BOB DYLAN SPECIAL: The Complete Tell Tale Signs

In this month’s issue of Uncut, we celebrate the release of Tell Tale Signs, the Bootleg Series Vol 8, Bob Dylan’s astonishing 2 and 3CD collection of unreleased material from 1989-2006.

We spoke to the musicians, producers and crew who worked with him during this period. And now, here’s your chance to read the full, unedited transcripts of those interviews.

Today, we present part 9; drummer Jim Keltner talks about making Time Out of Mind, while Daniel Lanois and others will follow in a further four parts in the coming weeks.

You can catch up on our previous transcripts by clicking on the side panel (right).

Next one up Monday (October 20)!

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Jim Keltner

One of Time Out Of Mind’s three drummers, Keltner first worked with Dylan in ’71 and has worked with him often since, including the session that produced “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” – “I actually cried while we were recording it.”

To speak about Bob is usually to try and pin him down in some kind of way. See, the thing with Bob is – he’s not as mysterious as everybody seems to think he is. That’s the one thing that I’ve always found about Bob. He’s a really normal guy. There’s a great normalcy to him. I actually love how normal he is. But his immense gift is so great that that people have always elevated him to this other place and try really hard to figure him out, in a way they might not do other artists. I don’t believe that, when it comes to recording, Bob has done anything much differently from anybody else, really. Everybody is recording with mics and stuff – so, really, how different can it be? And everybody, when they go into the studio, they want to try something new, right? Bob has just always done that, too, try to do something that he hasn’t done before.

The first time I met him was early 1971. The earthquake had just hit Los Angeles, and I was over in England for a spell when I got a call from Leon [Russell], to go to New York to meet up with he and Carl Radle and Jesse Ed Davis at a studio to record with Bob.

It was around March, a cold, rainy day down in the Village. I remember Bob seemed to have a cold, because he was blowing his nose and tossing Kleenex around. He had a pencil and a notepad, and he was writing a lot. He was writing these songs on the spot in the studio, or finishing them up at least. And the rest of us, we just started playing, jamming around on some different chords and things, and finally the song came together, Bob came over, and we recorded them: “Watching The River Flow” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. Those two songs were done really quickly.

I remember that Bob didn’t say anything throughout the day. I mean, he and Leon were talking, but he didn’t say anything to the rest of us. And I didn’t think that it was weird. He didn’t seem weird, like he was trying not to talk. The thing was, *nobody was talking to him*, because I believe everybody was sort of afraid to try and talk to him. But I remember, later on, the talk was that Bob didn’t speak. I just thought, “Well, yeah. But you probably had to speak to him for him to speak back to you!” People will say that Bob’s not prone to smalltalk, and that’s actually not true. I’ve been with him many times when we’ve had lots of that. But, you have to appreciate: when you’re in the studio, there’s a lot of intensity. Your intention is to *make a record*. And that’s a big deal, y’know? It’s a record. So your mind is focused on a lot of different things.

I think it’s true that Bob is often happy to kind of jam a song together. If you’ve been writing a song and playing it on your own, and you want to hear what it’s gonna be like with a band, that’s just what you would want to do. You want to come in and see what the players have to offer. I mean, some artists do come in with a real definite thing in mind, and some don’t. I’ve played on records with both those attitudes, and I can’t say that somebody knowing exactly what they want from the get-go is best. I mean, sometimes you need direction, sure, but as far as searching for the song, I’d say that was pretty normal.

This is one of the reasons you surround yourself with musicians you trust. On Time Out Of Mind, Bob called me and a lot of other guys specifically. I remember one evening, maybe the first night, he asked me, “What do you think about Jim Dickinson for this?” I said, “Aw, that’s a great call.” Jim Dickinson’s usually a good call, anyway, on most stuff. Next day, Jim Dickinson was there. So Bob was thinking about the sound, y’know. He put the call out for Duke Robillard, Augie Meyers, all those guys, I think Bob’s process, more than going around individual musicians saying, “Hey, why doncha try this, or why doncha try that,” is to think to himself: who would play good on this record? I think that’s probably the best way to do it, in fact. You can either let somebody else get the musicians for you, and then figure out how to try to tell them to do it, or you get the musicians yourself who you think can pull off your ideas.

When we did Time Out Of Mind, I think there were some demos of the songs that we listened to, or earlier versions that had been done prior to the sessions that I played on that they wanted to do again and flesh out another way. And there were other songs Bob would just go out and begin to play, and we would begin to noodle around and back him up a little bit. There are a lot of first takes on there, in my recollection. Y’know, we would go on and do more takes, but often we’d come back and realise the first take was the one. I don’t know what Daniel and Bob might have done after the musicians left, I can’t speak to that, but I know that Bob, pretty much, when he does his performance, and he likes it and the band is good – that’s it. That’s the way, pretty much, that it’s always worked with Bob.

The second song I ever recorded with Bob after that “Watching The River Flow” session, was early in the morning, on the Warner Studio soundstage, where we did “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, for the Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid film. Sam Peckinpah was there, and he was huddled up with Bob, talking to him. I admire Peckinpah as much as anyone, but that day, which was the only day I ever met him, he had a rumpled suit on, a red bandana round his head, and when I got up close to him, I saw his face and I felt so sorry for him, because he had the Hangover of *Death*. Y’know that one? I mean, his face was *crushed*.

Anyway, this is a very emotional thing for me, and a very powerful moment. The changes in that song were so haunting, and you put that together with the words, and you put that together with Bob’s performance – which was really beautiful, one of his great vocals – and then put that together with the image on the screen, because we had the movie playing there as we recorded, it was too much for me. I’ve told this story many times, but I actually cried while we were recording it. That was a perfect example of a beautiful session and how Bob works. We went in, we heard Bob play the song maybe once or twice. He played, we played, and that was it. The great thing about the really great songwriters, is that the great songs, the really magic ones, they play themselves. There’s very little question about what you’re supposed to do. I love that when it happens. And Bob has done that over the years to a great extent, with a great variety of musicians.

Of these unreleased songs that are coming out, I have a memory of “Girl From The Red River Shore”. I have a memory of it as being just beautiful. On Time Out Of Mind, I was sitting right in front of Bob. It was the first time I’d ever recorded with him like that. He was in the corner part of the room, facing out, and they had my drums facing him full on, with the rest of the musicians all around. It was interesting for me to work with him that way. And that particular song, it was one of those really beautiful Bob moments: a great song, and he sang it really beautifully.

I wanted to check the words with him. With Bob, I don’t get the words right away, there’s so much story in his songs that you usually only get it when you listen later, especially when you’re involved in the playing. What happens with me, though – and I’m sure it’s the same with the guitar players and the other musicians who play with Bob – is there’ll be key words in there that set me off in some musical direction. The more of a storyteller the artist is, the more it affects how the whole song comes together, and that was one of those songs. I could feel everybody in the room feeling that song. I think that was a first take. And, yeah, I was disappointed it wasn’t on the album.

Man, there were so many funny things that happened while we were doing that record, and, plus, I was going through a personal crisis at that time, that Bob was actually talking me through, in a funny way. There really was so much going on during that record – but I just can’t tell you any of those stories. I can’t tell you any of the personal stories, and the stories that were really funny to me, I don’t want to break the confidence that my friends have in me. But it was a funny time, and an intense time.

One thing I can say. Daniel Lanois was producing, Mark Howard was engineering, and you have a room full of musicians; some of whom *Daniel* wanted to be there, and some of whom *Bob* wanted to be there. So there was this curious dynamic. All the musicians are very respectful of each other. It was a great hang, everybody really loved hanging out and the musicians had a great time together. But there was this dynamic going on between Bob and Daniel.

What I saw was that Bob really was bouncing off Daniel. This may have appeared to some people to be Bob abusing Daniel, but I’d say it was more that he was using Daniel to bounce off. That was the main value that Daniel brought to the production of that record. He really allowed Bob to know what it was he wanted – and what he *didn’t* want. And I think the reason the recorded ended up really beautiful was exactly because of this dynamic that was going on between Lanois and Bob. I believe that, in the end, Bob got what he wanted, but he got it through that process. And it was a very intense process. That’s all I can really say. And maybe that’s enough.

DAMIEN LOVE

BOB DYLAN SPECIAL: The Complete Tell Tale Signs

In this month’s issue of Uncut, we celebrate the release of Tell Tale Signs, the Bootleg Series Vol 8, Bob Dylan’s astonishing 2 and 3CD collection of unreleased material from 1989-2006.

We spoke to the musicians, producers and crew who worked with him during this period. And now, here’s your chance to read the full, unedited transcripts of those interviews.

Today, we present part 8; Jim Dickinson‘s story about working on Time Out of Mind, while Daniel Lanois, Jim Keltner and others will follow in a further five parts in the coming weeks.

You can read previous transcripts by clicking on the side panel (right).

Next one up Friday (October 17)!

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JIM DICKINSON

Out of Memphis, the great rock’n’roll pianist and producer played on the Stones’ “Wild Horses” and was another of the Wild Bunch of veterans Dylan recruited for Time Out Of Mind.

The biggest problem recording Time Out Of Mind was the set-up; there were like twelve musicians live on the floor, three full drumkits. But, once the logistics of that were worked out, the way Dylan presented the songs to us was very traditional. He would play a song to us acoustically, and then we would start to get a groove. And, generally speaking, we took the first cut. Sometimes we would make multiple cuts, maybe two or three, but then he’d go back to the first one and select that. He was definitely into the spontaneity of the moment.

I think he’s distrustful of the recording process. He doesn’t give things time to develop in a traditional fashion. He wants the first interpretation he can get of the song. I saw the same thing working with The Rolling Stones, where they were interested in the moment of creation. Keith Richards said, “That’s where the song comes alive, the first performance.” Alex Chilton was the same way.

With Dylan, I mean, there was an *awful lot* of music going on. Six guitar players, y’know, people just sitting there ready to play. And barely able to get a note in. It was a curious situation. Sometimes, when it was all going on, it would be chaotic, for an hour or more. But then there would be this period of clarity, just five or eight minutes of absolute clarity, where everybody in the room knew we were getting it. It was unlike any session that I’ve ever been on. Because everybody could feel the potential, and realising that potential – if we went too far, it *was* too far. If we did too much, we would kill whatever it was that he wanted.

In the case of these outtakes that are about to come out, the two that I played on, “Mississippi” and “Girl From The Red River Shore”, they represented the most conflict in the studio between Dylan and [producer] Daniel Lanois. In the case of “Mississippi”, there was a cut that we had that was very swampy, a real kind of early’70s feeling that Lanois really liked. And it just wasn’t the direction that Dylan wanted to go. I think it was too obvious for him. And the two of them really got into it over that one.

“Girl From The Red River Shore” I personally felt was the best thing we recorded. But as we walked in to hear the playback, Dylan was walking in front of me, and he said, “Well, we’ve done everything on that one except call the symphony orchestra.” Which indicated to me that they’d tried to cut it before. I was only there for ten days, and they had tried to cut some songs earlier that didn’t work. If it had been *my* session, I would have got on the phone at that point and called the fucking symphony orchestra. I’ll be very curious to hear that song again after all this time, I was very impressed by that particular cut. But, when he selects the material that’s going to make up a record, Dylan is notorious for leaving off what appears to be the best one.

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. Which is the sound that *did not* go on the record. I truly never saw anything like it. And yet, he was in unspoken control of twenty-three people. Aside from the conflict between him and Lanois, there was an utter oneness as far as the direction of the session was concerned.

The way I heard it when I got there, when they’d first started out on the record, Lanois had wanted to record as a trio, in Oxnard. And they had started doing it, and then Dylan pulled the plug on it, and then he found the Criteria studio in Miami himself. (Ironically, my group the Dixie Flyers, were booked to record with Dylan at Criteria in 1970 – and his manager Albert Grossman pulled the plug on that, so it never happened. So, for me, it was coming back around, 30 years later.)

Bob had, for want of a better word, an orchestral concept: this thing of too many instruments in the room. There was chordal tension. It’s really hard to describe. There were three different sounds going on: there was the sound of what was in the room, there was what we heard in our earphones, and then there was what we heard at playback, and those were three very different things. The engineer Mark Howard was recording with a lot of effects, printing them to tape, and they took at least three of the playbacks from the initial night, and those were the final mixes. It really wasn’t like anything else I’d ever done.

Did Dylan say much about the kind of sound he was after? He said almost nothing. Almost nothing. Until we after we’d got something, and then he’d discuss it. But it was very abstract, very either/ or. Either he liked it, or he didn’t like it, there was no grey middle ground for him.

He’s a better guitar player than I ever would have thought. Much more fluid, hitting various keys, whatever. Although there are six guitarists on that session, the two that you’re hearing, mostly, are Dylan and Lanois. The kind of slower, looser Hendrix licks that you hear, that’s Dan. And the stuff that sounds like Jerry Garcia, that’s Dylan. On “Mississippi”, there was a guitar line that Dylan was developing that didn’t really get developed, and I think that was part of the conflict over that, he didn’t think that line was being dealt with. Actually, I’m not sure what he didn’t like about it.

But the cut of “Red River Shore” was amazing. You couldn’t even identify what instruments were playing what parts. It sounded like ghost instruments. And the song itself is really remarkable. It’s like something out of the Alan Lomax songbook, a real folk song. But, like I said, I gather it wasn’t the first time he had tried it. And, again, to compare him to Alex Chilton, after you did a song with Alex three or four times, he was past it. One of the things you really don’t want to hear on a record is boredom. And, while, certainly, no one was bored by playing with Bob Dylan, once they did fall into playing repetitious parts, I think that had that same effect on him.

He’s a consummate professional. This may seem like a small thing, but I was impressed by the fact that he had hand-written lyric sheets. Y’know, on, like, notebook paper, like he’d done it in study hall. He said he’d been working on some of the songs for five or six years. And he was still working on lyrics as we were cutting. He had a guitar tech who had all these steamer chests full of gear, and Dylan would lean over this one particular chest and work on his lyrics. With a pencil – because he was erasing stuff. That really touched me to see that. Y’know, you see so many artists come in with their Xeroxed copy that their roadie printed-off. But this was very personal, as far as the songs were concerned. I think it is all about the songs for him.

The other thing about his actual performance in the studio that surprised me, was how loud his voice is. How powerful. I did a record with Toots Hibbert a few years ago, and he did that same thing – literally stood four feet from the microphone, and he wasn’t in a booth, he was live out in the room. You’ve got to have some voice to do that.

I don’t want to give the impression that Dylan was awkward in the studio, it’s more that he was reluctant. Until he reached a point where he trusted, musically, what was happening, then it *didn’t *happen. But, on most of the songs, when we got into the intro, you could tell that he had it, that this was it. Everybody better come across now.

And some of the musicians that were on the session! Jim Keltner is a god of music, and of course, playing his heart out, because he would do anything for Dylan. Bob Britt’s probably the number one call in Nashville. Duke Robillard was just sitting there holding his guitar, waiting for a place to play a note. And I’ve never in my life before or since seen two pedal steel guitars played simultaneously, not even on hillbilly sessions. And Cindy Cashdollar, she wrote the book. Literally. You go find the book: she wrote it! There were some amazing musicians. And Augie Meyers, as well, he goes back with Bob, too, to the early 60s. There was a lot of heart in the room. And a lot of a people of a certain age. There was a lot of mortality there. And, y’know, it was truly the ambition of my career.

There is for sure something about the recording process that makes Dylan uncomfortable. I think it might have something to do with his own personal history. I think, maybe, some of his stuff he’s been dissatisfied with, and has felt manipulated. I mean, it’s curious to even say the words: that someone could manipulate Bob Dylan. But I saw them try during those sessions. I mean, management would talk to him about the radio. Can you imagine talking to Bob Dylan about *getting on the fucking radio*? And yet, they did. And they almost acted like they thought they were fooling him. But my humble opinion – when you’re on a Bob Dylan session, you should be on the page with Bob Dylan.

I remember, when we finished “Highlands” – there are two other versions of that, the one that made the record is the rundown, literally, you can hear the beat turn over, which I think Dylan liked. But, anyway, after we finished it, one of the managers came out, and he said, “Well, Bob, have you got a short version of that song?” And Dylan looked at him and said: “That *was* the short version.”

I mean, I don’t understand how people can presume to fuck with *Bob Dylan*. Yet they do. I mean, who do they think they are, compared to this man? My God. Dylan has a reputation of appearing and disappearing, y’know, of all of a sudden being in the room, and all of a sudden being gone. And he was doing that. Actually, I caught him at it, because I know Criteria pretty well. Yeah, he’ll definitely screw with your head, but, y’know – who can blame him? When they picked me up at the airport, on the way back to the studio, one of the bodyguards was telling me, y’know, “Don’t look at him, don’t talk to him,” all that stuff. And the first night, I don’t even know if we’d done a song, I was standing out in the parking lot smoking a joint, and here he comes, “Hey, didn’t you used to play with Sleepy John Estes?” What was I supposed to do? Say no? So, I did see him cut people off, and ignore people, as you’ll hear that he does. But he didn’t with me. He talked to me the whole time. In fact, it pissed Lanois off: “They said he talks to you, he doesn’t talk to me. He thinks I’m a whippersnapper!”

The thing I really noticed, in terms of their trying to put pressure on Dylan, all the songs on Time Out Of Mind are kind of pitched low. It’s all low in his vocal register. And, apparently, early in the session, whether it was when they were doing the trio, or when he was just playing acoustic guitar, he had some of the songs pitched in a higher register. But he very definitely avoided that while I was there. I saw Lanois try to manipulate Dylan into the higher register, and I saw Dylan resist it.

Dylan didn’t have anything favourable to say about the earlier versions of the songs. First, before the trio thing, I think they tried to do a just-sit-around-and-strum kind of thing. But Dylan, apparently, said, “No. I’ve already done that.” He was clearly interested in doing something he hadn’t done before. And I think in many ways Time Out Of Mind was his resolution with Lanois over Oh Mercy. I think there were issues unresolved over Oh Mercy that he was determined to resolve.

Bob definitely knows what he’s doing, beyond any question of a doubt. People who say that it’s all just off the cuff and improvised, they just don’t get it. I think it says something that, since Time Out Of Mind, he’s more or less chosen to produce himself. I’m not sure what it says, though. Production is for sure a part of the process that he doesn’t trust, but I personally think that self-production is a myth. There are many who have tried it. I don’t think he has really made a complete record since Time Out Of Mind, either. I mean, I have issues with the mix on Time Out Of Mind, but, other than that, that’s a *monster* of a record.

I don’t mean to criticise Bob here, God knows, but I think self-production is a myth, and he’s denying himself the luxury of a relationship that can be good. He’s obviously had problems with producers, without doubt. That would be my response to what I saw in the studio. But, y’know – as a producer – I’m ready for the phone to ring at any moment. Like I said, if *I* had been producing that night on “Girl From The Red River Shore”, I would have called the symphony orchestra. Because, believe me, they have one in Miami. And they would be delighted to play for Mr Dylan.

DAMIEN LOVE