“That doesn’t sound right”: Why Bob Dylan could never grasp the drum machine
Repeatedly refusing to conform to popular expectations of him, Bob Dylan has always been looking forward, in an artistic sense. He might have typified the folk revival of the 1960s, lending a voice to an entire generation of disenfranchised young people, but the Minnesota songwriter never showed any resistance to moving with the times. It is this penchant for innovation and development which has consistently set Dylan apart from virtually all of his peers, but that isn’t to say that he embraced every new technology with open arms.
Music technology has developed beyond belief from when Dylan first started out in the early 1960s. Although the folk devotee has largely remained true to his roots of a lone voice accompanied by an acoustic guitar, he has never shied away from exploring the benefits of those technological advancements either. During the 1980s, for example, when Dylan’s career was at something of an impasse, he turned to the emerging dominance of synthesisers and drum machines in order to drum up a hit – please excuse the pun.
At that time, Dylan was emerging from his much-maligned era of Christian and gospel music, and his commercial power as a recording artist had certainly dwindled during that time. The songwriter was, of course, never the kind of artist to sell his soul for chart success, but hit records are coveted by virtually every recording artist, and Dylan is no different. In order to achieve this return to form, the songwriter called upon his friend and fellow musician, Mike Campbell.
A regular collaborator of Tom Petty, Campbell began experimenting with drum machines during the early 1980s, culminating in the 1984 song ‘The Boys of Summer’. Petty, feeling the song didn’t fit with the vibe of the outfit, passed on the track, but it became a major solo success for former Eagles member Don Henley, instead. Dylan was impressed with the sound of the song, and quickly called upon Campbell for the duo to record a similar track together, using a drum machine.
Drum machines have been around, in one form or another, as early as the 1930s, but it was during the 1980s that they became much more accessible and widespread. Dylan was keen to use one of them on his work with Campbell, but the sheen of this new technology seemed to wear off very quickly for the folk singer.
Speaking to Vulture earlier this year, Campbell recalled, “He didn’t play along with the drum machine and got frustrated. I don’t know how he didn’t comprehend that. He was playing freestyle.” Seemingly, Dylan didn’t quite grasp the concept of a drum machine, and his efforts to record with one were fairly disastrous.
As Campbell remembers, “After a few minutes, Bob and the engineer look over at me, and Bob goes, ‘That doesn’t sound right.’ He looked at me like it’s my fault.” If Campbell was at fault, it was only as a result of not fully explaining what a drum machine does and what it could achieve for Dylan.
“I said, ‘Well, Bob, when you turn the machine on, you have to follow it so the record is on beat with that.’ And he responds, ‘You mean it won’t follow me? Well, what good is it?’” Campbell added, “He was dead serious.”
While trying to get inside the mind of Bob Dylan would be a fruitless endeavour, it does seem as though he expected a programmable drum machine to improvise along with him, like some kind of highly intelligent musical robot. Needless to say, a Bob Dylan drum machine record never materialised in the end.
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