One gig left Bob Dylan massively disappointed: “It wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to do”
Bob Dylan was never one to lick the industry’s ass and compromise his artistic standards. He was a true artist in every sense of the word, and while he did flirt with the mainstream from time to time, he could tell when a show felt earnest and when he started to feel like a musical puppet when he got onstage.
And while many fans harboured a lot of resentment for Dylan for making that kind of career move by going electric, that wasn’t a case of him trying to make a cash grab. He knew that there was power in rock and roll, and even if many of the other folkies around him couldn’t figure it out, hearing him sing ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ was a case of him trying to use the next generation’s music to make a statement bigger than he could have done with an acoustic guitar in his hands.
But even Dylan wasn’t willing to stay in that position for long. Looking through his discography, Dylan was a musical chameleon on par with David Bowie. He may not have gotten his makeup and costumes on like ‘The Starman’ did, but he always took the opportunities to work on songs that didn’t necessarily have the same flair as ‘The Times They Are A-Changin”. Every track he put out had to contain a piece of him, the constantly evolving him, but that doesn’t mean he was able to kick the sense of nostalgia away.
Because right as Dylan was making his way into the 1990s, the Unplugged had slowly started to heat up. While Alice in Chains and Nirvana from the new school set a benchmark for the show with their performances, Dylan first caught wind of the show when he saw Clapton transform ‘Layla’ in front of that crowd, turning one of his most emotional rockers into a slow blues jam.
For Dylan, going back to his roots like that got his spine tingling and gave him the kind of fix that junkies look for on street corners. He hadn’t revisited that area of his career for a while, and after hanging out with the Traveling Wilburys, this was a back-to-the-basics journey for him. But the minute he set foot in that studio and had the lights on him, he realised that the show was a lot more of a musical machine than he had expected.
All he wanted was the chance to reinterpret his material, but Dylan left his taping with a sour taste in his mouth, saying, “I was hearing a lot about how Eric Clapton did ‘Layla’ acoustically for Unplugged. That influenced me to do the same for ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, but it would never get played that way normally. I’d consider doing [it] again in a relaxed setting where I didn’t feel like I was on the spot. I felt like I had to deliver, and I delivered something that was preconceived for me. That wasn’t a problem, but it wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to do.”
In fact, the kind of performance he’s talking about is actually closer to how Nirvana structured their show. Whereas most artists would run through their songs a couple of times before they got the entire thing to sound perfect, Nirvana turned up and played the entire gig from front to end and then left, which would have been a much better approach for Dylan to feel in the moment a little bit more.
He may have known the ins and outs of the music business a little bit more, but it was a lot more underwhelming for him to see the mechanics behind a show that was supposed to be seen as intimate. Giving a performance that was genuine could have been done in that kind of format, but Dylan ended up being subjected to the more glamorous side of what Unplugged really was.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.