‘I Was Young When I Left Home’: Bob Dylan’s most technical guitar work
A lot of incredible musicians have played on Bob Dylan records. Emmylou Harris lights up Desire with her backing vocals. Scarlet Rivera’s violin on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour was a key part in what made those shows so unforgettable. Jim Keltner was hailed by many as “the leading session drummer in America” for his work with the Bobfather since 1980. Hell, his own band were… y’know, The Band. Of all of those incredible musicians, none of them was Bob Dylan himself.
Or so it would seem. The truth is you don’t become one of the world’s biggest and most successful recording artists without knowing your way around your weapon of choice, whatever that may be, and Bob’s was the acoustic guitar. I think it’s got more to do with the strange position folk musicians occupy in the instrumental world. Case in point, despite being just as innovative, exciting and technically skilled as any dude in her prime, Rolling Stone sent their readership into a toy-throwing tantrum by putting Joni Mitchell at number nine in their greatest guitarists of all time list.
I think we all know the real problem men like that have with Joni and her place on that list, but I digress. When most people think of the technical skill of folk musicians, it’s often as a joke or not at all. An ageing hippy clutching a battered old Spanish guitar, willing their fingers to remember a C major chord before blowing a knuckle, fretting it. Not only does playing folk music require a huge degree of technical skill even before learning to sing over it, but Bob Dylan showed just how good he was at that right from the very beginning.
For years, one of the most prized Bob Dylan bootlegs was The Minnesota Hotel Tape. Named for where it was recorded in 1961, it shows a 20-year-old Bob Dylan doing what he does best with alarming precocity. What’s more, it’s a rare occasion for early Dylan to do what he does with absolutely no pressure. He’s relaxed among friends and almost effortlessly spinning out utter magic with his voice, a guitar and a harmonica. The high point comes in the form of a little-known rarity called ‘I Was Young When I Left Home’.
Speculated to be a take on the Ramblin’ Jack Elliott song ‘900 Miles’, ‘I Was Young…’ is early Dylan at his electrifying best, for all the reasons we know today. His unforgettable voice and the mesmerising lyrics are all present and correct, but what’s also astonishing is the guitar line. A chiming, fingerpicked backing that’s a lot more than a bunch of cowboy chords that suit the song’s key. Instead, it’s a predecessor to the kind of playing that Dave Rawlings would make a career out of decades later.
From the moment the song rattles in on a fleet-footed riff straight out of vintage Nashville, it’s unforgettable stuff and the playing is a key reason for that. Sure, Dylan would go electric and leave the instrumentation to other players, but to me, that’s not a sign of laziness or failure. It’s a sign of his ambition to focus on what he’s good at and leave the other stuff to people who are better than him at it. When your lead guitarist is literally Robbie Robertson, you would be too.
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