The Bob Dylan song that took nearly 30 years to release
There are several stories in music history about songs that took a long time to form. Perfectionism takes hold as artists spend years trying to get a track exactly how they want it, with Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ sitting in drafts for five years while Freddie Mercury was piecing together ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ for almost six years. In Bob Dylan’s case, it was less the writing of the song and more the recording that proved to be the issue, showing his dedication to the track.
For dedicated Dylan fans, his Bootleg Series recordings are like the scriptures. Listening through the archival clips is like hearing the artist’s work in real-time as songs are pieced together over several takes or seem to be plucked from thin air, leading fully formed in his brain. They act as unique snapshots into Dylan’s creative world from several points in his career as they also feature tracks of other artists’ songs he liked or works in progress that he was currently trying to hash out and get right.
But in 1963, during the sessions for his third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’, he’s heard trying time and time again to get one song down on tape. ‘Eternal Circle’ was the culprit as a track that never seemed to come out quite right, but one that Dylan was determined to figure out.
It’s a unique concept of a song. In its essence, it’s a love song, but it’s one that deals with Dylan’s heightening fame as he sings about watching a woman watch him on stage, the tension between them and his desire to finish performing quickly so he can talk to her. But when he finishes, he realises that all along, she was into the song, not him. Enthralled by the music but not the man, it’s an interesting consideration of celebrity, artistry and desire and how the three combine.
Dylan wrote the track in the summer of 1963 and it became a key part of his live set, creating a unique moment where he captivated his audience by singing a song about a captivated audience. However, when it came to trying to record the track, which was clearly a favourite of his, it just never worked.
During the album sessions, he tried time and time again. In the end, he did at least 12 takes of the song. He’d even put it down for months at a time before returning to it to try again, with recordings of the track dated from August 7th, August 12th, and October 24th.
This is strange for Dylan. In general, he had a pretty lax approach to slip-ups and mistakes on his recordings. He cared less about getting an absolutely faultless recording and more about capturing the right energy, with many of his tracks being a one-and-done occasion. However, there was something about ‘Eternal Circle’ that he just couldn’t capture as he was unconvinced by every single take he did.
In the end, the song was shelved for nearly 30 years. After he gave up trying to get the right take, despite his dedication to the cause, the public didn’t hear the song until the 1991 release of the Bootleg Series. Listening to it now, it’s clear that it was merely a case of perfectionism taking hold and becoming self-destructive, as the take captured in the tapes is just as enthralling as the song he’s singing about.
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