Bob Dylan
The 35 Greatest Concerts of the Last 35 Years
We know, we know — the best concert of all-time is your friend’s obscure indie-punk band playing a sweaty neighborhood basement back in ‘94. We admit that one slipped through the cracks. Maybe it’s a fool’s errand, but this list is our attempt to narrow down three and a half decades of worthy live music events — legendary festivals, headlining tours from major artists, one-off stage collaborations, multimedia spectacles — into an eclectic and satisfying blend. – Ryan Reed 35. Heilung at Castlefest (8/5/2017) CREDIT: Gonzales Photo/PYMCA/Avalon/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Music-related viral clips tend to be silly and easily digestible, like the dude riding a skateboard to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” while sipping on Ocean Spray. So it’s heartening that Heilung’s debut l...
Paul McCartney ‘Wishes’ He Was More Like ‘Legendary’ Bob Dylan
In a cover story in the UK magazine Uncut, Paul McCartney admitted “Sometimes I wish I was a bit more like Bob Dylan…He’s legendary… and doesn’t give a shit!” McCartney, however, admits, “I’m not like that.” NME reports that during an interview centered on the making of his new solo album, McCartney III, the Beatles bassist said, “I always like what [Dylan] does. His new album [Rough and Rowdy Ways]? I thought it was really good. He writes really well. I love his singing — he came through the standards albums like a total crooner. But, yeah, I like his new stuff.“ He also cited prolific Canadian-born rocker Neil Young as a longtime favorite. While the Beatles and Dylan were certainly peers, Dylan’s self-titled debut album came out in March 1962, while the Beatles launched th...
Bob Dylan, George Clooney Team for Film Adaptation of Baseball Novel Calico Joe
Bob Dylan is dipping his toes in the Hollywood waters again. The singer-songwriter will produce Calico Joe, which is a 2012 book by John Grisham about a Chicago Cubs phenom from the 1970s whose life is changed after a near-fatal pitch. The story will chronicle all involved — the batter, the pitcher and the pitcher’s son — in its aftermath. Per the film’s logline, “Calico Joe is a surprising and moving story about fathers and sons, forgiveness and redemption, set in the world of Major League Baseball.” George Clooney will direct the film and will produce alongside Grant Heslov for Smokehouse Pictures. “George and Grant see in this book what I see in it – a powerful story that will resonate with young and old alike. People in all walks of life will be able relate to it, “ Dyla...
Bob Dylan Previews First Theme Time Radio Hour Episode in 11 Years
A few days ago, Bob Dylan announced the return of his Sirius XM show Theme Time Radio, and now we’re getting a preview of its first episode in 11 years through three audio snippets. In the first, Dylan welcomes fans back after a decade-plus hiatus. “Hello friends and welcome back to Theme Time Radio Hour. I’m your host, Bob Dylan. To paraphrase Alexandre Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo, I’m so delighted to see you again, it makes me forget for the moment that all happiness is fleeting,” he says before admitting his newly launched whiskey brand, Heaven’s Door, is the catalyst for the show’s return. “Now I’m not gonna pull your coat too much about it, ’cause me telling you how good it is is like tickling yourself. It just doesn’t work. You just have to taste it, a...
Bob Dylan, Bono, Nile Rodgers, Willie Nelson Appear in Jimmy Carter Doc Trailer
Though Barack Obama has shown time and time again that he knows music, debatably the first music-minded president was Jimmy Carter. The title for an upcoming documentary about the former president, Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President, shows on a grand scale as much. Carter’s lifelong love of music is on full display in the documentary’s latest trailer. Artists like Bob Dylan, Bono, Nile Rodgers, Willie Nelson, Gregg Allman and more are interviewed about their friendship with the 38th president. “The one thing that has held America together is the music we share and love,” Carter says at the beginning of the clip. He also said that he considers Dylan and Nelson among his best friends. “His love for music makes sense to me because music is the voice of the heart,” Garth Brooks ...
Neil Young Shares Cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They-Are-A-Changin’
Neil Young hasn’t dropped a Fireside Sessions livestream in a while, but he did share a remanent from the past. On the July 1 stream, which featured songs like “Alabama,” “Campaigner” and the recently released “Lookin’ for a Leader 2020,” Young has now released another song from that “Porch Episode.” Young has been covered Bob Dylan in the past, but this was only the second time that he performed “The Times They-Are-A-Changin,’” with the only prior time being According to Young’s Neil Young Archives website, the session was recorded on June 23 and was produced by Young and Niko Bolas, who are billed as the Volume Dealers. You can listen to Young’s cover here. This is the latest release in what’s been a busy year for Young. He recently announced that he’d be dusting off thr...
Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways Paints a Better Self-Portrait
For six decades, Bob Dylan has proven completely peerless. His lyrics especially have redefined risk-taking and boundary-pushing in popular song. His eyes have always been on the horizon. On his 39th studio album, he looks inward to explore the undiscovered country of his own heart, mind, and creative process. Rough and Rowdy Days is a typically astounding, kaleidoscopic journey through the last half-century of American history. The first hint of a new album came back in March when “Murder Most Foul,” a staggering, 17-minute orchestral elegy to John F. Kennedy, was dropped online with a typically cryptic message: “This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.” It was Dylan’s first original song s...
The 10 Best Punk and Alternative Bob Dylan Covers
Bob Dylan is one of the most widely covered artists in popular music – hit versions of his songs by the Byrds and Peter, Paul and Mary helped make him famous, and Dylan covers by Jimi Hendrix and Guns N’ Roses permanently remain in rock radio rotation. And even artists from the punk and alternative scenes that tend to have less reverence for ‘60s nostalgia been drawn to the Dylan songbook, often giving his compositions dramatically different arrangements. With Dylan’s first collection of new songs in eight years, Rough and Rowdy Ways, out now, here’s a look back at 10 Dylan songs that were memorably reimagined by punk, post-punk, indie, alternative, avant jazz and industrial artists. 10. My Chemical Romance – “Desolation Row” “Desolation Row,” the mighty 11-minute closer from 1965’s Highwa...
Bob Dylan Opens Up About Music, George Floyd and Coronavirus Pandemic in New York Times Interview
Throughout Bob Dylan’s illustrious career, the singer-songwriter hasn’t been keen on doing many interviews. However, on the heels of releasing his latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan sat down for a rare interview with his friend Douglas Brinkley with the New York Times where he talks about everything from his musical influences to the global pandemic to the killing of George Floyd. “It sickened me no end to see George tortured to death like that,” he told The New York Times of what happened in his native Minnesota. “It was beyond ugly. Let’s hope that justice comes swift for the Floyd family and for the nation.” Of course, the conversation focused mainly on music. Dylan spoke about loving the Eagles, wishing he wrote the Rolling Stones’ “Ventilator Blues” and “Wild Horses” and h...
Bob Dylan Shares Tracklist for Rough And Rowdy Ways
Next week, Bob Dylan will release Rough and Rowdy Ways, his first album of original songs since 2012’s Tempest (His previous three albums was comprised of Frank Sinatra covers). Today on his Instagram account (and definitely not the bard himself), the full tracklisting for the set was revealed. Previously, Dylan shared the 17-minute marathon “Murder Most Foul” which recounted President Kennedy’s assassination along with plenty of surrounding 1960s arcana, and the less-serious “I Contain Multitudes,” which shouted out Indiana Jones and “those British bad boys” the Rolling Stones. The latter song was featured on our list of the Best 50 Songs of 2020 (So Far) and both tunes bookend the album. In less good news, Dylan’s summer tour with Nathaniel Rateliff was canceled a few...
Listen to Our Best 50 Songs of the Year So Far
Last week we shared our list of the 50 Best Songs of 2020 (So Far), and we’ve curated a playlist so you can listen to the standout bops of the year in a seamless fashion (you’re welcome). The list covers all musical ground, from the Dixie Chicks to the Used, Dua Lipa to Bob Dylan, Lizzo to TOKiMONSTA, and, let’s face it, is a great source of distraction during a year that seems to just get worse and worse as the months pass. Fiona Apple “confronts her internal strife, but doesn’t sink into it” in “Heavy Balloon” off her equally stunning album Fetch the Bolt Cutters, while Billie Eilish becomes the youngest artist to pen a James Bond theme song with “No Time to Die,” a song that features the 18-year-old’s “beyond-her-years soprano that tops a quietly haunted melody ...
The 50 Best Songs of 2020 (So Far)
Great songs have a freedom that albums don’t because great songs only have to pull off their trick once. It’s like how a great SNL sketch can be a terrible movie or why Vine was an underrated miracle of online comedy. Sometimes an artist can get a lot more done in miniature. When people say that no one listens to albums anymore, they’re obviously mistaken, but they mean that no one listens to certain kinds of albums anymore. They won’t wait to get to the good part, and an industry that’s been padding out their wares for decades has had to adapt to a new reality where the customer is always dope. From Hailey Whitters to Hayley Williams, from King Von to Christine and the Queens, here’s a supercut of just the good parts: The songs that have challenged and delighted and comforted us through a...
