The Bob Dylan song that barely survived the chaos of the studio: “24 musicians”
Bob Dylan isn’t particularly known for his collaborative skills. The artist has always trodden his own singular path, expecting the musicians he works with to follow where he leads, trusting his vision and helping, the best they can, to understand it and execute it. But in the 1970s, the creation of one song not only stumped his band but a mass cast of other 20 tag-along musicians, too.
Dylan has never operated like a conventional musician. From the very beginning, he made it clear that he wouldn’t conform to expectations, following only his own creative instincts. Just as he was dominating the folk scene, that impulse drove him to pick up an electric guitar. When that move made him a rock and roll leader, he retreated to Woodstock, crafting songs seemingly designed to alienate his audience. Even today, Dylan continues to defy expectations at his shows, often refusing to play the hits—or if he does, reworking them into unrecognisable forms. It’s all part of his ongoing commitment to staying unpredictable and creatively invigorated.
That same attitude has always extended to his collaborative relationships, too. In the studio, his band and producers have to surrender to that, following his lead and trusting his process. There is no space for questioning it and often no point attempting to understand either, they simply had to wait and watch as his vision came to life.
But when working on the track ‘Catfish’ during the sessions for his 1976 album Desire, the musicians were waiting and waiting for a vision that just wasn’t coming together. Instead, with each step, it seemed to get more chaotic.
That chaos went down in front of an all-star cast, too, as Eric Clapton was there, scratching his head, wondering what on earth was going on. “He wasn’t sure what he wanted,” he recalled of that day at Columbia Recording Studios. In his view, Dylan was just as confused as his band. The track was supposed to be an ode to Catfish Hunter, a baseball player, but while he had the idea for lyrics, he didn’t seem to have a concept for its music yet. So the result was a messy attempt to find the song while the musicians watched on as Clapton said, “He was really looking, racing from song to song.”
That would be one thing if it was just Dylan and his typical band set up in the studio. However, the musician seemed to think he could fix the song by simply bringing more and more and more people in. “He was just driving around, picking musicians up and bringing them back to sessions,” Clapton recalled, as Dylan was essentially just picking up stray players with no plan, rhyme, or reason. The result was logistical carnage added on top of inspirational carnage; “It ended up with something like 24 musicians in the studio, all playing these incredibly incongruous instruments – accordion, violin… It was very hard to keep up with him.”
It’s no wonder, then, that the song was canned. It would take 19 years for the song to be heard as part of his Bootleg Series, and when listening to the studio outtake that was eventually released, the chaotic creation of the song is certainly audible. In its final seconds, even Dylan can be heard sighing, with all the frustration of the song’s creation scattered across the only version that ever came out.
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