Joe writes: Lapsley did the bedtime mix on Annie Mac's Radio 1 show last night including Jeff Buckley's cover of this early Dylan break up song:
Jeff Buckley was a brilliant interpreter of other people's songs. He needed nothing more than a guitar and vocal to elevate them into something magical (he reminds me of Eva Cassidy in this respect).
I've just added this to my Spotify playlist of favourite Dylan songs:
Phil writes: Have heard this on the radio several times recently. I thought it must be a track from the Sixties that I'd somehow missed. In fact, I was three decades out. Anyway, like some other songs that feature phone calls (almost up there with 'Diamonds and Rust') it immediately grabs, and keeps, your attention:
Joe writes: They are great and their album is great. But Laura Marling's music affects me in a way no other contemporary artist does - I'm in awe, I'm sad, I'm uplifted. I get the same feelings from listening to Blue or Blood On The Tracks (which I do a lot).
Joe writes: One of my favourite tracks of the year, Song For Zula by Phosphorescent, owes a debt to Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen, which reminded me how remarkable it is that the film Philadelphia featured two wonderful original songs with Philadelphia in the title.
Here's Springsteen's:
And here's Neil Young's Philadelphia:
Thanks to Streets Of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen is on the short list of legendary artists who have written one of their biggest songs well into middle age (see also Bob Dylan - To Make You Feel My Love and Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah).
Joe writes: Just Like Tom Thumb's Blue isn't one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs, or wasn't until I heard Nina's restrained version of it. It's my new favourite Dylan cover and one of my two favourite Nina Simone tracks.
Here's my other Nina favourite, Little Girl Blue, which borrows from Good King Wenceslas:
and while I'm on the subject of classic tracks that borrow from Christmas carols, here's Joni Mitchell's River with its debt to Jingle Bells:
Joe writes: I just spent a long flight listening to Bob Dylan and reading Rolling Stone's Special Collectors Edition of 40 years of Dylan interviews. They also asked a panel of Dylan experts to create a list of his 100 greatest songs. The top ten is here. Like A Rolling Stone is no. 1 - fair enough. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall is a rather surprising no. 2.
Blood On The Tracks is one of my favourite albums of all-time, and it's surely the best Dylan album from beginning to end. This is reflected in the chart which features nine of the ten tracks from the album. The Blood On The Tracks outtake Up To Me also features at no. 49. Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts is the one Blood... track that doesn't feature and it's the closest thing to a weak spot on the album; musically it's a little generic in a way that wouldn't be out of place on one of his recent albums.
Dylan has written so many great songs that you can make a list of his 100 greatest and still leave some out.
The glaring omission is To Make You Feel My Love, which I wrote about here, and which set Adele up to have one of the biggest albums of recent times after her version benefited from various reality TV performances, boosting her profile shortly before the release of her 21 album.
They also left out Sign On The Window, a gem from New Morning that hasn't received the Coen Brothers treatment (yet):
And their list of the best Dylan covers missed Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity's version of This Wheel's On Fire, presumably because Absolutely Fabulous was bigger in the UK than the US:
Joe writes: I have been thinking about Deacon Blue recently. They
were my favourite band for a while, until Aztec Camera released Stray. Real Gone Kid features on a current
TV advert. I recently gave their classic debut album Raintown on vinyl to a
friend for his birthday then ended up discussing Deacon Blue versus The Blue Nile
with another party guest. While I know The Blue Nile are great, what I loved
about Deacon Blue is how ambitious they were. Ricky Ross was trying to be the
Scottish Bruce Springsteen. Personally I prefer artists who aim high and fall
short than those who aim lower and reach their target.
Dignity was Deacon Blue's anthem and fan favourite. It's
a nice story song that held a lot of appeal for me as a teenager. Maybe Dylan
or Tom Waits could have got away with it.
Here's The Blue Nile with The Downtown Lights:
Here's how Aztec Camera won my heart with the Stray album, from which came Notting Hill Blues:
When Will You (Make My Telephone Ring) was Ricky trying to
be the Scottish Harold Melvin. If he didn't quite get there in terms of
performance, I really think he did in terms of songwriting. I'd love to hear this
song covered by a true soul artist:
And for good measure and comparison, here's If You Don't
Know Me By Now by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes:
Deacon Blue also helped Bacharach & David get the
appreciation they deserve with the 1990 release of the Four Bacharach
& David Songs EP, which reached no. 2 in the UK chart. As well as The Look Of Love and I'll Never Fall In Love Again with Hal David's
wonderful couplet rhyming "pneumonia" with "phone ya", it
also brought to light a couple of lesser known B&D songs, including this Are You There (With Another Girl), as recorded by Dionne Warwick:
Finally, here's a recent live version of Dignity that I
found both heart-warming and a little sad:
Joe writes: It's a choice of Lana Del Rey who is being interviewed. It sounds amazing on Radio 1 (as it does everywhere else one might hear it). Bob Dylan is so great he even inspires other artists' finest work.
Also here is Lana Del Rey's second best track National Anthem:
Phil writes: There's not a lot of Dylan on YouTube, not for want of trying but they usually get pulled. This is a live version of one of my favourite tracks from 'Street Legal' which to me represented a definite return to form when it first appeared.
Joe writes: To Make You Feel My Love is the best song Bob Dylan has written since the seventies, and one of the best songs he has written. It's a modern standard. The first version I know of was by Billy Joel (before Dylan's own version was released). I also have versions by Garth Brooks, Kelly Clarkson, Caedmon's Call and Josh Kelley. iTunes has versions by Joan Osborne, Louise Setara, Bryan Ferry, Maria Muldaur, Hilary Scott, Lynn Witty and Rob Mathes, Luka Bloom, Jermy Irons and many others. I guess it's one of the most covered modern songs of recent years (alongside You Raise Me Up which I can never understand - why don't people go straight to the source and cover Danny Boy instead?). And now it has turned up on the Adele album. Adele has a great voice but could learn a lot from listening to the Garth Brooks or Billy Joel or Trisha Yearwood versions. Keep it simple Adele! I think the best version is Trisha's.
I've always thought this song probably inspired the Lindisfarne song Can't Do Right For Doing Wrong which was beautifully covered by Erin Rocha.
Trisha Yearwood - To Make You Feel My Love (not on iTunes sadly so here's an Amazon link to the Hope Floats soundtrack which has it, and I thought had the Garth version too originally but not here it seems)
Erin Rocha - Can't Do Right For Doing Wrong (not on iTunes so here's an Amazon link to the album)
