REVIEW BY Eyolf Østrem
The greatest riddle when it comes to Bob Dylan is this: here is a guy whose name is synonymous with a nasal, whining voice and muted strings on out-of-tune guitars, and who made the two-note plonk-plonk solo (in)famous. Why, then, is it that a huge number of the greatest musicians of the past sixty years are all in awe when they get the chance to play with him – not because of his divine status as a cultural icon, but precisely because of what they unanimously refer to as his tremendous musical ability? Why is it that they all say the same: playing with Dylan is a blessing and an experience that stays with you for the rest of your life?
One thinks: no! it can’t be like that; it can’t be such a thrill to be playing three-chord dad-rock accompaniment to a mediocre soloist night after night. But that’s what they all say, those who have had the pleasure and the privilege.
The closest thing to an answer can be found in Ray Padgett’s Pledging My Time, a collection of interviews with musicians who have played with Bob Dylan over the years, and whose tongues the author has miraculously managed to loosen. In this review, I will try to approach that riddle from a number of different angles that all come to the fore in the book.
Pledging My Time covers more or less Dylan’s entire career, with interviews in more or less chronological order. Since many of the interviewees have been with Dylan for a very long time, the span is wider than what appears. The first interview in the book is with Noel Peter Stookey from Peter, Paul and Mary, but the earliest interview goes back to Dylan’s childhood friend Louie Kemp, who was enrolled as a producer for the Rolling Thunder tours in 1975 and 1976. Duke Robillard, who is the last musician among those interviewed to have joined the band – and left it after a mysteriously short stint in 2013 – is not the last interview in the book. That position is held by Benmont Tench, who has a history with Dylan that stretches from 1986 to 2020.
Between these outposts, most of the bases are covered. The interviews include an impressive range of musicians, from the legends (Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Richard Thompson, Scarlet Rivera, Jeff Bridges) over the band giants (Larry Campbell, Jim Keltner, David Mansfield, Winston Watson, as well as many of the musicians from his Gospel period band), to what is perhaps the most interesting and amusing group: the one-offs, those who happened to run into Dylan and found themselves standing on stage with him the next day.
There is Paul Jones, whose stage life with Dylan started when Dylan sat in with him, but who later got to play with Dylan as well. There is Xanthe Littlemore, a cocky, 22-year-old musician who got to open for Dylan in Adelaide, Australia without his having heard a single note of her music (“But are you any good?” Dylan asks. “Would I be here talking to you if I wasn’t?” was the self confident reply). And there is Bobby Valentino, who, with no preparation whatsoever, played violin on one song (“Lenny Bruce”) at one of the Wembley shows in 1987 (“I’m pretty good at winging things”).
There are two reasons why these stories are so interesting. One is that they give short glimpses into the turmoil that must be a Dylan tour. Valentino expresses it excellently: “One of the nights, I was sitting quietly in the VIP section next to the stage watching the Heartbreakers deal with the strangeness that is Bob Dylan.”
Planned Chaos
The other and main reason also goes to the core of the riddle: in their different ways, each interview is an illustration of that peculiar art of Dylan that could be called “Planned Chaos.” His art form depends on the illusion of immediacy, of the perception of a direct, spontaneous expression of genius, but how can that illusion be created and maintained in a medium – live music – which requires planning, rehearsal, and coordination? This has been one of the most persistent tales about Dylan as a band musician: that he constantly changes keys and arrangements, that his phrasing is unpredictable, that musicians rarely have a clue what they are going to play before he starts, and that they somehow have to watch the back of his hands on guitar neck to follow along. Winston Watson’s account of his first concert with Dylan, in front of an audience of 80,000 – which was also the first time he ever met Dylan himself – catches it perfectly: “Tony [Garnier, bassist and bandleader] just said, ‘Watch me, and watch him. It’ll unveil itself to you.’”
The most picture-perfect instance of this method is the Letterman performance in 1983. Everything about it seems chaotic, both to the audience and to the musicians. In the end, they actually play well rehearsed versions of the songs they had in fact spent the most time playing in the run-up to the show – it’s just that nobody knew. One account of this process is documented in the book, in the form of a lengthy interview with the bass player, Tony Marsico.
Revealed here are some of Dylan’s methods for achieving that rawness necessary for the immediacy that is a hallmark of his art: it is supposed to seem as if the performance grows spontaneously out of the inspiration of the moment. Dylan knows that is not possible; the second best is what he does: set certain conditions and thereby create the impression of immediacy.
When Dylan invites people on stage without preparation, or expects his musicians to play in impossible keys and stay away from the higher strings, it is a strong display of trust – both in the musicians themselves and in the ability of the group of all those involved to find their footing, no matter what. But it is also a sign of Dylan’s willingness to submit himself to unknown conditions, including the possibility of a flat faced fall. That those falls are so rare is a clear sign that his method is working, and to follow the development of this method is one of the great themes of the book.
The Film Director
One other aspect of Dylan’s art becomes abundantly clear in a way that, perhaps more than anything else, comes close to answering the original question: what is it about Dylan that makes it worthwhile to play with him? The answer is: because of his total control of his works and his arrangements, and not least because of the way he “plays” with his musicians. Reading through the various stories, the picture becomes clear of a band leader who picks musicians according to what musical direction he is after at the moment, much like a movie director chooses actors.
This is perhaps an obvious reflection, but I’ll make it anyway. For the fans who follow Dylan’s tours and receive each new line-up change with eager discussion, lamenting the one who has left and celebrating their own knowledge of the newcomer, the result of the change will only eventually become evident as the next tour progresses, and until then, the reason for the change will also be blurry.
To everyone else but Dylan, that is. What becomes clear from reading the interviews in the book, especially those from the Never Ending Tour years, is to what extent the entire touring project is one big continuous work of art, where changes in personnel, changes in arrangements, changes in Dylan’s attitude towards arrangements, changes in his attitude towards the setlist, the composition of the show, all work together. This continuity does not only apply to stylistic developments over the years, with the turn towards a country sound upon the advent of Larry Campbell as the most prominent example (whether the shift happened because of Campbell, or Campbell was recruited in order to implement the shift).
This is not to say that there is one all-encompassing master-plan behind the entire Never Ending Tour. But the shifts that become apparent in hindsight seem planned, in ways that become easier to see when they are confirmed by several independent stories.
One of those recurring stories is that nobody gets any instructions beforehand or feedback afterwards. Another is that the recruitment process is unconventional. Many of the musicians talk of periods of jamming loosely, but they are rarely given anything resembling a “you’re hired!” handshake; rather, they are expected to turn up at the beginning of the next tour leg. That these two peculiarities are two sides of the same coin becomes clear through the interviews: the jam sessions are in fact auditions, and instructions are not needed, because the musicians are picked not because of their ability to play as instructed, but because of what they do in fact play.
The Encyclopedia
A third strand of recurring stories also has to do with the audition process. Larry Campbell describes it precisely: “I showed up at the studio, and I met Bob, and we started playing. It was about three days of playing together. Mostly what we were playing was old rock and roll and country tunes. We’d do a few of his tunes, but it was mostly just running through like Hank Williams and Buddy Holly songs. It was a lot of fun. I guess Bob was absorbing what I was putting out. After that third day, [Dylan’s manager] Kramer called and said, ‘Okay, so we’re going on tour next week. You coming?’ I said, ‘Well, yeah, I guess I am’” (373).
Rob Stoner’s “audition” was very similar: “Every so often, Dylan and I would pick up guitars, and he would try to stump me regarding obscure bluegrass tunes, since he’d seen me play with this bluegrass group. Bob, being a student of these kinds of tunes, would say, ‘Hey, you know this one?’ thinking that he could find one I didn’t know. But I knew all these tunes, ‘cause I loved them too. Not only did I know the [music], but I knew the words, so I could harmonize with him. I knew at that time, this guy’s auditioning [me] for some future thing” (155).
What these two stories – and several others – have in common is the value Dylan places on knowing the repertoire. His great love for the old traditions is well known, and so is his uncanny ability to remember. Martin Carthy for example debunks a rumor from the early days, that Dylan was cheating – that he had people in the audiences at other folk artist’s concerts, recording them so that Dylan could play their songs later. “No, he didn’t,” Carthy says. “He had a fabulous memory. If he heard something that he liked, he would go back to the hotel and he would try and write down what he could remember. He did it with all sorts of songs” (24).
But what also becomes clear from the interviews is that repertory knowledge is not merely a point of identification or a mark of excellence and good taste in Dylan’s book, but just as much a musical baseline: that having a musician in the band who knows obscure bluegrass tunes becomes a warrant that Dylan will be able to produce music in a certain direction with this musician. That direction does not have to be bluegrass at all. Rather, the knowledge itself becomes yet another of those background elements that ensure that the “planned chaos” method will work.
The Book
When Pledging My Time is able to illuminate these three core aspects of Dylan’s music, it is thanks to the interviewees themselves. Padgett has managed to get all these musicians to talk, and many of the stories have never been told previously. As the interviews have been completed, Padgett has built a reputation for himself among the musicians, that his project is serious and worth opening up to. Several of the interviewees refer to previous interviews as the reason why they agreed to be interviewed.
There are at least three reasons for this goodwill. One is that Padgett is clearly a good interviewer, technically and personally. He is able to strike a tone with the interviewees on a personal level and make them loosen up and talk freely. That in itself is no small task, in a field where tight-lipped-ness has been the rule, whether out of respect for Dylan, or out of fear of the possible consequences of revealing too much.
Secondly, Padgett is always well prepared, to the extent that he usually knows more about the various performances than the musicians themselves do. They were there, of course, but Padgett’s background knowledge usually dwarfs theirs. He is therefore also able to pick up on things the interviewee says and drill further into those parts of what is being said that will lead down the most interesting side tracks.
Lastly, and most importantly, he never gets lost in anecdotes and chit chat. Pledging My Time is a highly music-centered collection of interviews, and Padgett is focused on the things that a musician would be interested in talking about: the music making aspect of playing with Dylan. So even though the book is definitely also a cornucopia of anecdotes and trivia, Padgett always manages to get the interview back on track again – on the main track, that is: What is it like to play with Dylan? What were the conditions? How did the collaboration start? How did it end? What was the music making like? How were the rehearsals? What was it like to be thrown on stage with hardly any planning? But also the nitty-gritty details: What key did you play this or that song in? Who made the arrangements?
This insistent focus on the music making aspect of spending time with Dylan is one of the book’s major selling points: interesting as the anecdotes may be, it is a delight every time one of those side tracks is not followed.
The Biography
In that sense, this is the most musical book about Dylan since Paul Williams’ Performing Artist series. Thanks to the wide span of musicians Padgett has managed to talk to, the book has actually become the most interesting Dylan biography I’ve ever read, because it always remains a book about the music, not a collection of juicy tales about the musician.
An artist biography can be of three kinds with three different focuses: on the person, on the product, or on the process. There is an abundance of the Great Lives kind of personcentered biographies about Dylan. From an artistic perspective, a focus on the product is more interesting – regarding the artist’s life as something distinct from the biographical facts of the person. But in Dylan’s case, the product may not even necessarily be the most interesting thing. What sets Dylan apart from virtually everyone else in his field is the constant flux, the refusal to settle down, whether on one version of the songs, on one format of the show, on one style. What is the product of, say “Tangled Up in Blue”? The album version is a product. Paul Williams ended up regarding every version of every song as individual works of art – which is a valid conclusion, but a simpler and musically more illuminating one is probably to regard the process of constant development and re interpretation. And in that process, the musicians around Dylan are essential participants. What becomes clear in this book is that Dylan is simply incapable of doing a drawing by-numbers greatest hits show, and that the musicians that he hires are an essential part of his music making.
*
Last but not least: Pledging My Time is also aesthetically pleasing, with a clear layout, almost without errors, misprints, apostrophes turning the wrong way, etc. The best thing is that the book is not the end – there are still more interviews coming through on Ray Padgett’s Substack newsletter, Flagging Down the Double E’s.
