Any time a new music biography hits the silver screen, there is lots to take into consideration. Does it seem real? Does the actor playing the rock star at least have a little resemblance? Is the subject doing the singing or did they dub the voice?
That’s the way they did it back in the day, until they discovered Gary Busey could sound a little bit like Buddy Holly. So when Timothee Chalamet arrived fresh from Arrakis with plenty of dust in his craw, his Bob Dylan voice was fairly uncanny.
Over 60 some years, there have been many Dylan covers. Few try to sound like the 2016 Nobel Laureate in Literature. After all the point of a good cover is to play homage to the author, but to also find something in the song that can become one’s own.
How the artists we are about to listen to accomplished all that is strictly your call. Odds are there are some total obscurities on this list, as well as some memory joggers and forgotten favorites. The first Dylan song I ever heard was a cover and that’s what we are starting with. It is historic and cool, and quite different from the original. A wise and perfect song from a complete unknown had found its way to the biggest folk stars on the hootenanny planet. You might say it was a simple twist of fate..
Oh, the foes will rise
With the sleep still in their eyes
And they'll jerk from their beds and think they're dreamin'
But they'll pinch themselves and squeal
And they'll know that it's for real
The hour that the ship comes in
Blowin in the Wind - Peter Paul and Mary
All I Really Want to Do - Cher
It Ain’t Me Babe - Johnny Cash & June Carter
The Times They Are A Changing - The Byrds
Masters of War - The Staple Singers
A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall - Leon Russell
With God On Our Side - The Neville Brothers
All Along the Watchtower - Dave Mason
From a Buick 6 - Gary U S Bonds
Positively 4th Street - Johnny Rivers
Like a Rolling Stone - Sebastian Cabot
The Ballad of Hollis Brown - Nina Simone
Simple Twist of Fate - Bryan Ferry
One Too Many Mornings - The Highwaymen
Hearing a bunch of Dylan covers is a trip to an alternate universe. Just like a guided tour to the lives and times that have been lived while this hard rain has been falling. For the more than half century that Bob Dylan has been offering up takes on life lessons and the magic of time and how it messes with the soul, we’ve all been getting fooled. Bob Dylan loves music and art, but so much of his time has been spent playing on stage, speaking only through his songs, it’s pretty certain that he prefers being the riddle master of his own war, working out puzzles that turn into wisdom and cosmic hints that turn into songs. And when someone else tries to sing them, we get a whole other angle from a plethora of artists who want to give these puzzles a shot. Three for a quarter. The circus is always in town.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Old School, provoked and inspired by the new movie and titled Complete Unknown Dylan Covers. I had to toss more tunes than i got to play, but I’ll keep the close by and do a Volume II and some point in the near future.
I’m Professor Mikey. I write, research, remember, and produce every episode, and deal with all the different podcast companies so that you can hear this on Substack, Spotify, YouTube, Apple, and many other originators of 21st century radio. Anything you can do to help, be it a like, a subscription, a comment, or a share, would be much obliged.
We just heard Bryan Ferry with a Simple Twist of Fate. Coming up, we watch the sun going down with a small group of friends who got together in the late 80s and called themselves The Highwaymen. Between them (Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson., they’d seen one too many mornings.
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