Was Bob Dylan always searching for a band?
No rock star can achieve iconic status alone. Even though most people can only hope to write the greatest songs the world has ever known and hold the respect of millions of adoring fans, it normally takes a small army behind them for anyone to even care about them in the long run. While Bob Dylan has always been one to keep to himself whenever he performs his best work, he might have more of a need to collaborate with others than he realises.
If you said that strictly about Dylan’s folk period, though, that wouldn’t make any sense. The whole point behind his early years was to be the modern incarnation of Woody Guthrie, so seeing him with an acoustic guitar and the words in his head walk into the studio to cut albums like The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan wasn’t that out of the question whenever he sang some of his anthems.
Somewhere around the time The Beatles arrived on American soil, Dylan seemed more accustomed to the idea of having people behind him. Outside of going electric on Highway 61 Revisited, the lion’s share of each subsequent album showed Dylan making the most of whatever group was working with him at the time. For someone who claimed to not collaborate well, seeing him work off of Mike Bloomfield on tracks like ‘Tombstone Blues’ is still one of the best moments in his career.
But looking beyond his classic period in the 1960s, Dylan always needed someone else to get him over the finish line when playing live. He had The Hawks for most of his glory years before they turned into The Band, but when it came to his major shows afterwards, he would always be working off of people like George Harrison during The Concert For Bangladesh and even employed Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as his backup band in the 1980s.
Still, that didn’t mean that his attitude towards his songs suddenly changed. The Hawks were known to change on a dime if Dylan felt that a song needed to be played in a different key, and since he was never one for rehearsal, hearing him “play” the band in some respects was simply became one of his strengths, like the moment during one of his tours with the Heartbreakers where the band calms down the minute he puts his hand up for ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’.
But his way of performing also allowed for a certain elasticity that wasn’t there before. Even though there have been many mixed feelings about Dylan’s collaboration with The Grateful Dead in the 1980s, hearing them work together to make his songs into extended exercises may have been the best way for him to break up the monotony of playing an acoustic guitar and harmonica and hoping for the best.
Those differences also might be down to the way that Dylan always saw his music. Some of his biggest songs have become anthems that legions of people can sing along to, and by keeping the bands eclectic throughout his career, he’s always tried to restructure his signature tracks to the point where they sound different every single time he plays him. Looking at a song like ‘Desolation Row’ now as opposed to the one on record is completely different, but that’s part of Dylan’s plan.
For years, he had been bigger than any other artist in the world, and considering how much time and effort he put into his words, he wasn’t going to look like a pin-up star for it, either. So, in a way, seeing him join bands like Traveling Wilburys or work with other artists like Tom Petty may have been his way of putting a cover over his iconic status for a little band so he could enjoy being a member of a band again.
In fact, that’s probably why he and Harrison ended up getting along so well in their supergroup. Both of them liked the idea of making music with their friends, but once their star power became too big for them to handle, it was far more important to make music that they loved with their friends than having to carry the burden of hogging up the spotlight all the time.
But if Harrison had made something the Wilburys to run away from the stigma of being a farmer Beatle, Dylan’s use of a band at that stage seemed almost like a necessity. He could still play songs like ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’ and ‘Masters of War’ if he wanted to, but by the time he reached his twilight years, his songs had simply become too big for any one man to carry alone onstage.
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