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How Bob Dylan recorded ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ in three days
During the early years of his career, Bob Dylan could work at an unprecedented speed without the quality level of his work plummeting. While some artists would slave for months in the studio to tirelessly work on an album, that wasn’t his style, and he recorded the seminal Bringing It All Back Home in just three days.
Astonishingly, that’s not even the album that he made in the quickest span of time, and he miraculously recorded 1964’s Another Side of Bob Dylan in just one session. His record label, Columbia, wanted to cash in on his newfound success, and the singer-songwriter was under immense pressure to release at a prolific rate. 1964 was an odd year for Dylan, and he began to develop a taste for experimentation after falling in love with the blues. However, the folkie was aware that the move would upset his fans and for that reason, he knew from the offset that Bringing It All Back Home couldn’t be all-electric.
For the first day of the recording process, it was Dylan recording solo. However, things didn’t go to plan with the only song making the album from that day being ‘Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream’, and even that take wasn’t taken from the same session.
The next day they decided to change it up completely by inviting a selection of esteemed session musicians to join them and add some colour to the recordings. Immediately, Dylan knew that this was the right move, and within hours, they had finished five songs.
Despite that session going swimmingly, in the evening, Dylan began recording with a whole new set of musicians apart from guitarist Bruce Langhorne, who was present for both. However, the chemistry simply wasn’t there between the set of people he’d assembled and the recordings weren’t usable. With this in mind, Dylan reunited with the first collective of artists for the last day of recordings and they put the final touches on Bringing It All Back Home.
Daniel Kramer, the photographer behind the iconic album cover, later recalled: “The musicians were enthusiastic. They conferred with one another to work out the problems as they arose. Dylan bounced around from one man to another, explaining what he wanted, often showing them on the piano what was needed until, like a giant puzzle, the pieces would fit and the picture emerged whole.”
He continued: “Most of the songs went down easily and needed only three or four takes … In some cases, the first take sounded completely different from the final one because the material was played at a different tempo, perhaps, or a different chord was chosen, or solos may have been rearranged…His method of working, the certainty of what he wanted, kept things moving.”
Although they recorded electric versions of every track on the album, Dylan never intended it to be a full transition from his folk roots. Instead, he opted for the first half to be an expression of his new persona, meanwhile, the second half was a homage to his traditional sound.
A large portion of the folk community turned their backs on Dylan because of Bringing It All Back Home, but, that didn’t matter to him. In fact, those three days he spent in New York transformed his career and play a crucial role in forming his legacy. It was a brave shift to enter into drastically new territory which could have been a colossal misstep, yet, instead, it was a bold decision that defined his career.
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