Seeing the recent Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown sent me spinning into Dylan's back catalogue again- Bringing it All Back Home mainly but also Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, bits and bobs from The Bootleg Series, songs from the 70s that maybe I've overlooked before, Another Side Of Bob Dylan from 1964. I haven't had a Dylan phase for a long time and I don't think Dylan is something one ever finishes or gets to the end of, there's always more, always another way in.
A Complete Unknown star Timothee Chalamet appeared on SNL (Saturday Night Live) last week playing three Dylan songs. In the film he is Bob Dylan. Apparently he signed up for the role in 2019 but then Covid delayed everything, giving him ample time to learn to play guitar and harmonica for the film and to sing like Dylan, Dylan's particular intonations and stresses. On SNL he plays two songs as a medley, Outlaw Blues (from Bringing It All Back Home) coupled with Three Angels (from 1970's New Morning, a deep cut). Outlaw Blues is an amazing song, Dylan giving it everything, charging out of the traps and amped up with the band, 'ain't it hard to stumble on the black side of the lagoon' and howling the lines at the end of each verse, 'when it's nine below zero and... three o 'clock in the afternoon'. In 1965 an album song like Outlaw Blues was better than many contemporary band's best singles (see also Love Minus Zero/ No Limit also from side 1 of Bringing It All Back Home). Chalamet doing Dylan but not in costume, doing Dylan as himself. I think it's pretty meta.
He also sang and played Tomorrow Is A Long Time, the beautiful acoustic song that first appeared on the Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II album, released in 1971, a fairly randomly sequenced double album of Dylan singles and album songs. Tomorrow Is A Long Time was originally recorded in 1962 live at New York's Town Hall. Chalamet nails it again, the band playing quietly behind him (including James Blake on keys).
Here's the Dylan version, always worth hearing.
1 comment:
Makes me want to go to a Chalamet gig, to be honest. Not a phrase I ever envisaged writing! Amazing stuff.
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