There’s a new clip on YouTube of Bob Dylan performing the Dick Holler song (originally a big hit for Dion in 1968) Abraham, Martin and John at a gig in 1980. It’s just Bob on the piano sharing the vocal with Clydie King. As the uploader observes, it’s a very low-quality clip by the kinds of standards we apply, but there’s something about it that really gets me. Click here to go directly to YouTube or play below.

Dylan was asked about his performance of this song during a backstage interview just before a gig in November of 1980, by Paul Vincent, then of KMEL radio. (Click here for clip.)

Q: When you did Abraham, Martin and John on opening night — you and Clydie I believe, sat at the piano — and on the line, “has anybody here seen our old friend Bobby, do you wonder where he’s gone,” the crowd reacted. Could they have been thinking, in this case, rather than Bobby Kennedy, could they have been thinking about “where has our old Bobby Dylan gone”?

Dylan: Sure they could’ve, because, y’know, they could be thinking any Bobby. They don’t necessarily have to relate it to me. It’s just a name. Uh, yeah, I’m sure some people think — when I first heard that song I didn’t really know who the Bobby was in it. I can’t remember whether — I didn’t put that together for awhile. I put together the rest of the names but for some reason it kinda was slow on that for me.

And in the current Wikipedia entry for the song Abraham, Martin and John, there is this:

During a 1981 tour, Bob Dylan sang the song in concert: the implicit “John” in Dylan’s rendition was John Lennon, who had been killed the year before.

Well, I guess that must have seemed implicit for the people hearing it then, and had to have added to the poignancy. But of-course John Lennon was murdered on December 8th of 1980. Dylan began performing the song in concert one month earlier, on November 9th of 1980.

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Addendum: A more complete recording of the song is this clip from a November 30th, 1980 performance in Seattle.

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