reference records”. In an interview with Robert Hilburn, September 2001, Dylan leads the Dylanologists to Charley Patton;
“I had the guitar run off an old Charley Patton record for years and always wanted to do something with that. I was sitting around, maybe in the dark Delta or maybe in some unthinkable trench somewhere, with that sound in my mind and the dichotomy of the Highlands with that seemed to be a path worth pursuing.”
… but that seems to be a misdirection; a Patton recording with a similar riff cannot be found. It can be found at Slim Harpo, though. Who is also mentioned elsewhere by Dylan as an example of the “reference records” with which he tried to put producer Lanois on the right track. Similar riffs as in “Highlands”, which is a quite generic riff in itself, can be heard more than once on Slim Harpo’s records. “That’s Why I Love You” comes close, for instance, and “Tip On In” even more so, as well as in sound – in fact, all those old Excello recordings have the “air”, the “space” that Dylan and Rollins love so much. Reduce the tempo of “Tip On In” by 75%, and you’re pretty close to “Highlands”.
Slim Harpo – Tip On In:
It is not unlikely that Dylan is simply mistaken, with his Patton hint. Fans and followers often think that Dylan is putting up smokescreens on purpose or having fun fooling journalists, but we have seen for 60 years now that Dylan is not familiar with details of his own discography, mixes up facts about recordings, such as the names of session musicians, and only superficially remembers circumstances surrounding recording sessions. It simply doesn’t interest him enough. He rarely, if ever, listens back to his own records, as he has said repeatedly for the past sixty years. During interviews, he often makes mistakes in dates and tracklists, which occurs again when asked about Time Out Of Mind and “Highlands” in 2001, more than four years later. Only nine months after the recordings, in September 1997, he does not remember exactly anymore:
“I don’t think we had a full ensemble playing on that, as I remember. There can’t be more than four people playing. I can’t say that the musicians didn’t know the song or the lyrics. I don’t know…,”
… he says to Edna Gundersen. And in 2001, with Mikal Gilmore for Rolling Stone, he is half wrong when he says about “Highlands”:
“That particular song, we worked with a track that I had done at a sound check once in some hall. The assembled group of musicians we had down at the studio just couldn’t get it, so I said, “Just use that original track, and I’ll sing over it.” It was just some old blues song I always wanted to use, and I felt that once I was able to control it, I could’ve written about anything with it. But you’re right – I forgot that was on that record.”
That peculiarity, that exceptional technical fact, “a track that I had done at a sound check once in some hall” concerns the recording of “Dirt Road Blues”, as we know thanks to both Daniel Lanois and drummer Winston Watson. For “Highlands”, a pre-recorded loop is indeed also used, but it was fabricated by Lanois and Tony Mangurian, while playing along with a reference record, and further edited by Lanois and Dylan at the Teatro in Oxnard sometime in late 2016
Bob Dylan – Dirt Road Blues (Version 1)
In short, it is not too daring to question Dylan’s memories and statements about the recording process and song inspiration. Nor is it deliberate deception – recordings are simply not that important to Dylan. His head was in the Highlands, probably.
To be continued. Next up Highlands part 3: That long rambling talking thing
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Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
- Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
- Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
- Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
- Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
- Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
- Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
- Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
- John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
- Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
- Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
- Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2nd Big Bang
- Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
- Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
- Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
- Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
- I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
- Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
- Bob Dylan’s 1971
- Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door