Watch Keith Richards and Bob Dylan duet on ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’
The city of Seville, Spain, had a brilliant idea to raise awareness for the 1992 World’s Fair: stage a star-studded concert event. Seville wasn’t exactly seen as the entertainment capital of the world (or of Europe, or even of Spain, for that matter), but since the World’s Fair was coming around for the first time in over two decades, some hype was needed to prove that exciting things could happen in the city.
The answer came in the form of Leyendas de la Guitarra, or the Guitar Legends concert. Over five nights in October of 1991, the Auditorio de la Cartuja would be filled with some of the most famous rock musicians in the world. Five 90-minute concerts would be available for countries to broadcast, along with a one-hour documentary, and over 40 countries wound up showing at least one of the shows. Seville was suddenly on the map, just as the organisers had intended.
The city didn’t skimp out on the stars either. Each concert featured a host of legendary axemen, including rock stars like Brian May, Joe Walsh, Roger Waters, and Robbie Robertson; blues icons like BB King, Albert Collins, and Robert Cray; and jazz giants like George Benson, John McLaughlin, and Stanley Clarke; and even the pioneer of the electric guitar himself, Les Paul.
The biggest draw of the concert was probably Bob Dylan, although Dylan himself was at a low ebb. After the disbandment of The Travelling Wilburys the previous year, Dylan released the critically panned Under the Red Sky in 1990 and was allegedly drinking heavily during this period. When Dylan took the stage for the Guitar Legends concert, he embraced the event’s celebratory nostalgia by busting out a rock and roll classic, ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’.
He also brought out a true rock and roll ringer – The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. Richards had revisited the first wave of rock and roll when he acted as the musical director of Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday concert, later turned into the documentary film Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll, so he was well equipped to take on the classic form.
Richards takes on the first verse and is his charmingly ragged self, replacing the censored “save your doggone soul” with the more appropriate “save your goddamn soul”. Dylan mostly slurs his way through his own verse, and when his voice croaks towards the end, Richards has to come in and save him during the chorus. It’s all in loose fun, but when people say that Dylan wasn’t in great shape during this time, this is an easy moment to point to.
Check out the performance of ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ down below.
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